Shane and I worked on powder skis when he was our sponsored rider at Volant and I was an engineer there. He rode the Chubb and really liked it, and he ended up modifying it by decambering the ski so that tip and tail stuck up in the air a little bit. We tried different fl ex profiles to make the thing work better all-around and work better in the powder.
Then he sent us a picture of a surfboard, quite literally, and he said, “I want skis like this.†He wanted something that was wider in the center and narrower in the tip and tail, in other words, reverse sidecut. His thinking at the time, which was really brilliant though very simple, was that powder behaves more like a fluid than a solid, but all skis are designed for skiing on a solid. We weren’t really sure how it would work, but it was the first truly revolutionary design intended for powder.
We gave Shane one of the prototypes, which he took down to New Zealand. He called me after the first day and was just ranting and raving about how unbelievably good the ski was… unlike anything he had ever skied on in powder. He was ecstatic and beside himself about how well it worked.
Everybody thought it was kind of a weird idea. The Volant crew were your typical ski managers and execs. In other words, they were all ex-racers. So they were all into nuances of carving. There was a lot of skepticism and rolling of eyes and I thought it was a bizarre idea, too. But when I thought of it, I knew it made a lot of sense because I was a windsurfer so I knew about planing. I understood the shape. I was always in pursuit of a better powder ski.
Even though Shane did all of this absolutely insane stuff, he was a really nice, pleasant person. He was a great person to work with, he really thought of all these ideas. He was totally committed to the sport. As a ski designer, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the guy. Even though I design skis, I look for inspiration and guidance from people, and he was definitely one of those ones, especially when it came for something new. Searching for something new and something better is something I look for in every aspect of my life, especially in my design experience, and he was really good at that.
