A great many new equipment buyers face a common conundrum: should they buy for the skier they are today, or step up in performance (and price) and acquire gear they can grow into? If they opt to step up, is there such a thing as a step too far?
Americans tend to be optimists and so often opt for an equipment upgrade on the premise that even if they aren’t as proficient as they imagine themselves to be, with enough repetition they soon will be. Are there any pitfalls to this program?
The answer, of course, depends on what the future holds. Are they actually going to ski 30 times this season? Are they actually going to take that lesson they keep putting off? And if they buy for an actuality that never transpires, does it actually matter?
The answers to this cavalcade of questions are as varied as the circumstances that inspire them. For example, well-conditioned athletes, no matter how inexperienced, will have the kinesthetic awareness to drive into a ski boot and so will progress quickly. They’ll need a better, more supportive boot than their current ability level would suggest.
There is a limit to how much better a boot one should consider, and it’s not just the financial one. As boots bump up in quality and cost, conventional ski boots also become more rigid. If a boot is too rigid (or over-sized) to bend when flexed forward, it’s essentially un-skiable, a liability no skill set can overcome.
Skis have a similar threshold of suitability when it comes to upgrading one’s game. Just as with boots, a ski one cannot bend is a ski one cannot control. Procuring a better ski only works in one’s favor if the better ski will bow under the pressure its new owner can exert. An unbendable ski behaves more or less like a toboggan, which is exhilarating to ride primarily because it’s impossible to steer.
Because skiing, done properly, is a tricky skill set to acquire, ski makers have modified their offerings over the last 20 years to make them shorter, wider and bent upwards at tip and tail to create less snow contact. While this makes guiding the ski like an arrow more challenging, it makes steering it like a squeegee more amenable.
The apotheosis of the shorter, wider, rockered ski is the super-wide (120mm+ underfoot) powder board. It serves two wildly different communities: meat-huckers chasing their bros to a coveted cliff band, and raw rookies, as such a ski eliminates the absence of powder technique as an obstacle to happiness.
I mention the evolution in ski dimensions towards a squatter platform because one of the step-up options on the new ski menu is a ski of aspirational width. Because skiers dream of powder more than they idolize hard pack, they imagine they need a tool that will facilitate flaying a powder field as much as they need a machine that will slice up settled snow.
The actuality is that most ski days are firm snow days, and even powder days are more like powder hours. Unless you’re a heli guide, the ratio of powder runs to descents in other ski conditions doesn’t come close to 1:1. So why buy for conditions one only rarely encounters?
We humbly suggest that if you regularly ski the western US and you must have one ski for all conditions, including over-the-knees pow, men can go as wide as 100mm underfoot without losing the ability to find a readily accessible edge on everyday groomed terrain.
When it comes to assessing your ideal ski width, be sure to bring the actual and the aspirational into balance. If you decide to go wide, remember that just because fatter skis require less effort to steer, you shouldn’t use their girth as an excuse for bad tipping, as deplorable a habit on the piste as it is at a pizzeria.
– Jackson Hogen
