the boots should perform reasonably well even on steep terrain.

people like the Freerides better than Fritschi's lighter weight package because they are slightly more burly.

My advice: Try those Superlights in powder before you decide you like 'em. They're more of a hardpack ski.

i ski pretty hard and aggressively and i weigh about 180. would be nice to crank the din above 10 from time to time, and the freerides go to 12 instead of just 10. if you are lighter and intermediate, there is no real reason not to go with the titanal III or whatever they are calling it now. you have to add brakes, but if you look you can find the older style fritschi bindings very cheap. i think black diamond in slc was selling a few pairs of them for $160 or so.

i actually used to ski on the magics since i found a pair for an absurdly cheap price - cheap enough to endure all of the "andrew is a princess" comments from my bearded ski partners. they are good boots - i could ski pretty much any resort terrain in them, though it became a lot more pleasant when i switched to the denali tt's. make sure to go with the thermofit liners and get them fitted. makes a world of difference in terms of weight, convenience, and fit.

This is a very belated postscript to the gear purchasing discussion above. I ended up getting Atomic Femme Fatales with Dynafit TLT bindings (I decided to vote for less weight over better release) for less than $600 all together. (Package sale.) I was very psyched about this until I discovered that no one in the world manufactures a small enough dynafit compatible shell for my foot. Smallest Scarpa Magic shell, 22.5/23. Smallest Dynafit shell, 22.5-24. Smallest Garmont shell, 23. I need a 22!!!! So I persuaded the boot guy here in town to try to modify the smallest Magic shells and we'll see what happens...

-Carissa