Ripstick 96

There’s an easy-skiing flow to the Ripstick 96, supple, smooth and graceful. “Hard to lose your smile while riding this ski,” confides Scott Sahr from Aspen Ski and Board. “The Ripstick is the perfect balance of stability and lightweight construction,” he adds,...

Orb

If everyone in skiing is part of a family, then the Orb is for the young uncle who only gets out on weekends. He spends most of his precious ski time inside the resort boundary but prefers to get off-trail if conditions are decent. He’s a good skier and would be great if only he skied more.

If he gets a pair of Black Crow Orbs, he may chuck work all together. The tapered forebody and mildly rockered baseline are ready to party off-piste, but with two Titanal laminates on board, the Orb is so strong on edge it doesn’t really care where you send it. Its tip design obliges the Orb to be loose at the top of a laid-over turn, but once it settles into the arc it’s as solid as the Mont Blanc massif. The once rebellious boys of the Chamonix backcountry now are making perfectly balanced skis that any member of the ski culture can climb on and relate to immediately.

Stormrider 95

The Stormrider 95 holds so well, in fact, the pilot may not feel incentivized to slow down. On test card after test card, still-awed evaluators noted, often in all caps, “NO SPEED LIMIT.”

They might have added, “No terrain limits, either.” Like most Stöcklis, this Stormrider doesn’t lack for confidence. It knows it’s better than whatever sort of frozen water you plan to plunge into, and it has a tendency to transfer this preternatural calm to its pilot. If the true measure of a ski is how well it performs in god-awful conditions it wasn’t meant to endure, the Stormrider 95 is an all-star.

Rossignol 2016

For most of the 1970’s, 80’s and into the 90’s, Rossignol was king of the roost, the most recognized trademark in a market crammed with brands that did not survive this epoch. They built a race department that was the envy of all, with stars like Alberto Tomba and...

Camox

Like French cooking, the genius of the Camox doesn’t lie in its basic ingredients but it how they all come together. (Want proof: try making a baguette.) The Camox is a poplar core, fiberglass ski with Kevlar and carbon stringers to give it strength and, in the...