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
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On March 13, 2009, I died. As the astute reader will instantly sense, something is not quite right about that sentence. The problem is the verb. I write, “I died,” because we have no other word to describe what happened to me that day. Allow me to start over with a chronology, so you’ll know this story is grounded in what we un-ironically refer to nowadays as “real time.” March 13 was a Friday that
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This is a story about community and the unique role that specialty ski shops play in helping to knit the family of skiers together. It is also a tale of individual will power and its ability to engage hundreds of enthusiasts in a common cause. Our tale has a heroine, Kjerstin Klein, who, along with husband Greg, owns and operates Willi’s Ski and Snowboard Shops, the dominant presence in Pittsburgh and its environs. As a hands-on
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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
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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,
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Before diving headlong into this week’s topic, let me clarify a central point that in a sense renders this Revelation’s irrelevant: technique conquers all. Great skiers can take their game anywhere with no discernable decline in performance. From the point of view of the skier, there may be any number of subtle tweaks he/she applies, but from the viewer’s perspective the great skier appears to possess the same mastery no matter the slope or the
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If you’re passionate about skiing, going to a trade fair is like attending an orgy or an endless Champagne brunch where everything you’ve ever wanted is there for the asking. Any ski maker who hopes to earn a spot on a retailer’s ski wall will be there with bells on, ready to turn screws, touch up edges and sing the praises of next year’s line. I’m pleased to report that many of the shop employees
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Peter Keelty didn’t just live life, he devoured it. The bright light that drove him to excel would forever wrestle with the darker impulses that arose whenever he indulged his passions, which were many. Before I go any further, I must beg my Dear Readers’ forbearance. This isn’t a proper obituary for a soul who drew his last, struggling breath on February 5. I don’t have the dates for when he went to college, but
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I’m nuts to be writing this. The Snowsports Industries America (SIA) show, now somewhat integrated with the Winter Outdoor Retailer (OR) show, concluded its 3-day run in Denver last Friday. The convenience of having the decision-makers of every important Alpine ski supplier in one room couldn’t be more perfect for my purposes. Any sane person in my position should adamantly and publicly proclaim every aspect of the current incarnation of the SIA show to be
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When I took my first steps on skis, it was Stein. He was the skier everyone wanted to emulate. “You ski like Stein” was the highest possible compliment one could pay to another member of skiing’s cozy fraternity. Pardon the cliché, but it was a simpler time. The ski culture was more homogeneous, with only one aspirational skiing archetype to copy, the racer. The equipment pool was also more uniform; while construction and consistency varied
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Last week I dropped by the first regional trade show to retrieve the fresh-off-the-presses 2020 catalogs for most of the mainstream brands. This seemingly sterile exercise gives me an overview of the market that reveals which ski genre is attracting the most investment, which brands are tweaking their lines and which ones are doing major remodels. Getting granular, it’s notable that the genre with the most new models is Frontside, and it’s not just because
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False modesty does not become me, so I’ll just say it: it was the best ski test, ever. Instead of running for barely a week, it churned non-stop for more than three weeks. But it wasn’t just long; it was also deep. Just the local talent pool was insane: Tamara McKinney, Wayne Wong, Eva Twardokens, Susan Chappell, Bill Hudson, Tina Vindum, Barry Thys, Erica Standteiner, Cameron Boyle, Kevin Andrews, Stu Campbell, Todd Kelly, Kristin Lignell,
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For nine of the last ten days I’ve been fitting boots and selling skis in the frantic scrum known as holiday shopping. My hands are speckled with not-quite-sealed wounds and my mind is numb from countless counseling sessions with frazzled customers. What I retain from this ordeal, aside from the eternal reminder that people are weird and wonderful, is that there are so many skiers coming back to the sport after long absences that they
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[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
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Yesterday morning the 2019 Masterfit Buyer’s Guide was posted on digital platforms across the Internet. A collaboration between Masterfit and Realskiers, the Masterfit Buyer’s Guide blends the instant availability of a digital publication with the sort of in-depth advice that once formed the backbone of print buyer’s guides. Of course the Masterfit Buyer’s Guide is also loaded with ski and boot reviews based on the on-snow evaluations of dozens of veteran testers. This week’s Revelation
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As the Pontiff of Powder, I have a sacrosanct duty to bestow spiritual enrichment upon my flock. The spirit guide I have co-authored for this express purpose is Snowbird Secrets, from which On Sensuality has been excerpted. While it is a fallacy to believe, as some overly zealous converts do, that mere ownership of a copy assures a peaceful afterlife, it can’t hurt. It’s like getting a good recommendation letter: it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get
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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
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Realskiers regulars who can sense any ripple of change in the site have no doubt noted by now that there’s a new member in the cast of reviewed ski brands, Liberty. As Liberty is the only supplier we cover with an owner/founder/designer as its CEO, allow me first to illuminate the rationale behind its inclusion. One of the foundational purposes of Realskiers.com is to support the specialty shops that continue to invest in training, mentorship
