Top 5 skis of all time

[skibrd]

Simple, what do you think the top 5 skis of all time are. Not just the best for you, or the best for Mags, but the best or most influential for the entire skiing world.

I’ll start:

1) First laminate ski with metal edges (anyone have a name?)
2) First parabolic ski, possibly a ski by Olin or the Elan Sidecut eXtreme?
3) Spatulas - pow made easy
4) Solomon 1080s - took us from helicopters to dub 1440 or what ever they are doing in big air comps
5) Soul 7 - skiing made easy



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[SKIP IN7RO]

Furberg snowboards circa 2012-2014, legendary shape based off of some of the skis soon to be mentioned.

[m2711c]

Praxis Rx.

[Bunion 2020]

#1. Three aircraft engineers Wayne Pierce, David Richey and Arthur Hunt, build an aluminum-laminate ski with a wood core. -1949: Howard Head created the most commercially successful early metal ski. It was a pressure-bonded aluminum ski with a plywood core, plastic side-walls and continuous integral steel edges.
#2. When did parabolic skis come out? Parabolic skis began to be widely used in the 1990s and are now standard for all Alpine skis.

https://www.skiinghistory.org/histor...history-skis-0

As for the rest. Its still all in the eye of the beholder.

The Salomon Cross Mountain was the 1st "Mid-fat" ski I ever skied on. They are ridiculously narrow by today's standards but the 1st 2 runs on a pair were a total game changer.

[CaliBrit]

Feel like you’ve got to give a shout out to the K2 Four.

“But in March 1996, Bode Miller, a little-known 18-year-old downhiller from New Hampshire, showed up at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine for the US Junior National Championships. A contrarian by nature and keen student of ski technology, Miller decided he would compete on the K2 Four, a shaped ski produced by his equipment supplier. The result astonished everyone: he won three of the four events and came second in the other.”

[Bunion 2020]

I suppose that the region or mountain town has a lot to do with it. The hot skis in Park City when I moved there were Atomic Red Sleds (GS), Dynamic VR17s and Rossi ST Comps. 1984ish. In Alta is was Rossi Haute Routes, and Dynastars. Back East what was influential was probably different.

The Ski was still around. Those probably deserve a mention along with Miller Softs.

Hand made by ski bums in Park City, I was told stories of parts of a ham sandwich, a dead mouse and a used tampon finding their way into the molds.

[ill-advised strategy]

#1. Three aircraft engineers Wayne Pierce, David Richey and Arthur Hunt, build an aluminum-laminate ski with a wood core. -1949: Howard Head created the most commercially successful early metal ski. It was a pressure-bonded aluminum ski with a plywood core, plastic side-walls and continuous integral steel edges.
#2. When did parabolic skis come out? Parabolic skis began to be widely used in the 1990s and are now standard for all Alpine skis.

https://www.skiinghistory.org/histor...history-skis-0

As for the rest. Its still all in the eye of the beholder.

The Salomon Cross Mountain was the 1st "Mid-fat" ski I ever skied on. They are ridiculously narrow by today's standards but the 1st 2 runs on a pair were a total game changer.

That x-mountain was a great ski.

[rfconroy]

[schindlerpiste]

My list:
Rossignol Strato 102
Volkl Exploder
Atomic R:11
Kastle MX98 Squaretail
Blizzard Bodacious

[Buster Highmen]

I think it was Kneissl that had the first metal edges, screwed in by segments.
Head and Hart were innovators in metal skis
Then it was the Dynamic VR7 in 1962 that was the first fiberglass laminated ski followed by the VR17 that started a revolution with Rossignol Strato, Dynastar S430 and K2 Holiday soon following.

The next revolution was the foam core Rossi ST650 and Dynastar S730 skis.

Then fat skis , Atomic Powder Plus and Rossi Axiom followed by Volkl Explosiv and Snow Ranger, capped by Drake-Boinay Tabla Rasa.

[singlecross]

Feel like you’ve got to give a shout out to the K2 Four.

“But in March 1996, Bode Miller, a little-known 18-year-old downhiller from New Hampshire, showed up at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine for the US Junior National Championships. A contrarian by nature and keen student of ski technology, Miller decided he would compete on the K2 Four, a shaped ski produced by his equipment supplier. The result astonished everyone: he won three of the four events and came second in the other.”

FWIW… Bode would never have been on the K2 Four if it wasn’t for George Tormey, the K2 race rep who put Bode on them. I worked in the backshop at Sugarloaf and mounted some of those skis with George a week before the races. George was laughing that with a skier like Bode “what have we got to lose!”… Bode was a very inconsistent finisher at that stage of his development.

The Elan SCX was the first well known “parabolic” ski that I remember being widely seen on the mountain in New England.

[ill-advised strategy]

FWIW… Bode would never have been on the K2 Four if it wasn’t for George Tormey, the K2 race rep who put Bode on them. I worked in the backshop at Sugarloaf and mounted some of those skis with George a week before the races. George was laughing that with a skier like Bode “what have we got to lose!”… Bode was a very inconsistent finisher at that stage of his development.

Was it a retail Four? Raceroom? Deflex?

I’ve always wondered.

[MakersTeleMark]

How could the pocket rocket not make the list? It does.

[singlecross]

Was it a retail Four? Raceroom? Deflex?

I’ve always wondered.

