Oh baby, baby, it’s a wild world. Entering the 2007-2008 season, skiing has become more diverse, eccentric and expressive than ever. More than ever, your choice of skis says as much about who you are as about how you ski. Today’s skis are meant to make a personal statement, not just a cleanly arced turn.
Every ski model now is conceived not only to meet certain technical specs but also to dovetail with a particular cultural mindset. Punk-rock park-and-piper? Lipstick cruiser? Retro freeerider? Buying skis in 2007-2008 is not just about performance — it’s also about look and attitude. You are what you ski.
As ski companies try to cover all their bases — gate-crashing racers, big-mountain freeri-ders, huck-crazy tricksters — they’re also coming up with more creative designs that help express what kind of skier — and person — you are. Cross the many specialized skis with the many new looks, and you end up with a giant matrix of possibility.
The sheer numbers suggest that in this year’s new-ski grab bag there is something for every single skier in every tiny niche of the ski market. Atomic’s line this year, for example, includes a whopping 57 models. Salomon comes in with 54, and other companies are close behind.
But if there is an ideal ski out there for everyone, finding it among all those choices isn’t easy. You could use some help, and that’s where the Ski Press Ski Test, the most comprehensive test in the business, cowboys up. We assembled 171 testers to run 308 ski models through seven days of testing — first at Mont-Sainte-Anne in Quebec and later at Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia. The data produced more than 3,500 individual test report cards to be analyzed, scrutinized and turned into useful buying -information for Ski Press readers.
Perhaps the most important skiing-as-life statement in this year’s test is that the proliferation of woman-specific skis has become so pronounced that for the first time we’ve divided the test into separate men’s and women’s sections. After all, women have long had different skiing styles and tastes from men. This year’s test acknowledges and celebrates that difference.
Your choice of ski says something about what kind of skiing you like, where you live, your pop-culture sensibilities, and in the end, who you are. The 2008 Ski Press Ski Test is a compass to help guide you to your own perfect ski.
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