Revelations
Mining the Revelations Archives
When I first raised the topic of composing a weekly newsletter with Realskiers.com founder Peter Keelty, he coughed, bit down on the Salem that was forever dangling from his lips and curtly advised me that I would run out of topics in a month. This...
What You’ll Pay for your Next Pair of Skis Depends on When You Buy Them
Suppose you’ve decided that this is the year you’re finally going to spring for new skis. Let’s add to this scenario the likelihood that you’d prefer to get a good deal on your prospective purchase. To help guide you through the thicket of...
BOA Takes Control
A scant three seasons ago, there wasn’t a single alpine boot adorned with the now-familiar BOA® dial. As the 2026 season commences, there isn’t an alpine boot brand that doesn’t deploy a BOA® cable retention system in at least one product across a...
The Impact of Tariffs on the U.S. Hard Goods Market
“Nobody knows anything.” This pithy epigram by the celebrated screenwriter William Goldman was aimed at the movie-making biz, but it is equally applicable to a ski trade trying to adapt to the exigencies of a market battered and bruised by sudden...
From Snowbird Secrets: On Being Light
Mineral Basin, on the backside of Snowbird, is a bowl so large if it were any bigger it would be a lake. When storms move into this corner of Little Cottonwood Canyon, visibility collapses to a range so dense it should serve as the optical...
2026 Silver Skier Selections
When Jon Weisberg, founder of SeniorsSkiing.com, suggested I single out skis that would be particularly well adapted for senior skiers, I didn’t immediately warm to the idea, if only because I was already plenty busy trying to test and review over...
Another Cornerstone of the Ski Trade Wobbles
For decades, retailers, rental shops and ski distributors have supplied the secondary market with their used and/or unsold inventory. While there will continue to be a robust secondary market, where the gear that stocks them comes from and how it’s...
A Change in Plans
You can’t go home again. The past is another country. Nothing lasts forever. There must be 1,000 such homilies that share the same, sorrowful observation. No matter what we cherish about the past, it ain’t coming back. I’ve spent decades refining...
Swimming Against the Tide
“You must know, deep inside, that what you are doing is important, meaningful - vital. That someone somewhere needs it to be special, that you have thought about them, and that you care.” - Master Carpenter Callum Robinson, author of Ingrained:...
Catching Up
It’s been a rough first half of the ski season. The 24/25 season began with a whimper, not a bang, when most major ski brands belatedly realized their sales targets were unattainable. Unsold skis were clogging the supplier-to-retailer pipeline;...
Battered, Bloody but Unbowed
To describe skiers as a resilient lot wouldn’t be wrong, just woefully insufficient. Skiers are determined to ski no matter how many battles with gravity they have lost. Many have been brutally mauled, patched back together and hustled back into...
A Fly in the Ointment
Today’s Revelation has been several weeks in the making. In the course of researching it, I’ve unearthed several disturbing trends that are tearing at the fabric of our sport: Some equipment suppliers are recklessly jamming their over-production...
At Our Wit’s End: A Sucker’s Guide to Revenue Sharing Models
*By "Special Offer," we mean "Obsequious Solicitation." It’s not like we haven’t tried. In our tireless efforts to increase our gross receipts, we’ve resorted to double-billing, even triple-billing, but our over-educated readership must employ a...
Bloomberg is Bankrupt
If Bloomberg Business doled out financial advice as transparently idiotic and unresearched as its ski gear advice, Bloomberg - and all its clients- would be bankrupt. Dear Readers: The following bit of tripe was recently re-published by Apple News...
Suspended Animation
Skiing isn’t for the faint of heart. Neither is subjecting oneself to what is coyly referred to as “America’s Health Care System.” Hold that thought while I elaborate on point one, that a lifetime devoted to skiing is hard to navigate without...
There Will Never Be a Better Time to Buy Boots
As far as I know, October isn’t “National Buy Your Ski Boots Now” Month, but it should be. Carryover stock will never be more abundant, and new models will still have a full range of sizes, which won’t be true forever. Perhaps most importantly,...
AI Ski Reviews Revisited
Since AI first reared its ugly head, I’ve been keenly observing its progress as a ski review creator (https://realskiers.com/revelations/chatgpt-ai-has-ski-patter-down-cold/) with a sense of impending doom. My second peek at its progress, The Con...
The Fog of War
In the spring of 1970, I was finishing up my sophomore year at Yale. Not unlike the storms of protest that have swept through the halls of academia recently, the normal student pursuits of spring were shoved aside by a spike of anti-war protests...
Your Next Ski Should Be a Frontside Model
I realize I’m swimming against the tide. The American skier has considered his abundant options and chosen some form of an All-Mountain model as his everyday ride. (Pardon me, ladies, much of what I’m about to assert doesn’t apply to you, as...
A Dearth of Data
During my tenure as Editor of Realskiers.com, one of the benefits of membership has been a long-form ski review, accompanied by test scores complied by our small volunteer army of testers. Long-form reviews are still a principal component of the...
The Reckoning to Come
This isn’t the typical season-opening salvo from Realskiers.com that my Dear Readers and Dear Listeners have come to expect. In years past, I’ve kept the focus on emerging trends as exemplified by interesting new models and where they fit in the...
Is Skiing Getting Better or Worse?
As we grow older, events of the misty past take on a warm, pastel glow that suffuses our memories with a charm that seems notably lacking in the present. Part of our sanity- preservation wiring gives us the ability to edit our past so the best...
What My Murky Crystal Ball Reveals
As I pen this piece in the middle of February, 2024, the outlines of the 2025 American ski market are coming into ever sharper focus. Every important brand has not only pitched its next collection to its retail partners, most initial orders have...
Better Write than Wrong
Of all the many splendid reasons for becoming a Realskiers.com subscriber, none is more unique - nor more valuable - than the opportunity membership confers to contact me directly with your queries. There are no forms to fill out, no arcane...
The Most Popular Ski of All Time?
Last week in this space I bid a fond farewell to a trio of outstanding skis that have ruled their slice of the market for the better part of a decade. No sooner had I sent the text off into the ether than my wandering mind dusted off some fuzzy...
The Twilight of the Idols
Rest assured, Dear Readers, that this Revelation is not a discourse on Nietzsche’s sermon about the end of religion; the idols to which I refer aren’t gods, but a coterie of iconic ski models that have consistently exhibited “best in class”...
Snow Can’t Get Here Soon Enough
Yesterday, I vacuumed my lawn. In the interests of full disclosure, “lawn” is too glorious a term for the stray bits of greenery that dot the patch of open ground on the south side of my home in Reno. Most of what had once been a robust example of...
A Real Skier’s Holiday Gift-Giving Guide
It’s my understanding that a great many of my fellow citizens do their gift shopping well in advance of the due date. While I appreciate this preparedness in principle, I find it very difficult to put into personal practice. Like Santa himself, who...
From Where I Sit
As I’ve been telling you since I first ascending this pulpit, there is nothing you can do to help your skiing more than procuring a properly fit ski boot. There is no way to compensate for its absence, no alternative that makes the choice of boot...
Checking in on the 2024 Women’s Market
Every few years I take a deep dive into the women’s ski market, partly to re-visit the latest trends in the overall women’s field and partly to identify brands that have done the most to differentiate their women’s models from their unisex...