If you pay any attention to the World Cup, you might notice that Austrian GS skis are on the podium ad nauseum. The RC4 Worldcup RC isn’t as powerful and fall-line focused as a genuine FIS-sanctioned GS, thank goodness, but it gives us mere mortals a sense of what it would be like to have that level of control and authority. It’s particularly exhilarating to drive through a long, banked turn that can’t be broken loose by boilerplate, wind-blown berms or heavy spring slush.
The new Sheeva is an example of an increasingly common phenomenon: the intersection of women’s ski design and the recent explosion in backcountry R&D. Both domains depend on lightweight as a central feature, but you’re unlikely to see the all-business Zero G collection adopt Sheeva’s sassy twin-tip attitude. Its surfy baseline is insanely easy to push around in powder, but there’s enough camber underfoot to keep it on course when the powder is kaput.
The key to the Samba’s go-anywhere attitude lies in its Flip Core baseline that predisposes the forebody to ride over anything in front of it without disconnecting it from the rest of the ski. As soon as the Samba is laid over, the skier can depend on every centimeter of the ski supporting her. Secure enough on edge to carve all day, the Samba saves its best moves for soft snow, where it helps the uninitiated learn to mix smearing and steering into a lively downhill dance.