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Boots are more important than skis. In terms of their effect on every aspect of your skiing, boots are at least ten times more valuable than skis. Maybe more. I’m reiterating this primordial bit of advice because our seemingly ever-shrinking sport is seeing a bump in participation from an unexpected quarter: lapsed participants returning to Alpine skiing. It turns out there’s a substantial population of former skiers who dropped out ten to twenty years ago
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Ski testing isn’t rocket science. In fact, it’s not any kind of science. It’s a small mountain of subjective opinions from a statistically insignificant population of skiers. Picking any single one as superior to all others in the game is a fun exercise disconnected from reality. While every ski on every run receives a score, accumulating the best score in any category isn’t an ironclad assurance that said ski is best for everyone contemplating a
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Every elite racer in the world is at the very least checked for it. You can be one of the finest technical skiers extant and feel helpless without it. Sheer talent cannot compensate for its absence. It’s called alignment, and it refers to adjusting the side-to-side angle of the boot so the skier stands dynamically balanced on his or her skis. Alignment is a complex issue, and the simple explanation just given doesn’t begin to
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In one of last season’s Revelations (Back to Boot Basics), I wrote: You could make the argument that the purpose of the Alpine boot is to put the skier in this forward-biased position and hold him or her there through thick or thin. Reading these words triggered a spider-sense tingle in the mind of Jack Rafferty, a practicing Pedorthist in Snowmass Village, CO, since 1980 and an instructor at Masterfit University for the past 25
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Look, I know you’re busy and my weekly Revelations don’t always respect that. So allow me to show unusual sensitivity and cut to the chase. I want your money. Not all your money and all the gaudy trappings that go with it, just a snippet; you won’t even notice it’s gone. Of course, one man’s snippet is another man’s fortune, but if we’re going to nitpick every proposition in what is sounding less and less
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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
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It isn’t often that a seismic cultural shift can be traced to a single, defining moment, and even more rare that this historic tremor should issue from the world of skiing. Yet on October 16, 1988, a former U.S. National Ballet Champion and heretofore little known auteur, Greg Stump, unveiled his latest production, The Blizzard of Aahhh’s, and the world would never be the same. The boys are back in town! Lest you think I’ve
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Last week I outlined the backstory behind the creation of Tecnica’s Mach 1 collection, a fairly straightforward chronology of how a panel of bootfitters exerted a major influence on product development that continues to this day. The code name for the project is P-165, the Pantone color of the Tecnica’s best selling models of yore. Regular readers of this space know I can’t resist a teaching moment, so with your kind indulgence, permit me to
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If the title of this 2-part article sounds about as exciting as a paint chip, it’s because that’s what it stands for, a Pantone color code. This is the tale of how such an unassuming moniker became a rallying cry that inspired a remarkably swift brand resurrection. Let’s peel back the veil of time to July, 2013. In his role as product manager for Tecnica, Bart Tuttle has been talking for a couple of seasons
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[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
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Reflections on the Product Lifecycle I recently had occasion to re-enter every one of the 240 ski reviews I penned prior to the 2015/16 ski season, in order to clean up the review archives maintained in Realskiers’ members’ site. It surprised me how ancient the model names seemed, as though the skis on the list were from an era as bygone as crinoline gowns and spats. Trying to rationalize the sensation of premature aging, I immediately theorized
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If you are in receipt of this Revelation, then you’re already aware that Realskiers.com is the most prestigious (and informative) online destination for serious Alpine skiers. A pungent stew of wry insight, occasionally accurate historical perspective and technical savvy made more palatable by a deviant sense of humor, Realskiers.com is best known for its annual analysis of the Alpine ski market. Realskiers isn’t just a compilation of preferred skis, but a methodology spanning seven recreational
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By most objective measures, Realskiers.com is my web site. I own it. I’ve contributed nearly every word of content for the past five seasons. I’m responsible for the hundreds of ski and boot reviews posted on the site every year. No one else composed any of the 33 Revelations issued since Labor Day, nor any of the dozens of others archived on the members’ site. But it would be a monumental mistake to imagine I’ve
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If you are reading this Revelation on the day of its issue, then I am en route to Silver Mountain, Idaho to assess the state of affairs in the 2018/19 Alpine boot market. The occasion is Masterfit’s America’s Best Bootfitters annual Boot Test, the most respected, most authoritative and most widely disseminated exploration of what will be available to skiers next fall. As someone who has conducted or contributed to equipment tests for over three
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Last Sunday I concluded another season of bootfitting at Bobo’s Ski and Board in Reno. As a city shop loosely associated with the local ski area, Mt. Rose, and closely aligned with Sky Tavern, a city-owned facility that tries to make skiing affordable for the less affluent, Bobo’s attends to the needs of the entire spectrum of skiers, from never-evers to skiing royalty. Inevitably, they will all end up sitting on the boot bench, some
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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
