Revelations
The Wacky World of Women’s Equipment
Back Story Allow us to peel back the veil of time to an epoch 20 years ago. Fat, powder-specific skis were just finding a following on the fringe of the sport and carving skis, still unknown in the New World, were too new to have a name yet. The...
What Makes a Star a Star?
At Realskiers, we believe that the measure of a great ski is how well it performs in conditions for which it wasn’t made. Much like great skiers such as John Clendenin, skis that exhibit both excellent Finesse and Power attributes are the...
Are Your “New” Skis Really New?
A Face Lift Every Season Realskiers recently posted a list of 254 skis from 11 major brands, indicating which models are new, re-decorated or unchanged. While 95 of the listed models are new, which sounds like a reasonably robust degree of...
Are Skis Overpriced? Part I
No question about it, alpine skis are pricey. Middle-of-the-line models run for over $500, and top-shelf all-mountain skis routinely check out for around $700, unmounted. One has every right to wonder, what am I paying for? Well, here are some...
Are Skis Over-Priced? Part II
So if manufacturers, distributors and retailers are all laboring mightily just to make a living, why are skis so bloody expensive? Part of the problem has to be that the world market has shriveled over the last 30 years. The US market used...
When to be Actual and When to be Aspirational?
A great many new equipment buyers face a common conundrum: should they buy for the skier they are today, or step up in performance (and price) and acquire gear they can grow into? If they opt to step up, is there such a thing as a step too far?...
The Rides of March
Recent commentaries I’ve posted in the Member Section of realskiers have looked beyond the near horizon at next year’s collection of new skis. While these dispatches provide snapshots of wonders to come, they perhaps do a disservice by...
How Testing the All-Mountain Ski Has Changed
I’d already been directing the Snow Country Magazine equipment tests for several seasons when editor John Fry made me aware of a DIN standard for ski testing. As with any standard, the test specifications were very strict: the snow surface had to...
How Is It in the Bumps?
In today’s market, we define the skis we use by the terrain for which they’re best suited. For example, narrower, Frontside models are adapted for hard snow at high speed. Wider All-Mountain skis are presumed equally adept at groomed and...
Are We Over-Serving America?
Why We Ski Test It’s axiomatic that if you don’t know how to ski it really doesn’t matter what model ski you use as long as it’s sized properly. This helps explain the popularity of rental skis, for which the principal design criterion is the...
The Spotlight Shifts to Frontside Skis
While the ink is still wet on the headlines proclaiming Ted Ligety’s utter dominance of the Olympic field in the men’s giant slalom, it seems a fitting moment to extol the virtues of Frontside (74mm-84mm) and Carving (66mm-72mm) skis. The...
A Peak Behind the Velvet Rope
New Product Preview As realskiers subscribers, it’s only fitting you be granted special access to what lies ahead in the pantheon of skis. I had a good look at the near future over a 3-day span at the recent Mammoth Mountain trade fair. The...
What’s Ahead for 2014/15
This isn’t our first report on next year’s gear, nor will it be the last. In each dispatch we’ll share our perspective on what’s on the horizon in the way of new equipment, delving into the details on new products and their significance in the...
The Right Tool for the Job
There’s never been a better time to own a slalom ski. Seriously. I realize the American ski market moved away from race skis as useful archetypes for recreational skiers some time ago. I wrote over 200 reviews of 2014 models this year for...
A Peak Over the Horizon
It’s too soon to reveal particulars about the 2015 ski model universe, but the overall shape of next year’s market is already clear. There’s no sea change afoot, no sudden shift in the paradigm. Instead, change will be evolutionary, following a...
The Cutting Edge
What Separates Good Skiers from Great Skiers Isn’t Their Skis This reverie may strike some readers as an odd blog entry from a person who writes over 200 ski reviews a season for realskiers.com, but chances are a new ski won’t change your skiing as...
What You’re Paying For
If you’re in the market for new skis, you’ll discover a wild diversity in prices. Skis that sell with bindings for $399 are arrayed alongside models with sticker prices well above $1,000, bindings not included. What does the $1,000 ski have that...
Bring the Backcountry Code Back to the Resort
No one should ever venture into the backcountry alone. Backcountry skiing is of necessity a communal experience in which risk, responsibility and reward are equally shared. In the parlance of mainstream sports, there is no “I” in...
How Not to Save a Buck
Skiing is expensive. Just affording the requisite underwear requires a second mortgage, never mind all the other clothing layers, equipment, travel, lodging and such niceties as food. Every expense seems to beget another: boots need custom...
Demo Downer
You can't always get what you want! As someone who skied over 100 ski models last season – the better to inform my judgments as editor of realskiers.com – I can hardly discount the many merits of trying a ski before you buy it. As someone who has...
Hope for America’s Future
Last week I attended two days of seminars on advanced boot fitting techniques under the aegis of Masterfit University. The folks who run this worldwide roadshow also orchestrate the annual ski boot test whose results appear on the pages of SKI,...
Every Shot in the Bag
You can’t consider yourself a complete golfer if you can’t put every club in the bag to good use. Skiers also have a bag of clubs, not in the sense of having 14 skis from which to choose, but in the arsenal of turn shapes and turning techniques...
The Great Insole Debate
A fierce debate has been raging within the narrow corridors of the ski trade for longer than the Thirty Years War. If you haven’t caught wind of it, it’s because each shop resolves the debate for its own customers, presenting the case that works...
Is Rocker the New Cap Ski?
If you don’t have the time to read the long-form answer to the question posed in the title to this entry, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version: yes and no. If you want to read much longer reflections on the subject of rocker and its role in...
How Fat Got to be Where It’s At & Where It’s Going Next
Why Fat Skis Need Fat Knees The Atomic Magic Powder first touched snow in 1990, a then ludicrously short (180cm) ski that was fat throughout, roughly as wide as two conventional skis of the day. It would be a few more seasons before the likes of...
Import/Export
The Two Dominant Families of Ski Design Exploit and Inspire Each Other For most of the last century there was only one archetype of the perfect ski, namely, the Race ski. Every ski made for every level of skier sprang from the same soil. Despite...
Two Numbers to Know
The Savvy Shopper: Buying BootsSki boots are the most commonly replaced piece of equipment because when they stop working, they get your attention by hurting like hell. When your feet are telling you it’s time for an upgrade, there are two numbers...
On Heads and Tails
How Sidecut Still Matters in The Age of Rocker I don’t want to come off as some geezer who gets misty recalling the olden days, but there was a time when a ski was expected to make contact with the snow from tip to tail, give or take a few...
Embellishments & Elaborations
All serious ski testing for next season’s crop of new and returning skis is over by mid-March, as that is when final orders have to be submitted to the various manufacturers. For a ski maker, the sincerest form of flattery isn’t imitation but a...
Adventures Below the Zero Line
Where Did My Skis’ Camber Go? Now that we are firmly planted in the Age of Rocker, a lot of marketing focus has been trained on the ski’s camber line, or, in the absence of camber, its baseline. For the purposes of this essay, let’s consider a...