Revelations
Reading the Tea Leaves of 2018
The ski trade is on such a wacky sell-in cycle that our regional ski rep association wrapped up their first trade show of 2017 yesterday, displaying 2017/18 product just as the current year has crested the holiday season and settled into the heart...
On Roundness
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,...
Many Davids vs. Few Goliaths
Several times a month I receive brief but impassioned pleas to cover a small-batch ski maker who has won the heart of an apostle who hopes to inspire a similar fervor in others. My explanation for why their prayer for coverage in Realskiers is...
The Mail Bag
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!...
Tales from the Boot Bench: Between Two Extremes
A leitmotif in western philosophy is the observation that the everyday world of mankind resides between two extremes; today, we have a better idea than ever just how extreme the extremities are, the gulf between them so vast that the laws of the...
The Best Women’s Skis of 2016/17
This week we celebrate the stars of the women’s ski market as identified by Realskiers.com Test Shops’ female staff. The same caveats that applied to last week’s selection of the best unisex skis of 2016/17 pertain here: There are a lot of great...
The Best Skis of 2016/17
Before we begin doling out victory laurels, we pause to recognize all the great skis of 2016/17 not being singled out below. Every unisex ski that earned a Realskiers.com Recommended medallion is by definition one of the best skis of the year. We...
On Gratitude & Asking Permission
On a day when we all pause to remember the people, events and things in our lives for which we are deeply grateful, I offer this meditation, On Gratitude, Chapter 19 of Snowbird Secrets. “It’s more, I’d say, not so much a word as kind of a...
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...
Get a Grip
If you are a lifelong skier, no matter how long that life may currently be, either you or someone you know has taken a nasty spill while crossing a slick parking area in their ski boots. These types of falls tend to be sudden and unmerciful, the...
Your Next Ski
If you’re like most advanced skiers, you’d like your next pair of skis to do everything well. Even if you aren’t the master of all terrain conditions, your want your skis to be. Much as you’d like to own several pairs of skis, it isn’t going to...
Measuring Up
Prospective modern-day ski buyers do assiduous research, checking every online advice purveyor for clues in its reviews that will identify his or her personal best-of-all-possible worlds. They interview friends, instructors and a random coterie of...
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,...
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...
Take the Leap of Faith
If you are totally content with your skiing, able to master any condition with grace and style, this Revelation isn’t for you. Perhaps in the spirit of giving you can forward this message to the neediest case you know in your skiing entourage. If...
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...
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,...
A Sommelier for Your Feet
How do you become a great boot fitter?Start by fitting a few thousand feet. Jim Schaffner applying his craft at Start Haus. Not long ago, I was sitting in a classroom listening to a passionately yet soberly delivered series of seminars on advanced...
Your Boots Aren’t All That Need to Be Fit
Eventually, all skiers learn the importance of getting their boots properly fit. It may take more than a season in rental boots, hand-me-downs or Craig’s List re-treads, but in time, even the most plodding intermediates figure out that maybe...
The Big Picture
We've spent the last three weeks devoted to the nuts and bolts of our trade, gorging on new product information and indulging in as many test runs as we could squeeze in a day. We were blessed in that a couple of our test venues, after teetering on...
Is America Over-Heating?
No doubt about it, heat molding has become a wildly popular feature wherever alpine ski boots are sold. Lightly toasting the inner boot so that it will readily conform to an inserted foot has become all but standard practice. Since the introduction...
Fat Isn’t Good For You
I’m not normally a crusader against fat, or any other form of self-indulgence for that matter. My bona fides as a bon vivant have been attested to by no less a luminary than John Fry, the finest editor ever to work the ski beat, along with a few...
A Nation of Dreamers
In last week’s Revelation, I wrote about the typical exchange between a prospective ski buyer and a shop salesperson. The focus was on the questions customarily posed during the getting-to-know-you interview. This week, I’m addressing the nature of...
The Most Important Question Salespeople Never Ask
Any ski salesperson worth his or her salt is going to ask a few standard questions in order to properly match the prospective ski buyer to a new ski. The litany of inquiries will go something like this: “How would you describe yourself as a skier?’...
Helpful Fictions
These numbers mean something... but not enough to find the right boot online. In one of our first blog posts of last season, we wrote about two useful numbers you should know about any boot you're thinking of buying: its flex index and forefoot...
The Fallacy of Meter-Radius Measurements
Back in the mid-1990’s, when carving skis were first embraced as skiing’s next Savior, I used to argue vehemently with European product managers over their insistence that the meter-radius measurement was the best way to classify a ski according to...
Our Dystopian Future
It’s a staple of science fiction that life in the future will be even more of a mess than it is today. Two of this summer’s biggest blockbuster movies,Elysium and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, take a dim view of mankind’s social evolution from...
Love is an Active Verb
Ski junkies, we know, devote a good deal of time and effort to finding just the right model for how they like to ski. They approach the decision with the utmost gravity, as if choosing a mate for life. But once they have the object of their...
The Pendulum Swings the Other Way
Like many in our small but loveable trade, I’ve just returned from 3 cathartic days of demoing a passel of next year’s skis, in my case at the Mammoth Mountain event. Despite a thus far dreadful winter, the hill could not have been in better shape...
The Parallel Worlds of Ski & Golf Gear
There are several important similarities between skiing and golf: both are essentially balance sports, success at both depends on managing the mind/body relationship and both require expensive equipment. On this last point golfers and skiers share...