Last week in this space I bid a fond farewell to a trio of outstanding skis that have ruled their slice of the market for the better part of a decade. No sooner had I sent the text off into the ether than my wandering mind dusted off some fuzzy memories that prompted me to wonder, what was the most popular ski ever sold on this continent?
It couldn’t be a recent model, if for no other reason than the current ski market is wildly diverse and fragmented compared to the relatively homogenous ski world prior to the ascension of shaped skis, and even more impactfully, fat skis. Not only are there many more models being offered today by each established brand, the total number of skis sold in North America has shrunk by roughly two-thirds, from somewhere north of 1.5 million pairs to something south of half a million. The recent bulge in backcountry activity, while adding to the total number of skis sold, has further diluted the chances of any one model dominating sales.
The period when the U.S. market supported the most brands and sold the most skis was also an epoch when there were really only two archetypes: a light and lively slalom ski and a beefier giant slalom, with the former far more popular than the latter. The peak of this period began around 1980 and continued into the mid-90’s, when curvaceous carving skis and plump powder models began to warp the market into what we have today.
If you were a skier back then, you already know where this train of thought is heading. In an ocean of candidates, there was one mega-star, the teal-green Rossignol 4S Kevlar. Its defining technical feature was a Vibration Absorption System (VAS) that the brand had been optimizing since it first appeared in the SM and SP models in 1980. Originally comprised of steel wires in a visco-elastic substrate, aka, rubber, the distinctive external plate – a snippet of aluminum alloy (Zicral) riding a rubbery cushion – wasn’t added until 1984. It bears noting that some variation of this principle – converting vibrational shock into elastic movement against resistance – is alive and well in many, if not most, of the skis using Titanal laminates today.
The 4S VAS had already earned a legion of fans before Rossi added the coup de grâce, the addition of Kevlar fiber to the mix, in 1987. The use of high-tech fibers is now commonplace – although carbon, not aramid fiber like Kevlar, has become the most common choice due to its lower cost and wide-spread availability – but in its era, Rossi was way ahead of the curve. To complete the package, Rossi shifted the ski’s dominant color to a soft, teal green that fit the moment perfectly.
By “moment,” I mean “half a decade,” for that’s roughly how long the original 4S K ruled the roost. Rossignol was the most important ski brand in America, with an enormous, well-cultivated armada of racers and ex-racers as brand ambassadors. The 4S K’s trademark mint tint didn’t just seem to be everywhere; it was everywhere.
All race ski designs are subjected to constant tinkering, and so it came to pass that the 4S Kevlar evolved into the 7S K, which continued the reign of Rossi slalom skis well into the 1990’s. The 4S moniker would one day be slapped on a foam-core package ski just to exploit the name, but it never pretended to the success of its namesake and it mercifully slipped away into anonymity.
As I’m sure you’re aware, Dear Reader, there is no such thing as a skinny, shapeless slalom ski – intended to be skied in at least a 200cm length, no less – anymore. Ubiquitous grooming has obviated the need to make an endless string of short turns, and the shallower, abbreviated sidecuts of today’s much fatter skis encourage a longer-radius, partially skidded turn. If the 4S K were introduced today, it might inspire curiosity, but precious few sales.
In point of fact, Rossi did introduce a concept ski based on a modern slalom design, but the concept The Essential is meant to illustrate is recyclability, using an archetype with which all major ski makers are familiar. I don’t think anyone at Rossignol believes Americans are suddenly going to put their feet together and start to dart in and out of the fall line with the agility of agitated atoms. The conditions that made the 4S K so enduringly popular – that could make any ski so universally endorsed – simply don’t exist anymore.
But skis still need to cope with vibration, and the principles that made VAS so effective in its day still pertain. Ski models may come and go to fit the exigencies of a shifting market, but the science behind the technologies that keep skis connected to a high-speed turn never goes out of style.
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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 game under Delouche’s patience guidance. I recall a debate on the binding specification then being batted around in the technical committee chaired by Carl Ettlinger. Ettlinger wanted language that would require any release/retention setting of 10 or above to be “visually distinctive” from the rest of the scale.
In Memorium, Carl Ettlinger
Carl was a giant of a man whose outsized voice roiled every conversation like a burst dam and whose expansive vision reached across the mixed milieus of research, journalism, risk management and education. I knew him when he was at the peak of his powers, as he explained to me when I interviewed him for a “where are they now?” profile in Skiing History. He was able to conduct long-term research on injury patterns as well as analyze the particulars of the current binding market, turn around and package this knowledge into articles for Skiing and Skiing Trade News, followed up by a workshop tour that would bring enlightenment to the grassroots level. No one but Carl could have pulled this off, and Lord knows no one has had the requisite talent, energy and will power since.
But time and tide wait for no man, and Carl’s finely spun web of influence was eventually plucked apart. The loss of his pivotal positions in the press allowed him to slip from public view before we, the skiers of the world, realized we hadn’t taken the time to thank him.
We have the time to thank him now.
So thanks, Carl, for being first and foremost a teacher, for teaching is at the heart of the evangel’s mission.
Thanks for being so damn stubborn. Your insistence on improving skier safety wore through a wall of resistance as tough as Vermont marble.
Thanks for having a heart as big as that melon-sized head of yours. The fuel to your tireless mind was a caring heart that tried to embrace the world.
Thanks for all the stories once the Mount Gay flowed. Who knew we would have won the Vietnam War if only his superiors had listened? I can’t remember exactly how – he wasn’t the only one drinking Mount Gay – but I recall the light in his eyes as he relayed his twisted tales, taking us down successive rabbit-holes of digression that I lost track of at the seventh level.
That’s what I remember most vividly about my many interactions with Carl: his brain so teemed with thoughts he rushed to get them out in a verbal jailbreak that would travel around the cosmos until returning, many lost minutes later, to the subject that had inspired them. That was Carl: too many words for one sentence, too many tasks to tend to and all of it, every erg of his endless energy, devoted to a cause he never ceased to serve.
Fare thee well, Carl Ettlinger. The world misses you already for it will never see another quite like you, whose every moment seemed larger than life itself.
I raise my glass to you, old friend. Mount Gay, of course.
Jackson Hogen
June 23, 2020
Why This Buyer’s Guide?
Don’t read the 2021 Masterfit Buyer’s Guide in Partnership with Realskiers.com for its 62 ski reviews. I should know. I wrote or edited all of them.
Not that the ski reviews aren’t worth the read. But ski reviews on the web are as common as rice, while the Buyer’s Guide contains something no other publication, whether in digital, print or video format, can claim: the most respected, thorough and dependable boot reviews in the world.
This isn’t mere puffery. The Masterfit Boot Test is so well regarded by the supplier community that nearly every brand not only sends its following year’s line-up in four men’s sizes plus three for women, it also dispatches its top designers and/or product managers to a distant North American site for most of the test’s five-day duration.
