2025 Men’s Frontside Skis
2025 Men’s Frontside Skis 2025 Men’s Frontside Skis The frontside of the mountain may not be the most topographically diverse part of the hill, but the skiers who populate it are the most polyglot we’ve got. Timid intermediates, cruising seniors, the...Peregrine 82
American skiers have been conditioned to think that a true all-terrain ski has to be at least 90mm underfoot, with an amply rockered baseline. Skinnier skis are fine for manicured groomers, but as soon as the surface devolves into a disheveled mess, it’s time to climb on a broader board.
As I’ve made a living divining the differences between one ski genre and another, it would be disingenuous at best to now claim that we don’t need as many categories as the market has chosen to populate. The new Völkl Peregrine 82 makes a strong case that the best Frontside skis shouldn’t be confined to the tireless tedium of carving up corduroy; they can handle whatever the backside of the mountain has to dish out.
There are reasons why this ski is so good. A ski can only do what its design allows. As is often the case with people, a good deal of the Peregrine 82’s brilliance is due to its genetic make-up; the Deacon 84 that preceded it in the Völkl line already used 3D Radius, Titanal Frame and its secret sauce, 3D Glass. All the hoopla about Titanal Frame is well deserved, but the 3D Glass design is every bit as clever. The bottom glass laminate runs up and over the sidewall, creating a lip that connects with a glass top sheet to create a torsion box. The 3-piece Titanal Frame allows the ski to bend more readily under a centered load, but it’s the 3D Glass torsion box that stores all this energy like a giant spring that instantly pops back into position.
There are two on-snow traits that elevate the Peregrine 82 from the rest of the field: one is the rebound energy I just described, and the other is the turn shape versatility inherent in its 3D Radius Sidecut, which essentially harbors a short-radius capability inside a long-radius chassis.
Supershape e-Magnum
Faithful followers of Realskiers’ ski selection methodology will notice that, strictly speaking, the Head Supershape e-Magnum doesn’t belong in the Frontside genre. Its 72mm waistline plants the Magnum – appropriately – in the Technical genre, where you’ll find the last remnants of the Carving category that once dominated sales in this country. I’ve overlooked this heresy because the Magnum has two Frontside siblings – the e-Rally and e-Titan – that are stars in the Frontside firmament; it didn’t seem right to review them without including the e-Magnum, which arguably is the best of the brood.
What elevates the Magnum above its brethren is its affinity for short, slingshot edge sets that are as secure as they are whiplash quick. You use the same skill set racers develop by dancing through a forest of slalom gates, repurposed to create your own line on the fly. It’s like riding a rollercoaster at Disneyland; you know you can charge with abandon because there’s no chance you’ll go off the rails. This is a form of exhilaration you can’t extract from a fat ski, which tend to be as lively as a wet noodle.
While short turns are its special sauce, the e-Magnum can be coaxed into elongating its arcs at its rider’s behest. The tip width on all the 2025 Supershapes has been whittled down a few mm’s, so the new e-Magnum isn’t as fixated on short turns as its only diet, without mitigating its ability to latch onto the tippy top of a turn. While it’s inherently quick on and off the edge, the e-Magnum is never nervous, it’s piezoelectric dampening system muffling vibrations and maintaining intimate snow contact until you stomp on the edge, loading up the Crossforce Carbon laminates in its guts so the ski springs across the fall line. By replacing a section of Titanal in the ski’s midsection with crisscrossed carbon, the latest Magnum is both lighter and livelier than prior generations.
Supershape e-Titan
If you come from a race background, your favorite Supershape is likely to be the e-Speed or e-Magnum, but if you’re accustomed to a fairly wide all-mountain model, you’ll probably gravitate to the e-Titan. The common misconception that one needs 100mm’s underfoot to tackle off-piste terrain won’t survive contact with the e-Titan. Particularly when the off-trail goods are best in the trees or other tight quarters, a ski with a talent for tidy turns has all the versatility you need to subdue the untamed side of the mountain.
Head has been fiddling with the formula for the ideal all-terrain/carving ski for many product generations. For 2025, the tinkering continues, beginning with the sidecut, the most fundamental element in a carving ski’s make-up. The 2025 e-Titan lops 4mm off its forward contact point and loses 2mm at the tail, tamping down the carve-insistent personality of its forebears. The e-Titan is still very much a carving ski at heart, but now it’s programed to be more open-minded about turn shape. It’s divine in boot-top freshies, providing a stable platform that wraps into the top of a mid-radius turn, holds an edge with a python’s smooth insistence, and concludes with a burst of rebound energy that converts the exit of every arc into an effortless stroll in the park.
This effortless exuberance wouldn’t be possible without another important design modification. You can’t engage a ski’s sidecut if you can’t get it on edge, and you can’t release the potential energy stored in the ski’s mainframe if you can’t bend it.
One of the reasons the e-Titan can motor through cut-up snow like it was meringue is it’s loaded with shock-muffling materials like Crossforce Carbon, Graphene and piezoelectric circuits that convert disruptive vibrations into edge-gripping power. Tuned to kick in only when it’s calming powers are required, Head’s unique Energy Management Circuit delivers next-level imperturbability on edge.