Off-Piste 2012

What can we see if we look at this year’s skis alone (see previous ski post for year-to-year retrospective)? All of these points are drawn from Off-Piste’s 2012-13 backcountry ski review. OP chose not to review any skis narrower than 90 mm this year.

What ski sizes are available?

In the plot above, if a manufacturer only offers a ski in one length, it’s ‘size 1’. If they offer skis in multiple sizes, each size gets its own point. 112mm waists get a little extra love; DPS look-alike contest?

What do skis cost this year? How does that scale with width?

Voile leads the way again. Awesome.

Ever wondered if you could do any quantitative review of the reviewers?

From digging through the past issues of Off-Piste, I’ve concluded that OP draws its weights and measurements directly from the manufacturers, rather than measure them independently. The few points far outside the errorbars are more likely manufacturer error or typos than anything else.

Does manufacturer-claimed turn radius have anything to do with ski sidecut? (for these points, when a manufacturer claimed something like radius = 35m / 15m, I recorded the smaller value.)

Hm. Very hard to tell. More sidecut should mean shorter radius, on average…

I’m not sure what to draw from this last plot, but it’s visually pleasing.

Ski shovel and tail width vs. waist: