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When I orchestrated equipment reviews for Snow Country Magazine 25 years ago, all skis looked similar but the quality of the on-snow experience was all over the map.  

T’is the season we in the ski evaluation racket look forward to all year, when we can take run after run on new ski after new ski, soaking in the sensations each ride imparts.

I’ve recently concluded four days of intensive ski testing at Mt. Rose, Nevada and Mammoth Mountain, California. Naturally, the first question posed during this ski fetishists’ festival by a fellow fanatic is, “What do you like?” 

Last week I spent three days immersed in the annual ski show in Denver and, like many of my brethren, almost as much time trying to travel home. 

This week the American branch of the world ski market reconvenes in Denver at the annual Snow Industries America show.  While the engine that drives the show is commerce, its machinery is oiled and fueled by personal relationships that are often decades old.  

Every ski catalog, brochure and review includes a smattering of statistics meant to encapsulate some aspect of the subject ski’s behavior.  Many, if not most, ski tails likewise sport summaries of design details.

The New Year brings with it the opening of ski test season and the first public revelations of what new skis we’ll be putting through their paces in the weeks ahead.  As RealSkiers.com prepares to peer into the future, we pause for a moment to revisit past trials and tribulations along the ski test trail. 

As was the case with our men’s picks last week, we were unable to limit our selections to ten.  We also arbitrarily cut off our qualifying field to skiers competing after 1950.

Not everyone will agree with our definition of “skiers,” as we’ve peremptorily eliminated Pipe & Park athletes, aerialists and acrobats in favor of what we regard as the most demanding of disciplines, alpine racing.

Expert skiers don’t worry about falling.  But they do worry about collision. A lot. As in, all the time. 

For as long as skiing has been a sport, skiers have squabbled over the ideal location of the skier on the ski.  

The question most commonly asked by the new ski buyer, whether in person or via the Internet, is, to no one’s surprise, “What ski should I buy?”  When this query is posed on line, the second most frequent question is, “Where should I buy it?”

The device responsible for making skiing an accessible sport instead of a risky form of recreation is the alpine boot. If it isn’t set up to function properly, the expensive slat it’s meant to control and the binding to which it’s connected won’t operate as their designers intended. 

Whenever a bootfitter slips what he or she knows to be the correct size on a prospective customer, it’s standard procedure to intone, “You will feel your toes at the end of the boot; please try not to panic,” or some such admonition.