The biggest single event that we run every year at Freeskier is our ski test. We take hundreds of skis to Copper Mountain, CO, and pick out the select few that rise above the rest to stand out as Editor’s Picks.
Here’s how it works:
1. Every ski company under the sun brings their best 5-7 skis to our test at Copper Mountain.
2. We split those skis into three categories: all-mountain, big-mountain and powder specific.
3. Each morning, we wake up and check the weather. Depending on how much new snow has fallen, we choose a category. Yesterday, we tested big-mountain skis because there was a ton of fresh left from a storm the day before.
4. Our group of 10 esteemed testers cycles through each ski in the category, ripping the Super Bee chair here at Copper top-to-bottom. In this one run, testers can hit trees, groomers, crud, powder… every element that they are testing the ski for.
5. When the tester is done the run (or two runs, if he/she wants another go to double check something), they fill out a test form and give the ski scores in different categories, amounting to a total score, aka the famed stoke-o-meter.
Now this system does lend itself to one obvious drawback: what happens if it doesn’t snow? That’s what happened last year, and we ended up road tripping down to Southern Colorado to go cat/heli/bc skiing and all was well. But this year, we’ve been blessed with utterly perfect conditions. Couple inches here, five inches there, five more here, couple more there… in three days, we’ve finished out all the big-mountain and powder skis; the two most fickle categories when it comes to waiting on weather.
So today and tomorrow, we’re cranking out the all-mountain skis – the narrower boys – to rip through groomers and whatever pow is left up on the mountain.
