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...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.
Supershape e-Rally
Head was the first major ski brand to tie its fortunes to the success of the shaped ski revolution with its Cyber series. I remember being a guest at a major dealer event in Konigsberg, Austria in the 1990’s when the president of Head’s subsidiary muttered the brand’s new mantra in a funereal monotone: “Cyber is carving, and carving is Cyber.” You had to be there.
Point being, Head went all-in on the carving craze and never lost its passion for the genre, always working on the perfect tool for making a continuous, flowing arc on groomed terrain. When Head acquired a license to use Graphene, carbon in its most elemental form, it didn’t rush to apply it to its established Supershape collection, but did its homework for a few seasons, figuring out just where it belonged. In the end, the answer was of the “more begets more” variety, in this instance, more Graphene lightened the overall construction enough to allow Head to add more Titanal to its core quartet of carvers.
For 2025, the entire Supershape collection tacked in a different direction, again adjusting the balance between carbon and metal elements, this time cutting out some Titanal and subbing in carbon in the form of Crossforce Carbon in a mid-section patch. The net effect is a ski more responsive to pressure applied directly underfoot, creating a round turn with an energy boost at the bottom, propelling ski and pilot into turn after turn, without a break in the beat.
If this sounds like the e-Rally is the consummate, dual-track carving tool, well, it is. Even with a new, more svelte sidecut that slices through broken snow on a more even plane, the e-Rally still reserves its best behavior for the groom. All you have to do is tip it on edge and it will go find the top of the turn.
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.