i have skied the ARG's for the past 3 years in washington, idaho, and california. THe ARG's are EXACTLY the same as the donner parties. on fressh snow of 6+ inches there is no better ski. in pow with some tracks init, the ski's are awsome. anything after that, and they are straight up a pain to ski. I found myself switching skis at around 10:30-11:30 on pow days. Especially in the PNW when cut up pow sets up quickly these skis can be really rough. on flat groomers they are actually really fun, you cant carve but its a fun feeling to slide on these.
Moral of the story: if you only plan on skiing virgin/virginish pow, these will skyrocket your confidence and legitamatley make you a better skier who will step into gnarlier pillow lines/chutes etc than you've skied before. i personally think they are worth it. make sure you get some burly bindings and plan on slaying, and charging aggressivly for a few hours, and then switching to your other skiis by midday.
also because they are sooo fat underfoot, they dont sink as much as other skis do in pow, so be prepared to STOMP your landings, so real need to lean back a little on landings as you can stomp the piss out of drops and such. any other questions PM me.
