OK, so we've all had a tough week or two.
Hard times require some perspective, which gives us all the perfect reason to hit the slopes for some much-needed, snow-aided gravity research -- that is, skiing.
Luckily, despite the warm weather here on the Street, there is plenty of snow left out West.
Spring skiing 2007 should be epic.
And not only are there significant amounts of snow waiting for you, there are also interesting new developments in ski technology for 2007.
To get a sense of the cutting edge of ski design, I recently headed out to
Park City, Utah, with a fresh pair of high-tech Atomic
Nomad Crimson skis and Neox 4.12 bindings ($1,250) matched to Atomic's similarly slick
M-Tech M110 boots ($749).
My verdict? Prepare to have your stodgy impressions of modern, do-everything skis vaporized.
For the decent skier looking for well-mannered rides that still behave reasonably well (that is, go fast) yet don't have the dorked-up feel of soft-intermediate skis, it's tough to beat these Nomads.
Angling for the Everyman
In case you have a real life and have not been following developments in ski technology, there has been a quiet revolution in the stuffy world of things that slide on snow.
Makers have (finally) gotten over the let's-just-detune-the-racing-skis thing for the average skier. Now rides are aimed squarely at you and me. They are built to turn easier, go faster and be more durable.
Usually dubbed "all-mountain" skis in the industry, these modern mounts are a careful balance of competing design ideas. They combine snowboard-inspired shapes -- the ends of the skis are wider than the middle -- so you can turn them simply by angling them to the snow with your feet (like skates).
And all-mountain skis carry plenty of stiffness right around the middle of the board, under your foot, pretty similar to what aggressive types like Bode Miller slide on. But all-mountain skis have softer fronts and backs, so they bend when you turn them and ease the sometimes terrifying process of getting from one ski to the other without pulling an Arnold Schwarzenegger -- that is, breaking a bone.
Ski makers have even hacked the ultimate problem. They have figured out how to make skis that are soft tip-to-tail
and stiff side-to-side.
Side-to-side stiffness, or torsional stiffness, is crucial to good ski performance. Skis that are torsionally stiff don't twist so much underfoot, so they can safely hold their edges as you ski across the face of a steep icy, horrifying slope. Trust me, it's a nice feature.
Even better, new materials are making these all-mountain rides blissfully light. Carbon fiber, ultratight weaves, Kevlar and other technologies are taking pounds off these skis.
Atomic, for example, says it has lost about a pound and a half off a comparable set of skis over the past few years. That's about 20% of the total weight.
Jonathan Blum
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