by Jackson Hogen | Aug 16, 2019
Most women don’t want a ski this wide as their everyday ski, limiting their market appeal to second-pair buyers. Less demand leads inevitably to lower model turnover, so there’s only one fresh face in this small field, Kästle’s FX96 W. The rest of our test panel’s...
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 16, 2019
Over the last several seasons, the brawniest skis in the Women’s All-Mountain West genre have been mellowing out. Gone are the models that simply replicate a carving construction in a fatter profile; today’s WAMW models are unequivocally off-piste appliances. The ones...
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 16, 2019
The original idea behind making a ski as fat as 110mm underfoot wasn’t to open previously unskiable terrain to world-class athletes, but to allow those without such skills to be able to navigate less forbidding pitches when the snow is knee deep. Our Finesse Favorites...
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 16, 2019
The defining difference between our Power Picks and Finesse Favorites can be summed up succinctly: how fast are you willing to go before you steer out of the fall line? If you tend to ride the brakes and the gas at the same time, you’ve overshot your category: you...
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 16, 2019
The women’s Big Mountain genre has bedeviled us since we began covering these super-fat models as a separate category seven seasons ago. Part of the problem is that skis this wide require some semblance of new snow to be given a fair evaluation, limiting their appeal...
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 16, 2019
The women’s Big Mountain field is inextricably entwined with its unisex cousins, as this infinitesimal slice of the market doesn’t consume enough units to merit women-specific spin-offs. Fortunately for all concerned, men’s Big Mountain skis have already been put on a...
