Revelations

Seven Skis That Transcend Their Genres Ever since Doug Pfeiffer and Sven Coomer orchestrated Skiing magazine’s first on-snow ski test, how to usefully categorize the pile of models under review has been an on-going debate. For many years, SKI magazine defined each category according to skier type rather than ski model traits; to find the right ski, you first picked the skier-personality profile that best described you. In an earlier era when all skis were derivative of some sort of race model, every ski was defined by its relationship to a race archetype, hence genres such as “All-terrain Slalom.” Many of today’s online ski reviews are …Continue Reading	How It’s Supposed to Work I’ve recently returned to the front lines – known colloquially as the bootfit bench – as there’s snow on the ground here in Reno and the frenzy has started. As usual, every encounter with live subjects reveals a trove of knowledge, or perhaps I should call it, “anti-knowledge,” the morass of misconceptions that all too many skiers mistake for the truth. Last week, I introduced you to Mike, the Internet shopper who came in with a hodgepodge of gear that would have hobbled his ski development until he got rid of it. Fortunately for all concerned, Mike recognized good advice …Continue Reading	Are You Ready? It snowed in Reno last night. There’s nothing like waking to a fresh blanket of snow draped over every inch of the landscape to kick-start the dormant machinery that monitors one’s skiing life. You probably took care of the season pass issue so long ago it seems disconnected from the rest of the process, but everything else on the to-do list merits your attention. Let’s take a look at what you should be doing soon – as in, before the holidays – if you want a clean start out of the gate when it’s finally time to put skis on …Continue Reading
Another Brilliant Idea I Don’t Like Maybe it’s because I’ve spent what feels like several days in the clutches of AT&T customer service, a stretch of unrelieved aggravation that would roil the implacable calm of the Buddha, but the latest new product announcement to arrive in my mailbox ruffled my feathers. I realize my remarks are likely to be dismissed as the ravings of a 19th-century Luddite, which is almost accurate. Actually, my mindset more closely resembles that of an ancient Druid. Those of my Dear Readers and Listeners who have read the odd chapter of Snowbird Secrets know that I believe skiing can open pathways …Continue Reading	Readers Respond to Revelation On Fear of High Lifts Four weeks ago, I posted a Revelation and attendant podcast titled, “Fear of Flying.” In it, I divulged that I have developed a syndrome that it turns out is not all that uncommon, at least among skiers old enough for membership in AARP. Several readers responded to my saga with tales of their own, silent battle with this affliction, with several noting that realizing others had the same issue at least provided the comfort of knowing they weren’t alone. As the subject of fear of high lifts, or FOHL, seems to have struck a chord, I wanted to share some …Continue Reading	On Taking What the Mountain Gives You Or The Many Shades of Perfect Americans tend to treat all athletic endeavors as metaphors for war. Our most cherished spectator sports are either grounded in a military ethos (football) or are brutally confrontational (NASCAR, cage fighting) and this winner-moves-on, loser-goes-home mentality bleeds into other arenas. Skiers also compete head-to-head in countless ways (remember ballet?), but 99% of skiers aren’t competing for anything yet they often bring to the slopes an attitude that this heart-pounding activity must be a contest with… something. It’s hard to conceive of a less constructive attitude to bring to the mountain. Skiing need not be …Continue Reading
The End is Nigh: An Optimist Looks at America’s Skiing’s Future The End is Nigh: An Optimist Looks at America’s Skiing’s Future If you ever experience a snow day like this again, cherish the moment, for they may soon be few and far between. I’m an optimist by nature. Try to keep this in mind as I air my misgivings about the future of American skiing. As the thoughts I’m about to share were incubating, they started to coalesce around five points, all of which turned out to be more complex than I at first imagined. The signs of skiing’s demise as I first perceived them were: The end of snow. …Continue Reading	The Ski Price Matrix Explained The snow-clad skis in this rack will one day adorn a similar rack inside a tent at a ski swap. If you can’t stomach dropping a grand on a new pair of skis, the secondary market offers an abundance of options to buying new. Fall is ski swap time, as well as being the best time to shop for boots, while inventory is at its seasonal high-water mark. By most measures, the ski buyer today faces a mind-numbing number of choices. There are skis made for every conceivable snow-sliding endeavor, and product quality, for the most part, has never been …Continue Reading	Fear of Flying What’s wrong with this picture of the Peruvian lift at Snowbird, gateway to idyllic terrain? Not a damn thing, unless, like your esteemed Editor, you suffer from FOHL. Photo by “Guru” Dave Powers. I don’t remember the first time I felt it, at least while I was awake. It could have been on the Peruvian chair at Snowbird, or perhaps the old Little Cloud chair on the same mountain. I distinctly recall the first time I felt something like it, for it was the centerpiece of several exceptionally vivid dreams in which the already skinny supply of slats beneath my …Continue Reading
How to Read Ski Data: Mining Ski Stats for Behavioral Clues Labor Day marks the beginning of ski season in America. This wall at Bobo’s displays a profusion of carryover, 2022 models. An equal allotment of new models overflow a small armada of ski racks elsewhere under the tent. At the top of most ski reviews you’ll find a suite of statistics that almost no one pays attention to. This oft-ignored bundle of data usually consists of: Sidecut, measured at tip, waist and tail Sidecut radius for a given length Sizes available Weight Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) Sounds as dry as unbuttered toast, but this quintet contains seams of …Continue Reading	2023 Ski Market Preview: The Golden Age of Incrementalism Labor Day marks the beginning of ski season in America. This wall at Bobo’s displays a profusion of carryover, 2022 models. An equal allotment of new models overflow a small armada of ski racks elsewhere under the tent. Viewed in its totality, the 2023 American Alpine ski market still strives to innovate, but almost all of what is touted as new is an extension of an existing technology or product family, or perhaps embodies a slight construction tweak that doesn’t quite merit the “all-new!” hyperbole. I’m not alleging that minor changes can’t result in palpable upticks in performance, and …Continue Reading	When Shopping for a Deal,To Thine Own Self Be True This skier qualifies as a Zealot: she’s as committed to powder skiing as she is to this turn. (Photo by Adam Clark, courtesy of Salomon.) The unofficial opening bell of the 2023 season rings on Labor Day, the focal point of pre-season sales across America. The strong sell-through of the past two seasons has whittled away at back stock, but there’s always an oversupply somewhere in the pipeline that allows specialty retailers to drop their prices on gear that no longer qualifies as “new.” Realskiers.com members frequently inquire as to the best time to buy; the time is …Continue Reading
