Skinny Skis for Skinny Ski Mountaineers

Is this retro day at WildSnow.com? Or have rando-racer-types infiltrated the blog? What’s next, reviews of tights for ski mountaineering and advice on how to starve yourself so you can trim 10 grams of mass from your cuerpo? We shall see. Meanwhile, check out some of the lighter weight planks on the market.

Seriously though, although such skis are frequently scoffed at and classified as tools useful only for skiing tight steep lines or slogging herculean traverses, I think ultralight skis with waist widths in the 70s are perfect for the typically consolidated snow conditions of late spring and early summer backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering.

A quiver of one? Hardly. But then again, if you’re the kind of skier who would be satisfied with a single setup, then you’re probably not reading WildSnow.com blog posts in August, anyway.

For this category of skis, obviously you can forget about rocker or even any early tip rise. My criteria were that the waist width had to be over 70mm, otherwise the ski is firmly in rando race territory, which is great if you expect consolidated snow conditions and only consolidated snow conditions, but anything unconsolidated and those few extra mm make a big enough difference in a non-race setting to justify their extra mass (relatively speaking) on the up.

Speaking of readily available, that attribute has a broader range than pretty much any other element in the table for those outside Europe. Some of the models here are from companies with strong presences in the North American alpine downhill market (Atomic, Blizzard, Dynastar, Elan) yet do not distribute their lightweight ski mountaineering models here. (Shame on them!) At the other extreme are some companies whose only attribute of which I am certain is that I didn’t make them up (Differences, Lighter Ski).

Newcomers to this segment include La Sportiva (new to skiing entirely) and G3. Traditionally backcountry-oriented ski companies include BD, Dynafit, Hagan, Movement, and Trab. Dynafit is a bit of a newcomer as their two prior iterations of a 70s-waisted ski had almost no distribution in North America. But the Broad Peak is carried by a surprisingly large number of shops, and has been used in an unsurprisingly large number of impressively long (yet fast!) trip reports on various blogs this past season.

Movement has four different models in the table. But its North American distributor last year had very limited availability. For this coming season, La Sportiva North America will take over distribution, but its focus will be on the Movement models appealing to alpine downhill shops (while La Sportiva’s own models — all tightly focused on backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering — go to backcountry shops). Since I have their Fish-X rando racer and their 80s-ish Logic-X, I’m disappointed that the Random-X will not be available.

Trab picks up much stronger distribution this season from Scarpa, and the Duo Free Rando Light will be available. I’m disappointed though that the Duo Sint Aero will not be available. Over the course of five seasons of late spring and early summer skiing, I’ve used them in all sorts of snow conditions (and even, umm, non-snow conditions). They ski perfectly in nice corn of course, and hold an edge perfectly on unripened corn and ski area “firm” groomer training sessions. When the corn is overly ripe, or fresh powder is unexpectedly encountered, a wider ski would of course be optimal, but the narrower ski still performs surprisingly well.

Their durability has also been a welcome surprise, even at over 100 outings and nearly half a million vertical feet. When I tapped the mounting holes the first time, I was a bit alarmed at how effortlessly the tap went in, then showed no apparent signs of bottoming out. Subsequently while playing around with binding toe shims, and also when remounting the heels for the diminutive DyNA/TLT5 sole length, I’ve removed and reinstalled the toe screws several times. Yet never a single spinner.

All specs in the table below are as published, including weights for a length somewhere in the 160s. The weight cut-off I set at that of the Dynafit Mustagh Ata Superlight, since I didn’t see much point in any 70s-waisted ski that weighs more than a 86mm to 88mm model (depending on length) that is reasonably priced and readily available.

The table’s “d” is for sidecut depth, which I calculated using the standard formula of tip plus tail minus twice waist (i.e., the bigger the “d” number, the turnier the ski). The “r” is for turning radius (i.e., the smaller the “r” number, the turnier the ski), as stated (or sometimes not) by the manufacturer, which is a function of both sidecut depth and contact length. (Note that a ski can’t have a constant set of sidecut specs and turning radius throughout all the lengths — some models vary the sidecut, some vary the turning radius, and some even both.)

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WildSnow chart: Ultralight Skinny Skis for Spring & Summer Ski Mountaineering. Waist width greater than 70mm (otherwise in rando race ski territory), and weight less than Dynafit Mustagh Ata Superlight.
Company	Model	cm	lb	oz	g	Sidecut			d	r —	msrp
Atomic	Guide Huberbuam	164	5	4.0	2380	107	72	96	59	18.0	€ 319
B.D.	Guru	167	5	4.3	2390	120	75	105	75	15.0	$540
Blizzard	TA Expedition	168	5	1.8	2320	112	74	96	60	17.5
Differences	Tour Light	166	4	7.6	2030	114	72	100	70	14.0	€ 800
Dynafit	Broad Peak	167	4	11.8	2150	112	74	96	60	17.5	$650
	Haute Route Plus	163	5	1.8	2320	113	78	100	57	18.8	$600
	Nanga Parbat	167	5	1.8	2320	102	73	89	45	24.7	€ 475
	Se7en Summits Superlight	163	5	3.2	2359	113	78	100	57	18.8	$630
Dynastar	Altitrail Vertical Light	160	4	12.2	2160	103	75	92	45	20.0	€ 329
G3	78 Stinger	166	5	4.7	2400	112	78	100	56		$570
Hagan	Spirit	163	5	6.1	2440	112	73	100	66	14.9	$430
	X-Ultra	163	4	6.5	2000	111	71	101	70	14.7	$630
Elan	Aconcagua	165				104	72	91	51	20.4
	Elbrus	165	5	4.6	2397	104	72	91	51	20.4	€ 270
	Makalu	165				104	72	91	51	20.4
La Sportiva	RST	167	4	13.6	2200	116	77	106	68	17.0	$579
Lighter Ski	Spatzle	171	3	14.8	1780	115	76	105	68	18.5	€ 700
Movement	Feather	167	5	1.1	2300	115	76	105	68	19.0	€ 485
	Random	167	4	13.6	2200	115	76	105	68	19.0	€ 528
	Random X-Series	167	4	1.6	1860	115	76	105	68	19.0	€ 739
	Red Apple 74	168	5	4.7	2400	114	74	103	69	18.0	€ 449
Trab	Duo FreeRando Light	164	5	0.4	2280	112	79	96	50	22.0	$779
	Duo Sint Aero	164	4	4.1	1930	105	73	89	48	24.0	€ 700
	Duo Sintesi	164	5	1.1	2300	105	73	89	48	24.0	€ 410

If anyone has any ideas for other offerings we can add to the list of skis in the table above, please comment and we’ll try to add them in.

(WildSnow guest blogger Jonathan Shefftz lives with his wife and daughter in Western Massachusetts, where he is a member of the Northfield Mountain and Thunderbolt / Mt Greylock ski patrols. Formerly an NCAA alpine race coach, he has broken free from his prior dependence on mechanized ascension to become far more enamored of self-propelled forms of skiing. He is an AIARE-qualified instructor, NSP avalanche instructor, and contributor to the American Avalanche Association’s The Avalanche Review. When he is not searching out elusive freshies in Southern New England or promoting the NE Rando Race Series, he works as a financial economics consultant.)