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Regular readers of my weekly Revelations are frequently reminded of the importance of supporting your local specialty ski shop. There are countless reasons for doing so, not least of which is that it’s in your best interests. This week’s tale shines a light on why patronizing your local shop matters more than you think. The big picture focus of this piece is on the power of community, but the details derive from a very singular
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Ski testing closely resembles skiing, but it’s not the same. Ski testing requires discipline. The ski tester has to reign in the natural impulse to ski the mountain as an ever-changing amusement park, instead taking the same path over and over. On a free ski run, the same skier might drop the reins and let the skis find the fall line; when testing, low speeds and short turns also must be given their due. What
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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
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I’m not anti-social, but left with the choice of skiing by myself or not skiing at all, I’m going skiing. I suppose part of me, the walled-off writer part, is happily misanthropic, but my skiing self is inherently social. The best ski days are those shared with family and friends who feel like family. But if I only have a few hours to ski, companionship is optional. I don’t mind driving up to the slopes
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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
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Last season I introduced a Realskiers Test Card app, allowing both our regular cast of specialty shop personnel and citizens of all stripes to record their impressions of new skis and send them off to my database in one fell swoop. The app turned out to be a lifesaver, as test venue after test venue was wiped out by wind and weather, drastically shrinking the number of paper cards that would be submitted after regional
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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
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[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
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[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
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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
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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
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A scene from the timeless classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail immortalized this mild protest from an unfortunate soul about to be tossed on a cart of medieval plague victims: “I’m not dead yet.” The lesson of this poignant vignette is, until the plague cart rolls up to your stoop, you’re still in the game. Don’t let aches in your body and voices in your head spur you to the premature judgment that you’ve
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A great new ski is going to set you back $600 – $700, and you haven’t yet paid for bindings, mounting and testing, base and edge prep, plus tax. That’s a lot of simoleans for two long and slender sleds. Of course it’s possible to buy a pair of mounted skis for a lot less; is the cheaper ski really that much worse? When you buy a better ski, just what is it you’re paying
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Buying alpine ski boots has never been a picnic. It isn’t going to get any easier, at least not in the near term. I’ve just returned from 5 days of intensive on-snow boot evaluation at the MasterFit Boot Test, conducted on the wintery slopes of Bachelor Mountain. Sixteen boot brands were represented, covering categories from Frontside to Backcountry. Dozens of testers willingly buckled themselves into every manner of boot and sallied forth to essay them.
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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
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If there is a single quality that epitomizes how great skiers ski, it’s fluidity. Fluidity is the application of technical skills to the opportunities the terrain and snow conditions provide. Fluidity is anticipation so precise every arc appears effortless. Fluidity arises from the awareness that when we ski, we step into a torrent of gravity. Harald Harb pouring himself downhill. Fluidity is hard to teach. It’s much easier and more effective to nurture nascent skiing
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Regular readers of these Revelations are aware that I routinely spend my winter weekends diagnosing and remedying multifarious bootfitting woes. Sessions with problematic feet may easily run over an hour, affording me the opportunity to hear countless confessions from afflicted skiers. Perhaps the most common remark volunteered by owners of ten-year-old boots that felt good for the first and last time the day they were purchased is something along the lines of, “I wonder why
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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
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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.
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In the White World of the mountains, every line is a curve. The innocents who proudly announce that they straight-lined such-and-such a slope fail to observe that every inch of their descent described an arc through space. (Through time as well, but let’s not complicate matters any further for now.) Once atop a mountain, the instant you step into gravity’s stream you go from standing on a dot to standing on a curve. The awareness
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This week, I share some Realskiers.com subscriber perspectives I found instructive, on pedicures, gloves and proper ski size selection, with my responses appended. One word: pedicure! I may have “discovered” something that can benefit all skiers! There is no question for me as to the benefits of proper bootfitting. Yet in all I’ve read there hasn’t been a mention of good foot hygiene let alone the value of a pedicure. I think I am on
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“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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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[I composed this meditation on why skiers are better than everyone else several years ago. The eternal verities it expresses strike me as an appropriate inauguration of a new year of content at Realskiers. 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! – Jackson] Skiers suffer. We endure countless
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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
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