In Case You Missed It… This charming photo [courtesy of Head] of kinder overlooking the Alps served as the title photo for Will the Next Generation of Skiers Be the Last? After I posted what I assumed would be my last Revelation of the 2021/22 season, I realized I had rushed off without leaving a handy reference to the resources created in the past year. While my normal output of 30+ Revelations per season was down to 26, I trust this loss was more than offset by the 45 podcasts posted in the same period. I want to call out two Revelations of enduring value: …Continue Reading	Where I’ve Been & Where We’re Heading Your Esteemed Editor in the company of Scot Schmidt, Greg Stump, Bruce Benedict and Fleppy the Flamingo shortly before Stump’s induction into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in Sun Valley, ID last month. Mea culpa, Dear Readers, for I have strayed. My last published Revelation and attendant podcast issued on March 15, nearly one month ago. If my audience were a house plant, it would have died of neglect by now. So, I owe you all an apology for my unexplained absence, which I will deliver in the guise of a truncated travelogue of my peregrinations. The …Continue Reading	Everything That Goes into a Ski Matters: Innovation in An Age of Incrementalism Everything that goes into a ski affects how the final product behaves on snow. Any change in any part, either in what it’s made of or how it’s assembled, affects the whole. Construction shown here is used by Head for its Supershape collection of exceptional carvers. Every Alpine ski brand is under pressure to introduce new models every year, a process that rotates through the entire line over the course of several seasons. In any given year, either a new model family or a refresh of an existing clan will give each brand something new to promote to a public …Continue Reading
Taking the Leap the Faith I met Loyd Tinsley serendipitously while waiting to clear security at the Haley, Idaho airport. My facemask bore a small Völkl logo, which prompted Loyd to spontaneously reminisce about a pair of RTM’s he adored. This led to a brief exchange during which Loyd expressed his curiosity about a certain boot brand, wondering aloud what I might think of them. After my curt, unfavorable review, Loyd asked if I might be able to do better, sticking out his cowboy-boot-shod foot so I could get a better view. I didn’t notice anything weird about Loyd’s gait or stance, and there was …Continue Reading	When to Buy in 2022, This Spring or Next Fall? The photo above shows a section of the ski wall at Bobo’s taken yesterday, Valentine’s Day, 2022. Note that several models are down to their last size and in a few cases the last of its kind. The light dusting of snow we’re expecting tonight could wipe a few more models off the wall. The question of when it’s most opportune for the prospective ski buyer to strike is an eternally recurring rite of spring in the ski trade. Is it better to buy now, defer until later in the spring or wait for the inevitable fall sale? While this …Continue Reading	Looking Back at 2021 We did it. Against long odds, we, the community of American Alpine skiers, pulled off a very respectable version of a ski season in the first few months of 2021. Wherever local restrictions allowed lift-assisted skiing, we not only showed up, we behaved. I don’t want you to get all misty-eyed over our collective wonderfulness just yet, as I want you to be able to read my glowing prose through clear lenses. But it is worth noting how well skiers rolled with the punches, adjusting to whatever new rules were applied as resorts felt their way forward. Gradually, lift-line protocols …Continue Reading
The Skiers Who Changed Skiing Walter Amstutz led the transition from free-heel to locked-heel skiing. In 1928, he pioneered a spring to control heel-lift, soon known as the “Amstutz spring.” Reduced heel-lift helped spark the parallel turn revolution. Photo courtesy Ivan Wagner, Swiss Academic Ski Club When present-day skiers ponder which skiers have had the most influence on Alpine skiing as it’s practiced today, they may conjure up images of Stein Eriksen, Jean-Claude Killy or Shane McConkey, each icons of recent epochs in the evolution of our sport. If you’re an equipment buff, you might mention Bob Lange, Howard Head or Sven Coomer, a tireless …Continue Reading	Ski Buying Tips for Parents Parents usually want the best for their children, but when it comes to ski gear for the littlest skiers, there really isn’t much to differentiate one ski, boot or binding from another. We’re all hard-wired to protect children. As near as I can tell, the “we” in the last sentence applies to all living things, but for the purposes of this pensée, let’s presume it at least applies to most mammals. When movie-makers want to rivet the audience’s attention, they put a toddler in peril. When we observe how non-human animals dote on their offspring, we feel the tug of …Continue Reading	The Story Behind Jackson’s List Jan’s in Park City, UT has maintained an impeccable reputation for customer service since it first opened its doors under founder Jan Peterson. In this week’s Revelation, I share the backstory behind Jackson’s List, a new feature on Realskiers.com. Jackson’s List is, as the name implies, a list, in this case a searchable list of U.S. specialty ski shops that represent the best America has to offer. I call it Jackson’s List because it is solely my creation; I am the final arbiter of who is on the list and who is not. My interest in identifying America’s best …Continue Reading
