Head’s phenomenal success as a racing brand overshadows its less lustrous history as a freeride line, and it’s hard to argue otherwise when one side has household names like Lindsay, Bode, Anna and Ted on its roster.  (The old Head Monster series had headline freeride talent such as Johnny, Allison, Jon and Rex, but we digress.)

The same engineers who equip the Head racing stable design the rest of the line, the Collective 105 included. Perhaps that’s why the Collective deploys the deepest sidecut of any ski in the Big Mountain category. At Head, a ski has to carve; if you want to build it with a waist as wide as a semi, fine, but first it must be capable of etching an arc.

The Collective earns its highest marks in the most prestigious criterion, Finesse/Power balance.  This grade is as close as we can get to an assurance that the ski possesses technical properties accessible to all.

One other factor that increases the accessibility of the Collective 105 is its relatively modest price, making it the value leader among our Power picks.