Super Joy
No brand is more obsessed with carving accuracy than Head. The Super Joy is right in Head’s wheelhouse, a Frontside ski that isn’t interested in experimenting with conditions that ruffle its featherweight construction. The Super Joy is at its most joyous on freshly groomed trails where, if the skier slows the pace to a trot, she can feel the snow ripple underfoot.
The Super Joy’s extraordinary snow feel is attributable to Graphene™, as this absurdly strong material allows Head to eliminate heavier materials that muffle this sort of subtle feedback. If there’s a trade-off for this sensitivity, it’s a prejudice in favor of the petite; bigger skiers can overload the Super Joy.
Total Joy
Some carving-centric skis are built beefy, the better to handle the shocks of riding hard snow at speed. But the Total Joy feels sensationally light and responsive, thanks in large part to Graphene™, the only material measured by the atom. Graphene allows the Total Joy to be both super light and torsionally stiff so the edge stays calm in all but the roughest terrain.
Skiers looking for a skills-improvement pill in ski form should take two Total Joys and go skiing every morning. All a lightweight skier has to do is tip it and the Total Joy takes over. “Easy peasy,” purrs Kelli Gleason of Boot Doctors, “it’s forgiving and light yet maintains a big sweet spot for recovering from a backseat turn.”
Venturi 95
The most prominent impression left by the Venturi 95 is of smoothness that remains unruffled no matter where it’s led. It holds an edge even when there’s no surface to edge into. When all semblance of softness has been pounded away, the Venturi 95 doesn’t bat an eye but continues to spool off medium-radius arcs as easily as a Vegas dealer spins out cards.
The Venturi 95 pulls off this neat trick by using a proprietary design that adheres a matrix of shock-sucking elastomer covered in a fiberglass shell to both the tip and tail. This feature is to shock what black holes are to light.
Worldcup Rebels i.SL RD
For 2017, Head has incorporated the miracle material Graphene™ – carbon reduced to the irreducible one atom – into the i.SL RD’s make-up. One might be forgiven for thinking that adding Graphene would ipso facto reduce the ski’s weight, but racers aren’t looking for lighter skis, but ones with perfect flex distribution. Because of its absurd 300-to-1 strength advantage over steel, Graphene strengthens the ski as well as stiffens it, an important feature among fragile slalom race skis.