Will the Next Generation of Skiers Be the Last? The future of Alpine skiing as we know it is very much in doubt. These little tykes may very well be part of the last generation of skiers. Ski resorts generally do what they can to lower barriers to kids’ participation, like discounts for kids’ tickets and value-priced programs designed to develop their skills in a variety of disciplines. But kids grow up, and when they age-out of junior programs, the pressures to stop skiing intensify, such that the chances of raising a skier to adulthood today are roughly equal to the odds of a newborn turtle making it …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier, Part XIV: My Illustrious Nordic Career No, this is not your intrepid Pontiff sailing high over the Alps, but an actual Nordic jumper possessing all the skill and talent your blessed Chief Prelate lacks. This is the posture I imagined I was in when I slammed nose-first into a Vermont hillside. I have a very powerful sense of self-delusion. I was raised in a bygone era marked by a barbarism that would shock the delicate sensibilities of the current generation. Among the degradations endured was the commingling of Nordic and Alpine ski events, apparently honoring some great amateur athletic ideal of the all-around skier. As I …Continue Reading	Getting Lost in the Details, Part Two Alpine boot soles now come in three different iterations. Pictured here, front to back, are Gripwalk, an Alpine sole with replaceable sole pads, and a monoblock racing sole. Which one is right for you? Last week, I illuminated to what degree the recreational skier ought to fret over waxing, base structuring and edge beveling. This week, I get into the details regarding different boot soles, binding standheight and ramp angle, shims – in all their varied manifestations – and pole length. Boot Soles Unless you’re part of the growing population of backcountry skiers, you probably suspect all boots soles are …Continue Reading
Getting Lost in the Details, Part One How well you take care of your skis will have an enormous influence on performance. In the race community, tasks like waxing, base structuring and edge beveling can take hours to achieve a perfect result. This Revelation proposes a practical guide that recreational skiers can follow without undue fuss and expense. Photos courtesy of Start Haus in Truckee, CA. Despite lofty ambitions at season’s onset, most skiers aren’t likely to get in more than eight days a year, which I would characterize as below the level of obsession. Skiers who only enjoy this mayfly-short life on the slopes aren’t likely to …Continue Reading	The All-Resort Skier The all-Resort skier would just as soon take a picture of an elk as ski a fourth day at Jackson Hole. What is the world coming to? While I earned my keep as an equipment maven during my tenure at Snow Country Magazine, towards the end of the relationship they let me try my hand at resort reviews. I’ll never forget the opening paragraph of my first submission because it was unambiguously rejected by my editor, Kathleen James, who currently edits Skiing History, for whom it has also been my privilege to write. Ms. James was right; my opening was …Continue Reading	The Best Skis of 2021/22 I’m of two minds when it comes to the “best of” business. I realize that many consumers appreciate this shortcut to any further research, take the gold medal as Gospel and act on it. From the designer’s perspective, even though I might make dozens of prototypes, I would still only manufacture one model. From where the ski review purveyor sits, for any given set of criteria, it stands to reason that the ski with highest aggregate score would be the best. The other side of the coin is that there is no best ski, nor can there be. Within the …Continue Reading
The Skis Americans Don’t See, Part Two This is the condition Powder skis were made for. If only we could use them every day… As I was dismounting my soapbox last week, I was on the brink of revealing a major reason why mainstream ski suppliers have a hard time making a nickel in the Powder genre (skis over 113mm in waist width). To review, the first problem threatening the commercial viability of these super-fat models is that it only takes a couple of low-snow years to stop the flow of inventory. As a second or third pair of skis, Powder skis tend to sit idle …Continue Reading	The Skis Americans Don’t See, Part One When I took the editorial reins at Realskiers.com roughly a decade ago, I instituted a classification system that divided the Alpine ski market into seven segments. Rather than depend on fuzzy skier types, I chose carefully selected bundles bounded strictly by waist width measurement. Nothing has happened in the last ten years to tamper with the essential accuracy and fairness of this method. Of the seven genres identified in the Realskiers.com methodology – Non-FIS Race, Technical, Frontside, All-Mountain East, All-Mountain West, Big Mountain and Powder – three are all but invisible on the U.S. market. In this first installment of …Continue Reading	The 2021/22 Women’s Ski Market The pandemic tore every plan I ever had for women’s ski coverage to shreds. Undaunted, I’ve provided a full slate of reviews of 21/22 women’s models. In this Revelation, I divulge how Realskiers.com pulled off this unlikely coup. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was no women’s ski market. In the 1970’s, a couple of women’s models popped up here and there, but there wasn’t enough of a product nucleus to be considered a market. More like a curiosity, like the ski Bogner – hardly a credible ski maker – created as a fashion accessory for …Continue Reading
What’s New for 2021/22? On the whole, last season went much better than anyone expected, at least as events transpired in America. In the spring of 2020, during a window in the calendar when suppliers ought to be counting orders, they were instead inundated with cancellations. Forecasts fell like an Otis with cut cables, and as budgets shrank, so did rank-and-file personnel. There were a few cool heads that looked at how well the ski market was faring pre-pandemic and didn’t slash their budgets to the bone, but it was hard to stick to any plan when uncertainty was the order of the day. …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier, Chapter XII: Putting Words into the Mouth of God & Other Mid-Life Adventures When I was cut adrift by Head on June 13, 2001, my once glowing prospects dimmed considerably. The date is etched in memory because I hosted a small soirée that evening in honor of my darling wife’s 50th birthday. One of the attendees was Paul Hochman, who would play several roles in my life as I wandered in the wilderness of unemployment during what were supposed to be my peak earning years. During the gaping hole in my career that spanned 2001-2011, I would eventually spend every cent of my inheritance, plus most of what I’d saved from earlier bouts …Continue Reading	Fit the Whole Skier We bootfitters are naturally obsessed with feet, but the best bootfitters don’t just fit feet; they fit the whole skier. The “whole skier” includes more than just a quick survey of the lower leg and how it’s connected to the foot. It’s even more than all of the skier’s physical attributes, which include not only height and weight, but seated posture, stance, kinesthetic wiring, arch health and stiffness throughout the kinetic chain; the whole skier also includes his or her history with the sport and, most importantly, what sort of skier he or she wants to be. One of the …Continue Reading
