Top Powder Skis 2013

It's that time of year again. First flakes are falling on California, Wyoming, Colorado and the rest of the mountain West. A-Basin is already running a lift that might not stop until May, and Squaw Valley just opened a slope earlier than it has in 51 years of record keeping. People—skiers and snowboarders, more accurately—are hopeful.

They're hopeful each day that they'll wake up to inches of fresh, white, fluffy snow on the windowsill, which will translate to feet of the stuff high on the slopes of their favorite local mountain. They dream of pushing back work a few hours to get in some flowy, neck-dusting runs through fresh, untracked powder. Here in the East, we dream of pushing off work for a few days or even a week, that we might jet out West to powder country, to take our share of turns in the champagne powder of Utah and western Colorado, or sink into the chest-deep stash of Tahoe's virgin backcountry.

If you're going to shred the untracked white, you'll need a solid pair of powder skis. Wider than frontside skis and more mobile than big mountain skis, they balance flotation and carvability. In order to pick the top powder skis, we've surveyed the work of nearly a dozen online and print ski publications who, together, employed dozens of testers to put every ski through its paces in every condition imaginable. We cross-referenced until we were cross-eyed and reasonably certain we'd gotten a comprehensive, bird's-eye view of what works and what doesn't. These choices represent the cream of the crop. Click on each set of skis for a more detailed review.

THE TOP 5

ROSSIGNOL SUPER 7, S7 WOMEN

BLIZZARD GUNSMOKE

VÖLKL SHIRO

NORDICA LA NIÑA

ATOMIC AUTOMATIC

 

HONORABLE MENTION

ROSSIGNOL SQUAD 7