Las Vegas – Pro skier Shane McConkey chortled as he strolled through the massive Mandalay Bay Convention Center, checking out hundreds of new skis debuting at the annual Snowsports Industries America trade show.
What the mad scientist of ski design saw were the longest and fattest skis ever made. Good ideas, he says, but still not done right.
“They still don’t get it,” the 36-year-old said. “They’ll get there eventually, but they will always be two steps behind us.”
“Us” is K2 Skis, the Washington-based snow toy maker. A little more than a year after McConkey and K2 joined forces, the duo last month unveiled what is one of the sharpest deviations in ski design since metal edges. The Pontoon is a powder tool that revises McConkey’s Spatula, a ski he designed for Denver-based Volant skis that developed a cult following of powder plunderers before Volant was gobbled up by larger corporate interests.
Imagine a torpedo: super fat at the tip (160 millimeters) and hefty at the waist (130 mm) and narrowest at the tail (120 mm). For comparison, that tail size is roughly the equivalent of two of the traditional skinny skis everyone rode 15 years ago. But it’s more than the unusual tapering shape that separates the Pontoon from every other ski.
McConkey’s inspiration for his signature stick is surfing. Since snow is a form of water, he said he believes skis should mirror surfboards. So he turned up the tip and tail, giving the aptly named Pontoon what he calls “rocker,” not unlike the hull of a kayak or surfboard. It’s the opposite design of every ski out there. Skis have always been cambered: The tip and tail push down, and the middle of the ski arcs upward. That’s what gives a ski its snap.
But you don’t want snap in a powder board, McConkey said.
“You want to float, like a boat,” he said. “It’s really exciting to see this come to fruition. This is why I signed with K2. They are one of the only companies progressive enough to listen to their athletes. And just watch, a lot of these companies are going to start making skis that look a lot like (the Pontoon.)”
While no one seems to be onboard McConkey’s tapering shape concept, ski makers across the globe are awakening to the need for less camber in their powder skis. The wider skis get, the less need for a ski that pops.
“Zero camber, reverse camber, rocker – whatever you call it – it’s the future,” said Colorado pro skier and K2 athlete Seth Morrison, whose Seth Pistol skis contributed to the fat ski revolution. He recently asked the K2 techs to bend a pair of the company’s super-stout Made-N-AK skis at the tip and tail so he could dabble with the “rockered” concept.
“I’ll never ski anything else,” Morrison said.
Most every maker – from the largest companies like Atomic and Rossignol to boutique outfits like Armada and 4Front – is releasing the longest and bulkiest skis the industry has ever seen, and most of those boast minimal to zero camber. For years, the Snowsports trade show has been the place to unveil the latest in ski design. In 1993, the new trend was shape. A little more than a decade later, it’s girth and zero camber.
It wasn’t that long ago skinny, shaped skis dominated the market. The few boards with waists of 90mm or more in 1990 were exclusively for heli-accessed powder. In the past three years, skis have broadened with more boasting midsections over 100mm. Every time a company expanded the girth of its biggest stick, skiers flocked, plowing the once powder-only boards into all aspects and proving prodigious planks were good for all skiing.
Today, a 100mm-waisted ski is a midfat, fat skis are 120mm and swollen, big-mountain powder skis have potbellies that reach 140 mm, which is more than twice the midsection of the long departed skinny skis that ruled skiing for decades.
And the lengths of those obsolete slender rides are coming back: Many ski makers have revived the 190-plus centimeter board, a length many considered extinct because of the added surface area provided by girth. Fat and short started the trend, but as skiers begin landing backward on remote cliffs and high-speed ripping Alaskan faces they are requiring more plank underfoot.
“People’s interest in backcountry riding is increasing every single year, and that is pushing demand for more fat skis,” said Tyson Hall, head of customer relations for Armada skis, which debuted two pairs of skis this year with waists over 100mm. “We are seeing more and more heli and cat operations than ever before, and these are the types of skis people need for the deep stuff. They make skiing like surfing.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
