Revelations
Ski of the Year 2018
With the holiday season upon us, it’s time to unwrap Realskiers’ picks as the best skis of 2018. Nothing seems to galvanize reader interest quite like a selection of a Ski of the Year; if you want the very best, you need to know what to ask for,...
You Have One Hour, And You Need All New Gear
If you can only carve one hour out of your crazy holiday schedule to get fully outfitted in new gear, how best to spend this precious hour? Your best chance of success depends on a small amount of preparation. First, try to fit your priceless sixty...
Unbalanced by Design
After each bootfitting exercise, I spend a few moments ensuring that my freshly fitted customer understands the basic operation of his or her new footwear. Part of this brief operations overview is a lesson on buckle tension. You might think...
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...
The Family of Skiers
Once upon a time, the family of alpine skiers was a relatively tight-knit bunch of risk-takers regarded by the general public as a lunatic clan whose members seemed to spend half of each winter wearing a cast or sling, yet continued to ski, as if...
Lessons in Humility
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...
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...
On Anticipation
[With the ski season looming just over the time horizon, the communal anticipation of skiers everywhere begins its annual climb to fever pitch. To add to your stoke, I’m offering a chapter from Snowbird Secrets that addresses the sensation of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Not Dead Yet!
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...
What You Pay For
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...
Realskiers.com Solves World Hunger!
Well, not entirely. But don’t let it get you down. Cheer up! After all, Realskiers.com is back and better than ever! Of course you expect tons of ski reviews, so there are 135 to peruse and ponder. And that’s just the Recommended models for this...
Where We Stand
We live in turbulent times. While it’s silly to compare the tribulations of the ski trade to the powerful tides currently transforming the world at large, 2017 has already proven to be a year of seismic change in our little corner of it. Nothing...
What You Should Know Before You Buy Your Next Boots
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...
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...
On Fluidity
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...
When Race Skis Ruled
Last week on Realskiers.com I wrote about the best all-mountain skis made since that terminology became common usage. This week’s reverie highlights some of the great race skis that served an earlier generation of skiers as their everyday ride. The...
The Top 12 All-Mountain Skis of All Time
When asked what sort of ski a prospective buyer is searching for, by far the most common answer is “an all-mountain ski.” After all, doesn’t everyone want a ski that at least purports to do everything reasonably well? Yet all-mountain skis are a...
On Trees
Dear Reader: This week’s Revelation is culled from the pages of Snowbird Secrets. It’s a meditation on trees and the part they play in our lives as skiers. In the turbulent times we live in, trees form temples of timeless tranquility where peace...
Triumph of the Tapered Tip
It seems like only yesterday, but it was in fact five seasons ago that Dynastar debuted its first Cham collection, in the process drawing attention to a feature that until then was found mostly on renegade, athlete-driven, freeride brands: the...
Fear of Fitting
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...
Incremental Innovation: What to Expect in 2018 and Beyond
To appreciate the global trends evinced by the 2018 ski market, one must first comprehend the pressure on major suppliers to renew as much of their product line as resources permit. At a minimum, cosmetics need to change; any model that doesn’t...
A Pocketful of Life Savers
It doesn’t take much to ruin a ski day. A foot that won’t stop aching. A burr on the edge that catches every time you turn. Rain that won’t stop smearing the outside of your goggles or fogging that obstinately persists on the inside. We only get so...
The Other Austrian Brand
Back when shaped skis were emerging as a powerful, but not yet all-conquering force in ski design, I was invited by Fischer to visit their factory and essay some new skis on the Sölden glacier. My residual impressions of that trip have faded over...
Celebrating Diversity in Powder Skis
Maybe it’s because the Tahoe resorts were recently so choked with snow it was a battle royal just to open a single lift, but my thoughts have been preoccupied with Powder skis, those monsters of the deep that measure more than 113mm underfoot. Once...
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...
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...