Post by superbman on Sept 18, 2015 3:15:31 GMT -7
Ron is 100% on the money with the value of taper (tips and tails) in tight spaces. LP, I always try to think about the specific history of things (even recent things), and the last 12 year trajectory of ski design is really cool.
1. Era of the big fats…building off of the blend of the Pocket Rocket, bigger fatter twins showed up everywhere..rocker was still only on odd ball fun skis (Last of the Spatulas, first of the Pontoons and a bunch of newbie garage band brands)). But skis with waists over 110, curved at both ends graced ski porn screens and local hills (prompting legions of cranky forum posters and confused ski instructors to lament 'what's with all the fat skis…"
a. Carry over from the 90's-a popular subset of the first big explosion of FAT skis also included some seriously stiff, non-twinned, pieces of big mountain Iron. They usually had names of bad ass big vert slayers like Nobis or Perret on them in the widest format.
b. This lasted longer-Big flex twin-tips or bigger stiff wide boy vert rippers (Both mostly not rockered) for longer than most remember: @ 2008-9. Yep, rockered, reversed, and all manner of fun shapes were out there (an those skis with the fish-tale cut outs which I never understood at all)…but the biggest companies hadn't fully jumped on board (heck, even Liberty and Icelantic didn't have a rockered ski until 2011)…that is, except the Biggest company K2 and rising superstars like Armada.
2. By 2011, however, the rockered, early rise, boom was in full swing, and wide skis, and many not so wide skis were everywhere (the monster La Nina year certainly pushed this along). Small companies who originally pushed the limits of design were having their salad days (some becoming definitively big companies like Armada and Line, others out growing their garage ski presses like Icelantic, DPS, Liberty, Moment, etc). Some had radical side cut designs (with multi point side cuts..the granddaddy of taper-First seen on small companies, than popularized by Armada, and finally embraced and spread massively by Rossi).
a. The material revolution: Ski companies across the board began making better and better skis-and this happened in a different direction than the fat/ rockered/ tapers direction which went from small co's and Fat pow skis down through the line of skis. The material revolution trickled up from top Race Development departments. Skis just got better, not just the shapes…the stuff they were made of and how the were put together: all kinds of alloys, plastics, glues, pressing processes, carbon evolved, and could be fine-tuned to a level never before possible. This has been the Quieter revolution in the industry, but maybe it's have been the more important one, as that is the one that determines flex, feel, dampness, 'pop', durability,…you've heard the platitude that 'it's hard to find a bad ski these days'-it's the material revolution, almost exclusively on the big companies, that has determined this.
b. A meeting in the middle evolved: skis between 85-99mm waist got the best of experimental materials and lots of thoughtful shaped design from the wider ski innovators-and this evolution continued at a shockingly rapid pace so that well before the end of one season, radical upgrades and changes in ski lines showed up on hills everywhere. Early rise in race skis, carbon and metal matrices in pow skis, widest and narrowest part of every ski changing and moving every season in a hunt for optimal points of snow contact.
3. The present: Only a myopic crank could decry today's options and choices in skis. There are skis with 85mm waists that out perform skis from a decade ago with waists 20-30mm wider in soft off-piste condition. And the same could be said in the other direction, there are skis with 85mm waists that out perform skis with waists 10-20mm narrower in firm frontside applications. And, at the best of the contemporary genre, there are 85mm waisted skis that do both. The biggest curse now is buying skis, in that, there are so many options, and the abilities of skis have been so fine-tuned that it can be maddening for the gearophile to narrow their gaze on specific skis.
The trend is towards more versatile, narrower widths (and better hard snow skis than ever at the other end). But not in spite of rocker, taper, or new materials, but rather because by embracing and really pushing the envelope of all of them, they've just made better skis.
1. Era of the big fats…building off of the blend of the Pocket Rocket, bigger fatter twins showed up everywhere..rocker was still only on odd ball fun skis (Last of the Spatulas, first of the Pontoons and a bunch of newbie garage band brands)). But skis with waists over 110, curved at both ends graced ski porn screens and local hills (prompting legions of cranky forum posters and confused ski instructors to lament 'what's with all the fat skis…"
a. Carry over from the 90's-a popular subset of the first big explosion of FAT skis also included some seriously stiff, non-twinned, pieces of big mountain Iron. They usually had names of bad ass big vert slayers like Nobis or Perret on them in the widest format.
b. This lasted longer-Big flex twin-tips or bigger stiff wide boy vert rippers (Both mostly not rockered) for longer than most remember: @ 2008-9. Yep, rockered, reversed, and all manner of fun shapes were out there (an those skis with the fish-tale cut outs which I never understood at all)…but the biggest companies hadn't fully jumped on board (heck, even Liberty and Icelantic didn't have a rockered ski until 2011)…that is, except the Biggest company K2 and rising superstars like Armada.
2. By 2011, however, the rockered, early rise, boom was in full swing, and wide skis, and many not so wide skis were everywhere (the monster La Nina year certainly pushed this along). Small companies who originally pushed the limits of design were having their salad days (some becoming definitively big companies like Armada and Line, others out growing their garage ski presses like Icelantic, DPS, Liberty, Moment, etc). Some had radical side cut designs (with multi point side cuts..the granddaddy of taper-First seen on small companies, than popularized by Armada, and finally embraced and spread massively by Rossi).
a. The material revolution: Ski companies across the board began making better and better skis-and this happened in a different direction than the fat/ rockered/ tapers direction which went from small co's and Fat pow skis down through the line of skis. The material revolution trickled up from top Race Development departments. Skis just got better, not just the shapes…the stuff they were made of and how the were put together: all kinds of alloys, plastics, glues, pressing processes, carbon evolved, and could be fine-tuned to a level never before possible. This has been the Quieter revolution in the industry, but maybe it's have been the more important one, as that is the one that determines flex, feel, dampness, 'pop', durability,…you've heard the platitude that 'it's hard to find a bad ski these days'-it's the material revolution, almost exclusively on the big companies, that has determined this.
b. A meeting in the middle evolved: skis between 85-99mm waist got the best of experimental materials and lots of thoughtful shaped design from the wider ski innovators-and this evolution continued at a shockingly rapid pace so that well before the end of one season, radical upgrades and changes in ski lines showed up on hills everywhere. Early rise in race skis, carbon and metal matrices in pow skis, widest and narrowest part of every ski changing and moving every season in a hunt for optimal points of snow contact.
3. The present: Only a myopic crank could decry today's options and choices in skis. There are skis with 85mm waists that out perform skis from a decade ago with waists 20-30mm wider in soft off-piste condition. And the same could be said in the other direction, there are skis with 85mm waists that out perform skis with waists 10-20mm narrower in firm frontside applications. And, at the best of the contemporary genre, there are 85mm waisted skis that do both. The biggest curse now is buying skis, in that, there are so many options, and the abilities of skis have been so fine-tuned that it can be maddening for the gearophile to narrow their gaze on specific skis.
The trend is towards more versatile, narrower widths (and better hard snow skis than ever at the other end). But not in spite of rocker, taper, or new materials, but rather because by embracing and really pushing the envelope of all of them, they've just made better skis.