“How Is It in The Bumps?” This question is one of the last objections a ski buyer tosses into the flow of the sale just as the salesperson has guided it to the brink of consummation. To keep the impending close on course, the suave salesperson will hedge the issue with some bland reassurance without raising the obvious retort, that no ski can overcome all the many and curious ills that plague the untalented mogul skier. A great skier can manage bumps no matter what ski he or she is on. That doesn’t mean experts don’t have favorite skis for this spine-rattling condition, but they don’t …Continue Reading	Yard Sale! When Going Big Goes Wrong If you’ve been a lifelong skier, you’ve not only experienced failure; most likely you’ve survived at least one miscalculation so soul-scarring, its time capsule is enshrined in the halls of memory alongside weddings and funerals. As inspiration and prod to memory, allow me to recount a vignette from my days as a freestyle competitor. The location is Keystone, Colorado, the event, The Chicken of the Sea Freestyle Classic, a sponsorship coup that couldn’t have been too tough to land as Ralston Purina owned both the resort and the tuna. I qualified via a preliminary aerial competition, taking a conservative tack …Continue Reading	Of Podcasts, Archives & Revelations According to my tight-knit circle of advisors, idolaters, sycophants and astrologers, I was made for this medium. Of course, any garden-variety sycophant will whisper words of inspirational twaddle, but the faint note of sincerity I detect in the smarm-storm of platitudes meant to buck me up has proven sufficient to spur me to action. I quickly acquired a very professional looking microphone and a pop filter to knock down my fierce sibilants. To preserve my objectivity, I opted not to take any lessons, follow any tutorials or otherwise prepare myself for this venture. By the powers vested in me as …Continue Reading
The Making of a Skier, Chapter XI: Desperate Measures When Head humanely, if rather brusquely, terminated my tenure in 2001, the ski business in the U.S. was already facing stiff headwinds, a brewing storm that would turn into a full-on debacle when 9/11 disrupted all commerce. I became unemployed just in time for the job market to implode. I don’t handle inactivity well. I started writing a very long, very dreadful novel, composed a handful of scripts for Warren Miller – and later, Jeremy Bloom – to recite and scribbled batches of brochure copy and white papers for industries as diverse as accounting software, instrumented football helmets that registered …Continue Reading	Top Reasons U.S. Ski Sales Have Shrunk [As I wrapped up an earlier Revelation, I proposed to my beloved readership that they share their list of the top ten reasons U.S. ski sales have shrunk. I elicited only two written responses, so I’ll reproduce both here in their entirety, along with my musings on the subject. Consider these submissions tinder to light a fire under you, Dear Reader, to submit a list of your own.] From Rick Pasturczak 1. Snowboarding- I’ve noticed most snowboarders are 12 to 20 years old and once they become an adult, almost all stop. While I noticed most skiers continue on. 2. …Continue Reading	The Five Stages of Ski Finish Awareness Don’t let the title fool you. Although it sounds like it, this Revelation isn’t about the degree to which skiing is top of mind among Helsinki society. The purpose of this exposé is to shine a light on a subject about which almost all skiers are woefully uninformed, namely the condition of their skis’ bases and edges. Just in case you don’t imagine this subject worthy of your attention, I hasten to point out that how well your skis are tuned and maintained isn’t just a factor, it is the factor that determines how well your skis perform. A properly …Continue Reading
From Fallible to Foolproof and Back In the 1970’s, prior to the adoption of the first ski boot sole standard, boot makers were free to concoct any sort of sole they might imagine. Many skiers still used leather boots with laminated soles, even after the industry largely moved on to injected plastic, which enabled shapes and sole patterns leather couldn’t duplicate. This incoherent jumble of boot designs showed no lack of imagination, but little consideration for how they might interact with a binding. Bindings were likewise free from any standards that might have limited the creativity of their designs, many of which were crafted specifically to …Continue Reading	The Road to Perdition The road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions. In my experience, the friends and relatives of prospective boot buyers are a wellspring of wretched advice wrapped in bright ribbons of sincerity and concern. (Let us pause a moment and prayerfully acknowledge the gratitude of bootfitters everywhere that the new, pandemic-driven bootfit protocol discourages the presence of a bootfit entourage composed of family, moral supporters and consiglieri.) Back to the subject at hand, the particular nugget of advice I’m leery of is the customary admonition to avoid too stiff a boot as it will hurt, you’ll hate …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier, Part IX: The ASTM, Carl Ettlinger and I One of the many hats I wore as North American binding product manager for Salomon in the early 1980’s was that of delegate to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). I believe the first meeting of F8.14 – the sub-committee on ski safety – that I attended was in Pennsylvania. I was flying under the wings of Salomon’s seer of all standards and patents, Gilbert Delouche, and the binding product manager for the North American zone at that time (and my mentor), Joe Campisi. I was a babe in the woods, but I soon caught on to the …Continue Reading
