2020 Women’s All-Mountain West

In yet another example of our cutting-edge journalism, permit us to point out that men and women are different. The pertinent manifestation of this principle is that the same width ski that makes an ideal men’s all-terrain tool is a tad too wide to be an everyday ride...

The 2020 Women’s All-Mountain West Field

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...

Finesse Favorites: Kicking Back

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...

Power Picks: Killing It

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...

2020 Women’s Big Mountain

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...

The 2020 Women’s Big Mountain Field

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...