I’ve been playing around for months now with developing a quiver of skis we can test and review in a slow paced human-powered backcountry style. Instead of the nearly impossible task of a complete industry overview, I decided to limit the number of planks to around a dozen, and just have fun accumulating the pile with skis we’re attracted to and that the industry was kind enough to provide. No intention of playing favorites or exerting bias, the idea is to simply have fun and keep it simple — yet at the same time do some cream skimming and present our readers with a selection of which any pick would be terrific. Well, here is the pile. We’ve been skiing all these for weeks (some for months now) and we’ll do a series of reviews as winter progresses.
We've done prelim takes on most of these skis over past weeks, see our 'Ski Reviews' category by using the category dropdown up there at the top right of pages. From left to right the 11 pairs: Volkl Nunataq, G3 Zen Oxide, Dynafit Manaslu, Black Diamond Element, Kastle 87, Voile Vector, K2 Wayback, Trab Volare, Dynafit Stoke, Black Diamond Carbon Justice, La Sportiva Hi 5 -- the planks are proudly posing at WildSnow Field HQ. Click image to enlarge.
For testing during past weeks we’ve been doing two things: To evaluate float and junk snow performance we’ve been touring bottomless facets and chopped powder in the snow deprived central Colorado backcountry. Edgehold and hardpack eval has been a simple matter of uphilling then making turns on the various white-stripes-of-death we have available at our local resorts — the other day I even found a nice patch of water ice to see how those edges felt. I think I even saw a frozen frog down there in the ice.
Update: Our Ultimate Quiver ski review is DONE, click here!
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
