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.”
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.
Head built its Joy women’s line from scratch, without borrowing so much as a gram of Titanal from the hundreds of men’s models it might have cloned and declawed. The weight reference is apt, for Head’s undeniable advantage of being the first and only ski brand to use Graphene™ – carbon reduced to its single-atom essence – gives its women’s skis amazing snow feel. Its one thing to experience the already significant joy of skiing powder; it’s another whole level to feel the Big Joy as it transmits the pearly brush of snow on its bases to your arches, as if you were skiing barefoot.
