Head was the first major ski brand to tie its fortunes to the success of the shaped ski revolution with its Cyber series. I remember being a guest at a major dealer event in Konigsberg, Austria in the 1990’s when the president of Head’s subsidiary muttered the brand’s new mantra in a funereal monotone: “Cyber is carving, and carving is Cyber.” You had to be there.
Point being, Head went all-in on the carving craze and never lost its passion for the genre, always working on the perfect tool for making a continuous, flowing arc on groomed terrain. When Head acquired a license to use Graphene, carbon in its most elemental form, it didn’t rush to apply it to its established Supershape collection, but did its homework for a few seasons, figuring out just where it belonged. In the end, the answer was of the “more begets more” variety, in this instance, more Graphene lightened the overall construction enough to allow Head to add more Titanal to its core quartet of carvers.
For 2025, the entire Supershape collection tacked in a different direction, again adjusting the balance between carbon and metal elements, this time cutting out some Titanal and subbing in carbon in the form of Crossforce Carbon in a mid-section patch. The net effect is a ski more responsive to pressure applied directly underfoot, creating a round turn with an energy boost at the bottom, propelling ski and pilot into turn after turn, without a break in the beat.
If this sounds like the e-Rally is the consummate, dual-track carving tool, well, it is. Even with a new, more svelte sidecut that slices through broken snow on a more even plane, the e-Rally still reserves its best behavior for the groom. All you have to do is tip it on edge and it will go find the top of the turn. From that moment, you’re on auto-pilot, standing in the center of a mid-radius turn that’s pinned to the snow. Give it a little stab of pressure on exit and it will project its pilot into the next turn on a platform that never wavers or shimmies off line.
You don’t have to ski the e-Rally at eye-watering speeds, but if that’s your jam, the e-Rally won’t disappoint. It was made to motor at speed on hard surfaces, which is why its vibration-cancelling Energy Management Circuit is preset to kick in at 80 Hz, injecting a dose of piezoelectric Valium to calm the edge. EMC, Crossforce Carbon and a healthy allotment of Titanal all contribute to the e-Rally’s limo-smooth ride.
No aspect of a carving ski’s design has more influence over its behavior than its sidecut, so what may seem like small tweaks – a 4mm trim in the tip and 2mm off the tail – actually have a noticeable effect on how the e-Rally responds to pressure. Basically, it’s become more open-minded, both about turn shape and terrain compatibility. The e-Rally is still a far cry from an off-trail drifter – note that, among Supershapes, the e-Titan is better adapted to tracked-up crud – but it lets the pilot massage the turn shape with edge angle, and the narrower shape finds a more constant level when the snow gets deeper.
Head has been making deep sidecut system skis for decades, so their R&D department was well aware that the elevated, adjustable plates used in their carving ski systems weren’t capable of compensating for the effects of boot sole length on ramp angle. On any and all plate bindings, shorter boots sit at a steeper angle. It’s a nasty bit of baked-in bias, but it comes with the territory, so suck it up.
No one has suck it up anymore. The era of short-boot bias is over. Head’s new two-piece platform automatically compensates for boot sole length, maintaining a constant .55 degrees of ramp angle. Sitting atop the Better Balance PR Base is the Protector 13 binding, that provides an extra measure of knee protection. It’s hard to precisely pinpoint the contributions made by the ski, the binding or the plate that joins them, but it is possible to assert that the ensemble delivers round, seamless arcs that hold up under speed and pressure.