From our Gimme A Break! Files comes Carradan Ski Company and their $12,000 Copperhead and $19,000 Mamba ski models. “What the hell are they thinking?†you might ask. It’s a good question.
The skis have a bunch of super-secret technologies, like patented CRYO:2 edges, which the company claims are tougher and more stable than the regular thing. They also claim that they use “exotic†materials like Bamboo and Okume wood cores, but these materials have been utilized by many manufactures. Okume wood has a long history linked to ski production for use in cores and Bamboo is currently used in skis available from companies like Liberty and Volkl.
So what do you get for your thousands of hard-earned pesos? Well, a day to ski with Martin Bell, an Olympic skier who was on the British Ski Team (rather posh, huh?), a plastic travel carrier for your sticks, and some skis with distinctly pedestrian shapes. Seriously, with dimensions of 120 – 86 – 110 the Copperhead is nothing special and a rather skinny snake indeed. The twin tip Mamba clocks in at 119 – 86- 117, not that impressive given that all- and big-mountain skis worth anything these days when it comes to performance are approximately 100 underfoot.
Still there may be a market for Carradan, and the kind of customer the company is reaching out to is embodied in the pictures on the company’s website, www.carradanskis.com. With photos of guys in the back seat and skiers in one-piece suits catching 8 inches of air, we can assume that the Freeskier reader isn’t on the company’s radar.
