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The All-Mountain Ski is Dead.

Writer's picture: HenryHenry

Updated: Feb 3

Fresh off a visit to SLIDE – the UK’s snowsports retail trade show – Skiing Unlocked dives into their biggest takeaway from next year’s slate of skis.


The all-mountain ski is dead.


Okay, not quite as dramatic the headline might make it out to be, the all-mountain ski is not quite dead. However, the thin all-mountain ski, one of two sub-categories within this class, is dead. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-ski. It has crawled down the village run and gone to the après bar in the sky.


This has been on the cards for a number of years now, with growing improvements to the quality of freeride skis and the emergence of a new sub-category of ski, the all-piste ski. Perhaps this will come as quite a thrill to my North American readers (of which I do have a fair few checking in from across the pond) who have very different ideas of what an all-mountain ski should be than those of us in the Alps.


In addition, there is something truly beautiful happening to the fat all-mountain ski: it is being absorbed by freeride skis to create this mega-category that, sooner rather than later, will kill the final remanence of the all-mountain ski.


Skiing Unlocked will explore what it means to be an all-mountain ski, the emergence or development of these two other classes of ski, and why fifteen years of ski development means the all-mountain ski well and truly is dead.



 

What is an All-Mountain Ski?


An all-mountain ski is a ski that does exactly what it says on the tin; it can ski across the whole mountain. It is thin enough and shapely enough to turn well on piste, but thick enough underfoot and strong enough throughout its core that it can handle anything but the deepest powder when going off piste.


The all-mountain ski has dominated the British market for much of the past ten years. Brits, generally, only head away to the mountains for one or two weeks a year. In that week or ten days of skiing, they will want to do a bit of everything; float around with the family, send big lines with their mates, enjoy waist deep powder or steer children through icy slushy spring conditions.


To have one ski that can do all that, saving space and weight especially when travelling and being comparatively light on the wallet, is therefore a life saver.


You can broadly define a ski by its width at the narrowest point – piste skis are around 68-c.80mm, all-mountain 76 to 100mm, and freeride 100mm and above. This is where I will lose some North American friends, who don’t really consider an all-mountain ski to be an “all” mountain ski until you hit around 100mm, thanks to their more bounteous and predictable powder you tend to find especially in the Rockies. But this is a British-European blog, therefore an all-mountain ski is between 84mm and 100mm. Fight me.


Within this range, you have two clear subcategories; Thin and Fat. Thin all-mountain skis are more heavily influenced by their piste-orientated cousins, with a thinner waist as the name might suggest but longer, straighter, with less camber and a little bit of tail rocker at the back of the ski. These sit between 76-odd and 88mm underfoot.


Fat all-mountain skis work from the top down; more heavily influenced by freeride skis, they carry an earlier rising tip rocker and more of a tail rocker to provide more surf along with a stiffer and lighter wood such as poplar and paulownia. These are the skis that come in between 88 and 100mm, but recent developments mean up to about 105mm can be consider “all-mountain”.


It is this first category that is dead; the latter is on life support.



 
A skier bootpacking towards the camera
The Atomic Vantage 90CTI strapped to my back here were one of the best all-mountain skis of the last decade and half - this was taken minutes before skiing Pisteurs Couloir in Val d'Isere, France.
 

Why are All-Mountain Skis Dead?


Freeride skis have been getting better and better out of the powder ove the last five years pretty much since the COVID pandemic. The period magnified a trend towards creating a hybrid ski that can go up hill too - tour up the skin track with the same ease as it skis through the powder on the way down.


Almost by necessity, this required a skinnier, lighter ski, erring more towards a piste-style ski that previous years.


At the same time, someone had the genius idea to start building freeride skis with the same technology as went into piste skis, themselves often inspired by the absolute weapons in use on the World Cup circuit.


To this end, things like Rossi's Line Control Tech, one of the best vibration dampening techs on the market, found its way into their Sender freeride skis.