The Ripple Effect As I’ve observed in this space before, product managers spend most of their time in the future; the present for them is two years away for the rest of us. So when the coronavirus shut down the 19/20 ski season, it triggered an automatic response in the R&D lobes lodged deep in my noggin: what impact will this have two years down the road? If I knew the answer to this question with any certainty, I should be running a hedge fund, not scribbling about skiing. But after checking with several of the bellwether players in U.S. market, I have …Continue Reading	The Brave New World of Bootfitting During my time on this planet, the value of knowledge – specifically, the detailed understanding of accumulated facts about the past – has been steadily devalued. The impact of the pandemic and the crater it’s left in the world economy has created an uncrossable chasm between now and then. The Firesign Theater once capriciously declaimed, “Everything you know is wrong.” How right they’ve proved to be. One of the many casualties of our perilous times is that bootfitting as we knew it is over. The last time anyone was able to practice this arcane skill, the best bootfitters would literally …Continue Reading	Silver Linings A little over a week ago, I was skiing. A little over a week ago, I was recruiting Mt. Rose instructors for a women’s test that would have rolled out yesterday. A little over a week ago, I was pulling together a dream team of Non-FIS Race ski testers, to convene the second week of April. Then it all cratered. With a few, swift strokes, all possible venues shuttered, all potential testers pre-emptively sidelined. I know, a First World problem if ever there was one. It is, however, a preoccupying concern for this correspondent, as evaluating the current crop of …Continue Reading
It Wouldn’t Hurt to Take a Lesson It’s my business to sell the promise that a new pair of skis will bring joy and a sense of completion that life would lack without them. It grieves me to no end to inform you that while new skis may indeed augment your happiness and boost your self-esteem, the evidence suggests that they will not, in fact, make you a better skier. Before I build up a head of steam, allow me to excuse all of you who have spent decades polishing your skills so you flow over any terrain with grace and artistry. The fulminations that follow are …Continue Reading	The Big Squeeze: Why it Pays to Understand the Brand We live in difficult times. I’m not referring to the messes mankind is making on every macro level, but the state of affairs within the tiny, cloistered domain of the ski maker. In a financial marketplace that demands growth as the measure of success, squeezing more money out of an ever-shrinking world ski market requires constant innovation just to maintain sales volume. The need to shave R&D costs has shrunk the product development cycle down to eighteen months, partly due to advances in computer-assisted design and prototype creation. The force fueling this frenetic pace of model turnover is, of course, …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier, Part VII: The Snow Country Years I quit my dream job because of a dream. I was staying at the Hotel Lenado in Aspen, escorted by my lovely bride Stephanie, over a March weekend in 1987. The occasion was the men’s FIS downhill, which happened to tuck neatly into the calendar just before the annual SIA show in Las Vegas. My wingmen that weekend were Scooter Libby, George Benkendorf – a retired airline pilot and gifted sybarite – and my dear friend and incorrigible reprobate Mike Wood, aka Stinky. When I awoke Sunday morning, a feature-length, noir mystery was still mostly intact deep inside my tequila-marinated …Continue Reading
The Making of a Skier, Part VI: Salomon Office Daze A rock impresario who happens to be a dear friend of mine ascribes the secret of success to “timing and lighting.” That’s an apt aphorism for my office career at Salomon in the early 1980’s: I was in the right place at the right time, for nothing creates opportunity like chaos. Just as I was settling into my new duties as Educational Services Administrator, the lowest possible clerical rung on the ladder to success, the ski market went into one of its periodic paroxysms. (Later on, as a product manager, it would be one of my myriad duties to calculate …Continue Reading	When Should You Replace Your Boot Liners? Once a skier finds a great fitting boot, it can be very hard to let it go. I’ve seen boots manufactured during the Reagan administration tenderly pulled from their neon (and somehow still pristine) boot bag by their besotted owner in the hope that I can somehow breathe life back into them. Somewhere during the history lesson that often accompanies this moment, the suggestion is made that perhaps replacing the liners will extend their useful life? With the delicacy of mortician, I am forced to explain that the boots before us expired some time ago. The fact they are still …Continue Reading	Realskiers.com Wins First Stump-Bertoni Prize Realskiers.com Receives Prestigious Award! Realskiers.com Wins First Stump-Bertoni Prize In a stunning upset that has shaken the very foundations of the sports media world, Realskiers.com has been awarded the first Stump-Bertoni Prize for Excellence. The precise nature of the excellence being recognized is deliberately vague, according to award co-creator David Bertoni, which he claims both reflects the quantum nature of human experience and allows the scope of the Stump-Bertoni Prize to inflate as necessary to cover the extreme, ever-expanding excellence that Realskiers.com fairly reeks of. The Supreme Prelate masters his turbulent emotions after receiving the Stump-Bertoni Prize. In the unlikely …Continue Reading
The State of the Women’s Ski Market II In 1993, there were 25 models of reputedly made-for-women skis entered in the Snow Country Magazine ski test. They were classified as “recreational,” but a more accurate adjective would have been “dreadful.” Not a single brand of the 18 represented was aiming at anyone above average ability. Our elite test crew regarded them with unvarnished contempt. The reason no one tried to concoct a decent women’s model was the prevailing attitude among ski makers that making a model specifically for good women skiers was a misbegotten enterprise. The men who designed skis were, of course, skiers themselves, and the women …Continue Reading	The State of the Women’s Ski Market Much as I loathe the idea of contributing to the demise of my native tongue, I hereby bow before the Zeitgeist of brevity. For those whose reading habits consist of a diet of small doses, behold the conclusions of my two-part examination of the current women’s ski market, delivered in the modern idiom of the bullet-point list: The wider the ski, the fewer the distinctions between a men’s model a women’s model. The women’s models that are the least like any in the corresponding men’s collection tend to be the products of extensive field testing. In the U.S., the Women’s …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier, Part V: Salomon Field Days, Part Deux My first winter season as a Salomon rep was winding down when our Binding Product Manager, Joe Campisi, asked me to script a promotional video for use on the following year’s certification circuit. I promptly produced a draft that Campisi passed along to John Creel, head of Salomon’s ad agency. Word came back that the draft would need a little work, but not to worry, I’d have plenty of time on the flight to Geneva to fine tune it. Overnight, my career at Salomon veered onto a new tack. I hadn’t spoken much French since leaving Yale seven years earlier, …Continue Reading
