If there is a single, do-it-all ski – particularly for western, big-mountain skiing – it no doubt lives in this category and probably has a waist width of 98 or 100mm. The reason is simple: up to this girth (95mm-100mm), these relatively wide skis don’t...
All the unisex All-Mountain West models, whether new or returning, biased towards Power or Finesse properties, lightweight or burly, strive to serve two masters by providing enough surface area to facilitate off-piste skiing while retaining basic carving skills for...
The main reason to acquire an All-Mountain West ski is to get the widest ski possible you can use as an everyday ride. The reason you want the widest ski is so you can take it into powder and what’s left of powder between storms. To make that all-terrain access as...
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...
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...
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...
