Palmer Snowboards

12-04-06 - Man Bites Dog: Palmer Launches Skis?

From www.skipressworld.com
By Jules Older

When a ski company launches a snowboard line, it’s not “Hold the presses!” kind of news. When a snowboard company launches a new ski line, that’s news.

It’s news because of what it might imply. With few exceptions, the flow has been in one direction over the past dozen or so years. Snow sliders have been voting with their feet and credit cards for the new kid on the hill, snowboarding, at the expense of the reigning champion, skiing. Yet, you could make a pretty compelling case that snowboarding has saved skiing by keeping bodies on the hill that might otherwise be sun-tanning somewhere in the Caribbean.

You could also make a credible argument that skis, themselves, owe much to the single-plank alternative. It wasn't until snowboards gained favor that ski manufacturers finally started experimenting with deep sidecuts and came up with the now ubiquitous shaped ski, arguably the best thing that’s happened to ski technology since Howard Head invented the metal ‘cheater,’ way back when.

And now, there may be a new debt — and a reverse flow. Palmer Snowboards, a Swiss-based, hi-tech, snowboard-only firm is introducing not one, but two lines of skis.

For a launching pad, they went to Copper Mountain, Colorado on November 30, 2006.

That could be a historic date. Will other snowboard companies follow suit? Is this the tart of a new counter-trend; will the pendulum swing back from one plank to two? Or is this just an anomaly, a dead-end path on the evolutionary trail system?

A lot may depend on the skis, themselves. Borrowing some tricks from snowboard design and creating others from scratch, Palmer has come up with a noteworthy pair. Remember that taste in skis differs as much as taste in art; with that in mind, here are my observations.

Palmer’s white (though it also comes patterned), twin-tip, all-mountain ski — hereafter referred to as the white ski — does a lot rather well. It’s good in the halfpipe, good on cruisers, good on the groomed and in medium-deep powder. The key word here is ‘good;’ I asked other testers to rate it on a 1-to-10 scale, and we all gave the white ski an identical grade — 8. Pretty good; not earthshaking.

The carving model, hereafter known as the black ski, was another story.
Three times in my life I've jumped on a ski and knew within the first 50 yards that this was something new and better. The first was, after skiing on Olin Mark IIIs for 10 years, I tried a pair of Dynastar Course HPs. “My god,” I said, “things have changed.” The second was the first shaped ski, the Elan SCX. Once I demoed them, I wanted to throw away my old boards.

The third time was Palmer’s black ski.

Before I describe it, let me say I think it’s misnamed. For me ‘carving ski’ often means one-trick pony; it can do one type of turn spectacularly well, and it can't do anything else worth jack.

This ain't that ski. Quite the opposite — it’s nearly an all-rounder. I didn’t get to take it into powder or moguls, but on steeps and cruisers, groomed and crud, it did very well indeed.

But what took it to a new level wasn't its versatility but its ease. The black ski is a knee-saver, a breath-saver, maybe even a heart-saver. It requires less effort than any ski I've ever been on. And its sweet spot is as big as all outdoors.
I skied it short, I skied it long. I skied it through tight turns, I swooped it through giant slaloms. I skied on my heels, toes and the balls of my feet. I steered with my feet and with toe pressure only. It handled all of it with grace. And, though I live at sea level and was testing at 10,000 feet, I skied a liftline-free day without tiring. Without even breathing hard. Not because of training, because of the ski.

Will Palmer’s ski line change the course of manufacturing history? Will it entice snowboarders to try two planks beneath their feet?

I don’t know. What I do know is that for many a skier with hurt or tired or aging bodies, the misnamed black Palmer could extend their ski life. If I were Palmer, I'd call it Black Beauty.

--Jules Older