Today, I found myself bored, so I ventured into two ski shops in Boulder: Epic Mountain Gear (the former Boulder Ski Deals/Colorado Ski and Golf) and Christy Sports, on a lark to look at the width of the skis available. I didn't see anything under 85 in width. Granted, I didn't look at the width of each and every ski, but if there was even one ski under 80, it would've been obvious as most of the skis were well over 95 in width.
I thought that the trend was to have more performance oriented skis over the past two seasons? Given that wide skis contribute to knee injuries and are not helpful for learning technique, not to mention that Colorado does not get that much deep snow and conditions are often toward the hard end of packed powder, it is really surprising to me that there are none of the great all mountain performance skis on the rack in a width less than 80. Is it that the shop retail staff just really doesn't know what the benefits are of narrower widths? Are industry professionals not educating the retail staff? Or is it that the skiing public has simply bought that a wide ski can do everything a narrow ski can do?
Mike
I thought that the trend was to have more performance oriented skis over the past two seasons? Given that wide skis contribute to knee injuries and are not helpful for learning technique, not to mention that Colorado does not get that much deep snow and conditions are often toward the hard end of packed powder, it is really surprising to me that there are none of the great all mountain performance skis on the rack in a width less than 80. Is it that the shop retail staff just really doesn't know what the benefits are of narrower widths? Are industry professionals not educating the retail staff? Or is it that the skiing public has simply bought that a wide ski can do everything a narrow ski can do?
Mike