January 25, 2012
Fat boards drive innovation
by Matt Boxler/
Snowboarding -- and the fat skis that inspired by it -- has re-energized skiing after a period of stagnancy. (photo: Photographed at Stowe Mountain Resort)
Next time you’re sucking air through that huge grin on your face because you just hucked off a cliff, shmeared a perfect landing pillow to scrape off excess speed before ripping perfectly tight powder turns through a treeline that you dream about … thank a snowboarder.
They’ll probably look at you like you’ve lost your mind, but do it anyway. Those fat skis you’re on with the rocker in the tips and tails? Those mixed cambers, mid-fats and twin tips everybody else is bringing to the mountain these days — even on the East Coast? Snowboarding brought you those, thank you very much. It’s an industry evolution that has re-energized skiing after a period of stagnancy.
Yep, skiing is cool again and fat boards are driving the market. According to research by Leisure Trends Group and published by SnowSports Industries America, sales of skis with waist widths 95mm or wider increased 162 percent in 2010-11 to 33,763 pairs sold. Reverse/mixed camber ski sales doubled in one season. In fact, alpine equipment sales across all categories jumped 17.6 percent compared with a scant 0.1 percent rise in snowboard equipment sold.
“I love it,” said John “Spoon” Witherspoon, ski instructor and head freeskiing coach at Jay Peak who is enjoying the resurgence firsthand. “This new style of ski makes it easier to get into more extreme situations than it used to be on those skinny skis. In the old days you had to be really strong. Now, intermediates can be out in more advanced zones — woods, parks, rails, cliffs. Fat skis are great for all that.”
Even the most basic rental packages at resorts are going fatter. Witherspoon says absolute beginners are benefiting from wide-waist skis because they pivot easier and the earliest skillset requires steering more than carving.
As youths advance, Witherspoon’s approach is to teach multi-turns, including carving and “shmearing” (imagine a knife scraping warm butter across a piece of toast), which is more versatile in the bumps and the woods because skiers can “butter over” the imperfections and crust, giving them the tools and the confidence to go places they otherwise wouldn’t dare.
“I tell kids carve when you can, but when you can’t, shmear your turns, and hop, and do the whole scope in between,” Witherspoon said.
Witherspoon knows a thing or two about excelling in extreme situations. Raised Jay, he started skiing the northern Vermont resort at age 6 and became an instructor there as a teen. He moved out to Colorado and competed on the pro mogul tour, the Freeskiing World Tour, and raced skiercross events.
During those competitive years, he moved to Lake Tahoe to quench his passion for backcountry terrain, which he did primarily at Squaw Valley before finally returning “home” to Jay Peak about four years ago, where he now teaches in the ski school and launched the Freeskiing Team. Now in his early 40s, Witherspoon has had time to reflect on how skiing culture has evolved to greatness again, thanks in large part to snowboarding.
“When I went out West, skiing trees was illegal,” Witherspoon said, “and it was really difficult on skinny skis. We had no jumps, we couldn’t practice. Then snowboarding came along and now there were terrain parks. Skiers would go in and get chased out. Then there was a little bit of a bend and skiers got in a little bit more. Then everything turned.
“The cool thing to me is I like the way snowboarding brought all these things to us, but I feel that the skiers are now the ones who are crushing it.”
Witherspoon was among the throng of skiers to push the limits of the sport back in the ’80s and ’90s. In fact, he’s never met a boundary he wasn’t inclined to cross. His extreme swan song was an eight-month journey across borders by bicycle, riding 15,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina. So when it comes to going extreme, he knows good technology when he rides it.
“Kids now don’t know any different,” he said. “They’ve only known fat skis and twin tips and terrain parks. It’s a little bit of a Catch-22 because the wisdom and skills that you once had to have are not in demand now so you find people with less ski savvy out there doing things that maybe they shouldn’t quite be doing yet. They can be getting in over their heads.
“Now you can go anywhere and the feeling is that as you get farther out, deeper in the woods, other things now come into play — survival skills, navigational skills — which wouldn’t have been as much a factor before because generally only the most prepared backcountry athletes were going that far out.”
Case in point, on a Sunday last January, three Rhode Island skiers had to be rescued after venturing into the backwoods area known as Hellbrook at Stowe Mountain Resort. They ended up going out of bounds on the western side of Mount Mansfield and had to be guided down by police sirens. They finally stumbled upon someone’s house at 9 p.m.
On the exact same day, three other skiers from New York spent five hours in the woods after getting lost at Pico Mountain Resort. The trio skied out of bounds off the Fools Gold trail at about 3:30 p.m. and weren’t found until 10 p.m. near the Pico Pond Road, where they were eventually hauled out by snowmobile.
Fortunately, all six skiers that day were rescued from the mountains uninjured.
Resorts are working to strike a balance between opening new side- and backcountry terrain while taking measures to keep everyone safe. Freeskiing programs, backcountry tours, lessons and clearly stated policies are all an important part of resort landscapes these days.
Witherspoon has taken it a step further, using his connections with the International Free Skiers Association to help launch the Ski The East Freeride Tour, which debuted last season with event stops at Mad River Glen, Magic Mountain, Sugarbush and Jay Peak. Winners of the series earned automatic qualification to the Freeskiing World Tour. Wouldn’t you know Jay Peakers Ashley Maxfield and Dominick Malaussena won the inaugural titles.
“I’m really into our backcountry, off-piste skiing,” Witherspoon said. “When I say, ‘Hey, let’s do some cliff-jumping,’ kids perk up! Deeper in the woods, natural terrain parks … that’s where I’m hoping to go and that’s where I’m pushing.”
Instead of maintaining trails and building parks, Witherspoon is out in the woods trimming takeoffs from cliffs and logs, thinking of the kids in his ski classes.
It’s no surprise that he’s the resort’s primary terrain explorer for its proposed expansion into the West Bowl. Not yet developed, he’s been nibbling away out there, finding some really good stuff.
“I’m psyched for what’s out there,” he said. “One of the drawbacks now is I’m working on a sliver. I can only go so far because I need to get back to the existing base. Once they really set me loose, I’m psyched to see what new natural terrain we can find.”
Witherspoon marvels at all this positive change ushered in by snowboard technology and culture. It makes one wonder what the next big change on the horizon will be.
“If I knew that, I’d be an investment genius,” he says. “It will be interesting to see the big stuff that happens next, but you get the feeling that was the big shift that happened and now it’s just going to be the subtleties … smaller changes within that.”
Yep, it’s a good time to thank a snowboarder.
This article originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of New England Ski Journal.
Matt Boxler can be reached at feedback@skijournal.com
