2021 Volkl Secret 102

Tester: Edie Thys Morgan When you go to Jackson Hole, you want one thing and one thing only. You want powder, and lots of it. You don’t really care if your ski can carve GS turns without a whimper on firm groomers, or turn on a dime in the crux of a chewed up chute. You certainly don’t care if it will hold on a marble hard wind-scoured ridge or if it can downshift without flinching when you get into a dicey tight spot that was a whole lot friendlier the last time you were in it. Why bother wondering if it can navigate sun-baked moguls without your knees and your back squawking and your teeth rattling out of your head? No, you don’t care about any of those things because you’re going to be ripping down Rendezvous Bowl and hitting the Hobacks for 4,000 vert of uninterrupted champagne fluff. And then you wake up, and guess what? Your vacation just might come between epic dumps. When it does, you’re going to wish you brought that one ski that can do all of the above. The Secret102 may look like a fatty—and it’s definitely got the girth to plow through the powder of your dreams and its skied-out aftermath—but it’s no one trick pony. The ski gets happier as you dial up the intensity, which is also to say, it performs best when you’re the boss.