Season Diary - Day 11

Wednesday 28th January 2026 - Champoluc, Italy

Casting an eye on the biggest skis available on the market

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Boy have I been sleeping on fat skis over the past few years.

Take nothing back from everything I’ve written on skis around 100mm underfoot – and it is a lot – I stand by every single word of what I’ve said. I firmly believe that no one needs a ski wider than this, or if it is the it’s only by a few millimetres. Last year I splurged on a pair 104mm underfoot, designed to be my touring and powder skis, something I intend to do more of from this season onwards, but for the vast majority of people one who are building a one ski quiver then this new generation of 90-100mm underfoot skis are perfect for.

This is now the fifth season I’ve been part of the Ski Club of Great Britain’s ski test team, and the fourth year leading it. I’ve been driving this message home for much of the past four years, becoming more impressed with how wider skis are getting better and better on piste and outside of deep powder.

Walking around SLIDE – the trade show that immediately precedes the Ski Test – I was struck by something. Innovation and development in skis seems to have ground to a halt. It is a fact of life that the ski market is shrinking, with less and less people purchasing skis. Let’s face it, skis are expensive, and you don’t save much on faff and cost versus renting over.

The UK is also a boot-first market. Almost six times as many boots as skis are sold in the UK each year, and the numbers are either holding steady or growing (depending on who you ask). So the wider international market, and specifically when it comes to selling into the UK, innovation and experimentation in skis is becoming more limited as brands try to get more value for money out of their existing designs.

Which has led us back to Champoluc. I came into this week trying to shift the focus a little bit, to take into account some of the proper, true freeride skis – those coming in 110mm underfoot and above, the absolute boats. By testing these skis, many of which are not new but fit this bill of existing and with a stretchy lifespan to help brands save many,

And now I find myself standing at the top of a tree run ready to drop on a pair of 114mm skis. 114?! Who on earth do I think I am?! Those are huge!

I had tested these skis last year and was really surprised by how they skied in powder – super lightweight, they sat high on the snow surface and allowed you to create the most perfect “S”s. And this year they were no different. But now I was lining them up for a tree run and really didn’t know what to expected …

I traversed tentatively into the line, waiting for the photographers and videographers to get set, then dropped.

I needn’t have been worried. At all. Light and twitchy, the flowed and weaved and sprung between the trees, over little cushions and spat me out the other end with a huge smile on my face.

These weren’t the only really good powder skis we managed to get a hold of this week. And you know what? Sure, they ain’t gonna be your one ski quiver for this week, but bloody hell were some of them good on piste …

Anyway, we have three categories of skis to test and as this is a small one, there is plenty more to do …