The Making of a Skier, Part IV: Salomon Field Days I was an experiment. Clay Freeman, Salomon’s Western Sales Manager, and Tom Corlett, the Colorado Front Range rep who would soon assume Freeman’s mantle, met me in the United Airlines lounge at Stapleton Airport to offer the newly created position of Service Representative. I was hired, at the princely sum of $9600 per annum, to support three sales territories by performing all their binding certification clinics, thereby freeing the associated salesmen to extract yet another round of orders from Salomon’s vast dealer network. In those sepia-tinged days, binding certification took four hours, including a written exam and lab session. I …Continue Reading	Why Wide Skis Aren’t Good for Your Knees In his introduction to an overview of current research on the effects of wide skis, Prof. John Seifert of Montana State University explains two fundamental ways that wide skis expose the knee to injury. (We’ll get into the mysteries of just how wide is “wide” and other variables in a minute.) The first of the Big Fundamentals is that wide skis force skiers to adopt a more upright stance. Less bend at the knee means the muscles that support the joint are no longer in their optimal position to exert force. This means the knee is more vulnerable just when …Continue Reading	Mixed Media Messages Regular readers of my Revelations know that my primary communication vehicle is the printed word, which I try to conjure and arrange as artfully as I can with the entwined intent of entertaining and educating. While my goals remain the same as ever, the teaching this week shall be delivered by the most popular of modern media, video. In the furnace of my imagination, the few emails I received that wondered whither my video content last year were embers I fanned into a crackling inferno of widespread public demand. And so I offer these four video essay-ettes as a service …Continue Reading
The Movie in Your Mind A pivotal moment in any ski or boot sale comes when the customer provides a thumbnail portrait of his or her abilities and ambitions. This self-appraisal determines the direction the salesperson is going to take to zero in on the customer’s perfect ski (or boot). The clearer the picture the prospective buyer can paint, the more accurately the sales advisor can match skier to ski. If only life were so simple. The problem is that a very large percentage of self-assessments, particularly those proffered by men, are, shall we say, optimistic. I used to believe that many men were naturally …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier Part III: The Breckenridge Years When I graduated from Yale in June of 1972, I had little idea of who I was and no idea whatsoever how I was supposed to spend the remainder of my time on earth. My degree was in Philosophy, where I sought to untie the knottiest problems. This no doubt enriched my life in many ways, but it was not what I would describe as a fast track to related employment. As trained philosophers should, I took dispassionate stock of my situation. What could I actually do? Hints were dropped that given my talent for argument I would make a …Continue Reading	The Making of a Skier, Part II: Shorties and Other Tales [In fond memory of many joyful Christmas vacations in the home my parents built in the mountains, where they were happiest. Merry Christmas to all my Dear Readers at Realskiers.] It’s no longer regarded as insightful to observe that memories are not only fallible, but often constructed from scratch by the recollector’s imagination. Memory is further distorted when the distant events are culled from fragments originally recorded by a 7-year old mind trying to decipher a world filtered by all but useless eyes. Among the snapshots that flutter out of the shaken box of memory is one of my immediate …Continue Reading
The Making of a Skier, Part I Dear Readers: I subscribe to exactly one blogger, Bob Lefsetz, whose passion is the music scene, but his restless mind and flowing prose are by no means confined to this subject. Lefsetz’s second love is skiing, a topic to which he often strays in winter months. In a blog post dated November 28 – he frequently posts several times a week – he wrote a burst of sentences that caught my eye: “And Killington got hit. But I know the further south you go, you get rain, but at Bromley, my home mountain, where I grew up, they literally got …Continue Reading	Your Equipment Isn’t Getting Any Younger Aging is a bitch. Nothing and no one is immune from its predations. I mention this not to impress you with the depth of my insights (the likes of which are unavailable elsewhere), but because we humans have a tendency to hope some things will last forever, or if not forever, at least as long as we will. A corollary to this inescapable reality is that some of the stuff we own is quite a bit older than we imagine. For reasons science has yet to explain, this phenomenon is common among skiers. Ski salespeople are routinely told that a …Continue Reading	On Genius [After writing Snowbird Secrets, I composed a series of meditations that attempted to dissect its origins. On Genius is from this series. I realize its relevance to skiing is oblique; I offer it here to keep your minds engaged while I research a few of the technical articles I’m composing for your future delectation. This piece is for all the angels who have helped me give voice to my thoughts.] We have a tendency, in our daily usage, to cheapen the value of words. We choose them carelessly, tossing them out pell-mell, as if sheer volume were a substitute for …Continue Reading
Power vs. Finesse Skiers are not a homogenous lot. The ski community includes Nordic jumpers, runners and biathletes alongside pipe and park denizens, co-mingled with backcountry enthusiasts, some of whom race up the mountain instead of down it. All of these activities require highly specialized gear. This brief treatise isn’t about any of these sub-cultures, but a primordial schism within the ranks of Alpine, resort-based skiers. My daily encounters with the ski-seeking public – both online and in person – reveal that a wildly diverse population all self-describe as “expert.” There are experts who’ve skied every winter for 50 years and experts who …Continue Reading	On Patience I composed this piece several years ago in the wake of writing Snowbird Secrets. I’m publishing it now for the first time to bolster the spirits of all those skiers whose patience has been sorely tested while waiting for snowfalls that never come. Patience is perhaps the most invisible virtue. We know we own it completely when we don’t feel it at all. The instant we are aware of it we are in danger of losing it. Patience contains its own contradiction: to feel its tug is to know its stock is dwindling, perhaps to nothingness. Patience places its heaviest …Continue Reading	Baselines Basics You’re first attracted by a ski’s topskin, how it appears in the hand. But you live with the base, where the ski meets the snow. Of all the clues to performance that can be gleaned by examining a pair of new skis plucked off the ski shop wall, perhaps the most significant reside in the ski’s baseline. In the olden days – i.e., over ten years ago – there wasn’t a lot of discussion about baseline. All skis were cambered – arched tip to tail – to one degree or another. Then early rise tips appeared on some high performance …Continue Reading
