Where to Ski And Snowboard -

New gear for 2012

24th February 2011, by Dave Watts

Salomon’s Eric Davies with the revolutionary new Salomon BBR ski

Earlier this week I was at SLIDE, the UK industry trade show at which all the new skis, snowboards and other ski gear for the 2011/12 season is displayed by the different manufacturers. And next week, I’ll be at the UK industry ski test in Bormio in Italy, testing all the new skis with the team from Daily Mail Ski magazine.

The talk of the Show was the revolutionary new Salomon BBR ski, which won the Show’s award for best new hardware. The same guy who came up with the very successful X-Scream and Pocket Rocket skis in the past has designed it. The BBR was inspired by the way that surfboards work, with the tip pushing water out of the way. Hence the new skis have hugely wide tips of 140mm or more (compared with, say, 120mm for more conventional skis). Salomon claim that the skis work really well both on and off-piste – I look forward to trying them next week.

Another major leap forward is with the new Fischer Vacuum Fit boots. These feature a new type of plastic that is 15% lighter than normal and when heated in the special oven that shops will have becomes very soft and malleable. It can then be moulded, using special equipment and compressed air, to the exact shape of your foot. Fischer says that this heating and moulding can be repeated up to five times if you are not happy with it when you go skiing.

Custom fitting of ski boots is a continuing trend with many manufacturers, with Salomon continuing their Custom Fit boots, Rossignol rolling its sensor system out throughout its boot range and Tecnica refining and expanding their range of boots of Air Shell boots where you can inflate and deflate a bladder within the boot to suit your foot.

Another trend is that many more manufacturers are now producing lightweight but wide touring skis that they claim are as good for downhill skiing as they are for climbing uphill on skins. The Volkl spokesman told me that this was a rapidly-growing sector of the market and that ‘worldwide, touring will be as big as snowboarding within a couple of years’ – as someone who hates skinning or hiking uphill, I’ll believe that when and if it happens.

More news from Bormio next week.

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