And they weren't alone. Blizzard have just rolled out a unique five flex wood pattern that creates a different feel at different points, helping provide a smoother ski.


Black Diamond completely rebuilt their Impulse range, using flax fibres to create the same effect in skis that start at 94mm underfoot.


Overnight, freeride skis and their fat all-mountain counterparts unlocked not just a new gear, but a whole new gearbox. Suddenly they shredded on piste and were soft enough in the tail to provide a better platform for just smashing through crud.


You no longer needed to sacrifice off-piste stability for on-piste performance.



 
A line up of Black Diamond skis.
Black Diamond's Impulse range have redefined what a freeride ski can do on piste - one reason why the all-mountain range is under threat.
 

Whilst all this was going on, someone had the bright idea to make on-piste skis wider. That's it. That's the great evolution in on-piste skiing.


But to do this with the same shape, ratios and style, they had to reduce vibration dampening.


Welcome back in the World Cup-developed technologies that have been filtering down from the race circuit over the last few years.


The aforementioned Line Control Tech is the best example of this, but at the same time Head were developing their KERS chip into their in-house Energy Management Circuit (EMC). This can be found in their Shape, Supershape and Total ranges, and is what makes them sing as some of the best on-piste skis on the market.


By introducing this technology - which admittedly has been around for a while - on-piste skis have been creeping up.


The all-mountain range has been under threat for a number of years, as a result of these changing and new technologies and ideas. I wrote a column a couple of years back in which I tongue-in-cheek included a subheading with exactly the title of this piece - The All Mountain Ski is Dead. It has squeezed out a few more years if life, but now I will confidently say that the all-mountain ski is dead.



 
A line-up of Volkl skis
A line-up of Völkl's Mantra range, the M7 (at 96mm underfoot) one of the best freeride/fat all-mountain skis on the market. New for this year is a narrower-than-ever-before version.
 

What Does It Mean to Be "Dead"?


What are the big casualties of this skiing version of the K-T extinction (the one that did for the dinosaurs)?


Rossignol's Experience range? Gone.


Dynastar's excellent Speed 4x4 range, on which is skied the line of my life a few years ago? An ex-range. Blizzard Brahmas? Crawled down the curtain and gone to meet its maker, although this is a fun one because Blizzard have lead the charge with a new breed of all-mountian ski, and this herein lies the future.


All piste skis have done for the thin all mountain ski - the first two examples above are just that, and the few that are left aren't amazing. They don't tend to sell well, meaning the nails are being firmly driven into their coffins. Salomon and Atomic lead this charge a few years ago, pioneering the "all piste" principle and getting rid of anything between their piste and fat all-mountain range - the first pair of skis I owned were Atomic Nomad Blackeyes, which, at 79mm underfoot, perfectly embodied what this thin all-mountain range was.


Freeride skis have gotten smaller and smaller, in previous years, and next year will see an explosion of freeride and fat all-mountain skis - already thin versions of their wider cousins - coming out even thinner than previously.


A new Völkl Mantra around 80mm underfoot. A new Rossignol Arcade around 80mm underfoot. A new Dynastar M-Pro at 84mm underfoot, a like-for-like replacement of an old 4x4 Speed but with completely different, freeride-like dimensions.


And I'm so here for it. The emergence of fat skis that can shred on piste has been something I've been excited about for the last few years, and to see the payoff is going to be so much fun. With the thin all-mountain ski dead, and the fat all-mountain ski becoming more influenced by freeride and thinner versions emerging to fill the gap, it's a really exciting time to be going after a one-ski quiver.



 

Final Thoughts

The writing has been on the wall for thin all-mountain skis for some time now, as they have struggled to find their niche and on-piste ski improvements have made these better and better.


At the same time, whilst there is still some time to go before the fat all-mountain ski dies, and it will only become absorbed by the freeride range, they should still begin getting their affairs in order.


In a few years time, the all-mountain ski will be truly dead.



 

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