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***UPDATE: See our blog with a new Salomon BBR 10.0 Review***

Every few years, something comes along in ski design that captures the imagination of the skiing public so completely, that it revolutionizes the market.  This doesn’t happen very often but when it has happened in the past, the concept has often been the brainchild of Salomon’s Bernard Bertrand. Bernard who is often known as Beber is not just a ski engineer or a marketing guy.  Rather he is an imaginative designer with roots that deeply embedded in both surfing and skiing.  Beber has always strived for ways to make skiing easier and more accessible to the market and some famous designs of his include Salomon’s X-Scream and Pocket Rocket.  Both of which dramatically altered the landscape of ski design.

Beber’s newest creation is the new Salomon BBR model for 2012. This ski model looks so radically different from other ski designs that it warrants double takes in the lift line.  The most noticeable difference in the

The Pon2oon is the second generation of the venerable Pontoon model; the brain child of the late Shane McConkey.  This is the first major redesign of the ski that arguably popularized the trend toward big, rockered skis for powder.  While there is no doubt that the Pontoon set the trend, the original design has become a bit dated.  Newer designs have brought some serious competition to the genre and the new Pon2oon addresses the market very well.  The Pon2oon has a much longer conventional section in the center of the ski along with lower rocker at both tip and tail.  The result is a ski that retains most of the near magical powder performance of the original, but with dramatically improved stability when the snow is not waist deep.

I first skied the original Pontoon some years back on a day when it had rained over an 18” storm, not your ideal powder day.  The Pontoon handled the thick heavy snow with ease and it really showed me what the concept was all about.  In the years

“Legend Pro” is a name that has become……well……uhhh…….legendary among western big mountain skiers over the years. That name drew its following from several Dynastar big mountain skis that really epitomized the category. For the 2011 season, there was a ski called the Legend Pro 115 but that was (and is) really more of a powder ski than the versatile big mountain performer the prior Legend Pros had been. For 2012, the big mountain ski is back in the form of the Legend Pro 105. This is a ski with the wood/metal layup and medium-firm flex of the older versions but with the addition of a moderate amount of tip rocker. This upgrade really makes this the most versatile of all the Legend Pro skis.

I first tested the LP 105 at Mammoth during a period when there was not much new snow. The result was a good groomer skiing but mostly firmish conditions off trail with some chalky soft spots and some horrible refrozen crud. The Legend Pro 105 is a big ski with plenty of stability for high speeds both

When Blizzard built the new Freemountain series for 2012, they really threw out the rule book on ski construction. Most skis have their camber and especially their rocker shaped via heat and pressure in the molding process. This creates the shape, but it also creates stress in the core which translates to uneven pressure distribution when the ski flexes. The Blizzard “Flipcore” skis take the opposite approach by using a core that is basically built upside down. The molding process then does not have to place stress into the core when the rocker is shaped. The effect is a more even pressure distribution from tip to tail. The result of the Flipcore technology is a group of skis with remarkably even flex characteristics and a flex pattern that marries perfectly with the sidecut and the rocker profiles. The Flipcore models from Blizzard were the skis most universally accepted by our staff as personal favorites. When we select our personal winners each season, it is seldom that there are several