Where Are Rear-Entry Boots Now that We Need Them? According to the recently released SIA Market Intelligence Report, the Key Insight to be gleaned from the Alpine Ski Participant Age Trends is, “As a percentage of Alpine Skiers, the 45-54 and 55-64 age groups grew.” Actually, so did the 65+ age group, although to a considerably lesser degree, which suggests that some concatenation of factors causes senior participation to fall off after what we were raised to believe was “retirement age.” Why would senior skiers, by and large an affluent lot, with more leisure time available than at any earlier period in their lives, choose to ski less just …Continue Reading	The Vanishing Ski Bum The ecology that allows the ski bum to flourish has always been delicate. In order to survive, the ski bum often is forced to live in communal households with half-crazed roommates (which is better than it sounds) with dubious hygiene (worse than it sounds). In his most primitive state, diet consists largely of free bar food and what nutrients can be culled from uncleared lunch trays. Improving on these conditions requires working, which interferes with the Primary Mission, to ski as much as humanly possible. There are a few highly prized jobs that require one’s presence only at night, but …Continue Reading	It’s a Woman’s World: Part III [For the last two weeks we’ve been investigating the women’s ski market. In this, our third and final installment, we look at two different directions open to advanced women who have outgrown what’s available in the women’s Frontside genre.] We open our closing rumination on women’s skis with a brief inspection of a category virtually invisible to the U.S. market yet important enough worldwide to merit women-specific constructions. The women’s Technical genre, like its unisex counterpart, is comprised of narrow (67mm-74mm waist), high-performance skis meant for skilled skiers (hence the title “Technical”) skiing on groomed runs. Skilled American women tend …Continue Reading
It’s a Woman’s World: Part II [In the first part of our exploration of the current women’s market we cited the influence of the backcountry market and the Lighter is Better trend on women’s ski design in general and the Big Mountain genre in particular. This week we look at how a selection of major brands have addressed the women-specific market in the far more significant Frontside and All-Mountain East genres.] Before taking a deep dive into the details of how a few ski brands have addressed the women’s market, allow me to restate why the women’s market is concentrated in the Frontside and All-Mountain East …Continue Reading	It’s a Woman’s World: Part I It seems like only yesterday, but it was, in fact, seven years ago that the tiny corner of the national sporting press devoted to alpine ski coverage revealed a tantalizing tidbit: Lindsey Vonn, the star of the U.S. team and reigning World Cup Overall champion, was switching to men’s skis! That a woman as big, strong and fearless as Lindsey would opt to compete on men’s skis seemed both brazenly audacious and entirely plausible. It was a great story that helped burnish Vonn’s reputation as skiing’s Wonder Woman. It would have been even more interesting if it were true. For …Continue Reading	Deceptively Fast I can already feel the headwinds of protest this pensée is likely to engender, so to mitigate their ferocity, allow me to open with these caveats: I’m not against people taking electronic gadgetry to the slopes. On the contrary, I’ve created an app for ski testers to record their results, a gadget if there ever was one. I’m all for apps that help people extract more enjoyment from their ski day or serve some safety function. I’m not trying to rate or evaluate the existing apps that, among many other functions, try to measure the skier’s maximum and average speed. …Continue Reading
Why Test Ski Boots? At Realskiers.com, we consider it axiomatic that skiers should entrust boot model selection to a competent boot fitter, rather than trying to negotiate the labyrinth of the current market in hopes of unearthing the magic slipper that will provide the elusive perfect fit. The hunt for the ideal boot is analogous to the search for health care; the skier who wants the best care should be looking for the right doctor, instead of researching prescription medicines that may or may not be curative for one’s condition. Stretching this comparison a bit further, the autodidact who seeks to self-diagnose must depend …Continue Reading	So You Want to Test Skis? Everybody loves to demo new skis. When most skiers try out a new model, they just go skiing and see if they like it. They may lack the vocabulary to describe precisely what they prefer and what they loathe, but they can easily distinguish between being happy and being miserable. Realskiers.com readers tend to be more analytical, striving to think their way to an optimal solution. They want to understand all they can about the behavioral bundle somehow encapsulated in the static object they can only flex and caress when pulled off a ski shop rack. Now all demo devotees, …Continue Reading	Flipping the Pyramid When I was cutting my teeth in the ski trade in the late ‘70’s, the market was built like a classic pyramid: the broad base was composed of a large population of entry-level skis, sold mostly in packages; the next level of intermediate/advanced products didn’t add up to as many units but remained a relatively large percentage of the total; capped by a small contingent of mostly race models for experts, instructors and actual racers. The product pyramid circa 1978. Over the next 40 years, the ski world shifted so dramatically off-axis that today the product pyramid is completely upside …Continue Reading