They were raceroom laminate skis… the Derbyflex plates wouldn’t fit over the little wedge shaped pietzo-electric light thingy for GS and Super-G and the SL skis were stiffened up a lot to not overflex, load up, and launch you out of the course as badly.

There were some stock skis with just riser plates as well.

Forest Carey also got some pretty trick K2 raceroom stuff back then as well.

[ill-advised strategy]

Man would I love to get my hands on that raceroom SG four plus deflex setup.
Drool.

[westoxified]

Man would I love to get my hands on that raceroom SG four plus deflex setup.
Drool.

Bode first won on the stock Four. not sure if the blue white and red Four was ever done without cap construction.

i still have some laminate Merlin VIs with yellow epbs and 997s. it definitely doesn’t belong in this thread whereas the Four certainly does.

[DarthMarkus]

Might seem out of left field, but I would actually put the Gotama in that list. Not sure where it would stand, but for it's time, and even now, the Gotama stands out as one of the best options for what it did. I would probably still own that ski if they continued to make it

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[abraham]

Seems like 4 should be Pocket Rockets and 5 should be the S7 that led to the soul 7.

[Shorty_J]

Does the Rossi Sickle belong in here?

I haven't been a good enough skier for long enough to have a solid bet on this, but that ski (and the Spatula) both changed my life.

[D(C)]

The Rossi S7, Armada JJ and Atomic Bentchetler stand out as rocker-camber-rocker skis that saw widespread adoption as daily drivers. These came out in 2008, I believe.

The first short, shaped slalom skis were a gamechanger. Around 1999, a guy I raced with got an early pair of 160 Rossi 9S when everyone else was on straight skis and just crushed the field.

[skibrd]

The Sickle might belong. I never skied it, it I heard great things.

My cousin skied his S7s through last winter. Loved them.

The S7, JJ, BentChetler, and Protest all came out about 08, all were similar and game changing, but not defining, like totally changed skiing for the masses. I prefers the Shiros over the taper rocker camber rocker style for a long long time.

Schindlerpiste, I knew someone was going to say the Kastle MX 98 square tail. The 194 was finally a ski that was long enough at that width for me and I’m clutching onto my last two pairs as long as I can because they are that good for me. I know of one more pair almost brand new. skied twice but he wants $1400 for them. Such a good ski.


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[ill-advised strategy]

FWIW… Bode would never have been on the K2 Four if it wasn’t for George Tormey, the K2 race rep who put Bode on them. I worked in the backshop at Sugarloaf and mounted some of those skis with George a week before the races.

Was it a retail Four? Raceroom? Deflex?

I’ve always wondered.

They were raceroom laminate skis… the Derbyflex plates wouldn’t fit over the little wedge shaped pietzo-electric light thingy for GS and Super-G and the SL skis were stiffened up a lot to not overflex, load up, and launch you out of the course as badly.

There were some stock skis with just riser plates as well.

Man would I love to get my hands on that raceroom SG four plus deflex setup.
Drool.

Bode first won on the stock Four. not sure if the blue white and red Four was ever done without cap construction.

You guys are saying two different things here.
Knowing K2 of the time, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if what everybody thought was a retail four was actually a raceroom ski with a deflex plate. That seems to be what Singlecross was saying.

[Mustonen]

Simple, what do you think the top 5 skis of all time are. Not just the best for you, or the best for Mags, but the best or most influential for the entire skiing world.

I’ll start:

1) First laminate ski with metal edges (anyone have a name?)
2) First parabolic ski, possibly a ski by Olin or the Elan Sidecut eXtreme?
3) Spatulas - pow made easy
4) Solomon 1080s - took us from helicopters to dub 1440 or what ever they are doing in big air comps
5) Soul 7 - skiing made easy



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Best and most influential are different things. Steph Curry isn’t in most people’s top 5 of all time, but most influential of all time? He deserves consideration. Lebron is widely considered to be in the top 5 of all time, but was he truly influential (outside of player empowerment)? Not really, no…. He didn’t change how the game is played like Steph did.

To the topic, spatula changed the game, but wasn’t and isn’t really on the radar of the masses and isn’t even the best example of a reverse/reverse ski, even if it’s the first. Rossi S7 or Soul7, by contrast, are well known by anybody who has looked for a powder ski in the last decade and arguably were some of the best at doing what they do.

[Peruvian]

Everything old is new again.

[Dexter Rutecki]

You guys are saying two different things here.
Knowing K2 of the time, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if what everybody thought was a retail four was actually a raceroom ski with a deflex plate. That seems to be what Singlecross was saying.

That is, in fact, what it was. And then he competed in the Park City WC on those K2's (that model) as well. I remember watching that race and hearing Bob Beattie rave about Bode, then seeing him ski and thinking 'this is never going to work.' I gave up my WC prognostication career after that.

Shortly thereafter I was working in JH running timed laps on a GS course and some guy showed up on 190(?) K2 Fours and I ended up behind him in the gate, silently snickering at his skis (I was on 208 Kastle RX12's, which, BTW, should be on this best ski list). Guy fucking smoked me, and I watched him seemingly effortlessly carve in a way I couldn't begin to do on my long, straight planks. I realized something was up at that point and that I needed to change gear. Similar to a year or two later on a 30" day in La Grave when I got on a pair of Atomic Heli Dogs and realized the future of pow skiing was fat (I don't know how fat those things were, but at the time I was skiing exclusively on 64mm waist race skis--I assume they were about 64mm, no one aside from ski engineers even knew skis had tip-waist-tail dimensions back then).