I have no business reporting on this ski, much less awarding it a Recommended medallion, but after letting the Völkl Confession ski me for a couple of consciousness-raising runs, I had to use my bully pulpit to announce its arrival.

If the Confession feels guilty, it might be because it knows where all the bodies are buried. With two sheets of Titanal in its guts it doesn’t so much float as burrow, blasting its way through wind crust, spring porridge or ragged crud. After a run on the Confession, you’re looking for other worlds to conquer. It’s like have an army of earthmovers on each foot, rolling over once powdery pastures and turning them into pavement.

This assessment is not only based on wafer-thin evidence, it’s possible the Confessions that materialize in the fall of 2017 won’t behave exactly like the one I essayed last February. But if any brand could introduce a model as beastly as the Confession and never blink, it would be Völkl. Remember, these are the folks you brought you the original Snow Ranger and later the Kuro, both big, badass chargers that believed in world domination.

The Confession fits perfectly in this lineage. By the time I reached the bottom on my test runs, I experienced a Walter Mitty moment, imagining myself in the cockpit of a make-shift urban assault vehicle, guns mounted to the forebody of each Confession, ready to invade another run.