Women’s LIB “Lighter is better” (LIB) has been the dominant theme in consumer products over the past several years, so it’s no surprise that ski makers have adopted this mantra as their own. What is somewhat of a surprise is that the LIB philosophy has permeated all recreational ski categories, affecting both men’s and women’s models. The global emphasis on weight reduction across the gender divide has had the net effect of making men’s models more similar to women’s models than has been the case since the long-ago era before there wasn’t any such thing as a “women’s ski.” The fabulous Tina …Continue Reading	Silver Skier Reflections and Selections Aging isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes fortitude to slide out of bed when every sinew seems to have ossified overnight. The silver-haired who continue to ski into their dotage manage to do so not because they’ve found the Fountain of Youth, but because they’re able to suppress or ignore the body’s daily attempts to signal for a time out. It’s as if your skiing self were a dim-witted game show contestant who doesn’t realize he’s lost; your body – the exasperated but ever gracious emcee – keeps repeating: “Thanks for playing! Time to go now! Take up …Continue Reading	The First Five Minutes Last week’s Revelation, “Take the Leap of Faith” inspired some thoughtful critiques among the Realskiers faithful, both on our Facebook page and in one-on-one correspondence with yours truly. One perspicuous soul correctly observed that said essay was superficial, while another waxed eloquent on why the ski industry should adopt saner, customer-centric practices that mimicked regular shoe buying. In my meandering reply to this critic, I noted that if the customer takes charge of the sale, then the person who has the least idea what he or she is doing is now running the show. This is rarely a formula for …Continue Reading
Understand the Brand When considering which ski is right for you, don’t just compare thumbnail model descriptions, helpful though they might be. Don’t put all your faith in numbers either, even though statistics exude the aroma of science. Take stock in the advice of family and friends, if you must, but I wouldn’t invest too heavily in the opinion of those whose experience has been largely limited to one ski. Before you take the final plunge, learn what you can about the brands behind the models that intrigue you. While in general it’s true every major ski manufacturer attempts to cover all bases, …Continue Reading	Why Your Ski Boots Hurt An alarming number of skiers assume that ski boots hurt, period. Every boot they ever put on, beginning with rental boots, then their first pair of boots bought as part of an entry-level package and even the next pair of supposedly better boots, all hurt like hell. This “understanding” is what fuels the average boot buyer to be more circumspect about his or her next purchase, vowing to take charge of the sale and not putting up with less than ethereal comfort. This is a terrible idea. While I empathize with the plight of skiers fed up with incessant discomfort, …Continue Reading	What Matters Most about Your Boots At the beginning of every new season it’s appropriate to revisit some fundamental issues that bedevil the ski equipment selection process. If there’s one point upon which all equipment gurus agree, it’s that the most critical piece of the equipment puzzle are one’s boots, so let’s start there. Part 1: The Primordial Importance of Boots You’ll never ski well if your boots aren’t a perfect match for your anatomy and skills. Many skiers with 20 ski seasons or more of experience base their associations with each boot brand on their personal history, despite the fact that this history is most likely …Continue Reading
What Matters and What Doesn’t – Skis In another sentence or two, we’re going to inform you that what ski brand you buy isn’t very important. We want to caution you in advance that this statement isn’t entirely true. It does indeed matter what brand you buy; it just doesn’t matter as much as a few other factors that need to be settled first. To help explain why brand considerations are tertiary territory, let us present a brief summary of how major manufacturers organize their product lines. Every important manufacturer, without exception, organizes its product line around skier archetypes. Not every ski supplier attempts to service every …Continue Reading	How to Judge a Boot Fit Whenever a bootfitter slips what he or she knows to be the correct size onto a prospective customer’s foot, it’s standard procedure to intone, “You will feel your toes at the end of the boot; please try not to panic,” or some such admonition. This caveat applies in nearly every instance because the foot in an unbuckled boot will always seek the toe-bending end; only after buckling and flexing will the tootsies retreat into a less confining space. The bones in the green zone should be the focus of every fit. This “toes will touch” moment is, for many skiers, …Continue Reading	Expand Your Sphere of Awareness, Please! Expert skiers don’t worry about falling. But they do worry about collision. A lot. As in, all the time. Collisions hurt. Falling down a steep mogul slope, while terrifying at the time, mostly injures one’s pride; colliding with another speeding skier will dislocate every bone in the body. The modern panacea for collision mitigation is the helmet. For puttering-along impacts, the modern ski helmet does a fine job of protecting the surface it covers. As for collision avoidance – vastly preferable to mitigation – this observer of the ski scene finds that the virtual omnipresence of helmets has done nothing …Continue Reading
A Brief Explanation of Why Skiers are Better Than Everyone Else Skiers are among the finest human beings on our precious planet, which this short essay makes abundantly clear. I composed this meditation on why skiers are better than everyone else several years ago. If you’re reading this, please know that I appreciate your support to the bottom of my heart and hope you enjoy the best runs of your life in the year ahead. Happy New Year! Skiers suffer. We endure countless indignities just to engage in the activity that allows us to say the hallowed words, “I’m a skier.” We travel ungodly miles through weather that would force a Sherpa …Continue Reading	Buying on a Budget — Stretching Your Ski Equipment Dollar The Pontiff Pontificates On Parsimony Skiing has many charms, but being cheap isn’t one of them. Only the likes of princes and pashas can indulge in the sport with a blind eye to its costs. Everyone else is faced with making choices, such as whether to buy a piece of new gear or a season’s pass, or if both, resigning oneself to a winter of living on ramen. The purpose of this piece is to help you make the right choices. First let’s suppose you have a family to both feed and take skiing. Let’s begin by outfitting the kids. …Continue Reading

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