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By Doug Mock
A Powder Bedtime Story
Once upon a time, waaaay long ago, like before The Pandemic, and even before The Financial Crisis, a small group of crazy people had a funny idea about powder skiing.
This idea had some pretty complex physics behind it, so I’ll do my best to simplify: Snowflakes are water, only cold, and not liquid. When you get a whole bunch of snowflakes together, though—and this was the funny idea—when a really lot of snowflakes stack up together, like on the kind of days that skiers, back then, would describe as “Epic!!” (we now know that that word has very specific, brand-related denotations, and so would instead say, “Oh my! The skiing is really good today!” or else “Deeeeeep, brah.”) back in this Ancient Era now known as The Early Aughts, skiers suddenly recognized that powder snow, just like water that isn’t frozen, is a three-dimensional medium.
This revelation was “epic.” It changed the way we think about skiing.
If you are old enough, you perhaps remember The Legendary Shane McConkey sliding sideways down a 45-degree face on actual waterskis with Look Pivots drilled into them, in whatever TGR flick that was. This was the “proof-of-concept.”
Snow was indeed a three-dimensional medium.
More importantly, though, if we treated snow as a three-dimensional medium, and designed skis with this in mind, skiing might become even more fun.
Thus began an era of stupid-fat skis with names like “Flyswatter” and, haha, there were at least three different ones that were just called “Pow.” Skis that floated high upon the three-dimensional snow, and were capable of never-before-seen turn shapes, shapes like “slarving,” which soon ushered in a New Era Of Skiing.
This New Era was characterized by more tail-gunning (backseat skiing; bad skiing) than had ever been seen on the mountain before. With the new skis, you could just sit back, like in a powder-oriented BarcaLounger, and…gosh, I don’t even like to think about it.
Truth was, the stupid-fat new skis sucked. The funny idea almost ruined skiing forever.
Skis Like A Smile
Except: the major, ski-design-related revelation that the funny idea unlocked was not that “skis need to be stupid-fat to be fun.” The actual, game-changer revelation was, “We’ve been bending powder skis the wrong way.”
You see, the vast majority of lift-accessed snow is not a three-dimensional medium. It is a single, hard, flat plane or, maybe, on a good day here in Colorado, a hard, flat plane with between two- and six-inches of three-dimensional snow atop it, which is effectively the same thing. In order to create the edging characteristics that make sliding on planar snow fun (e.g. “carving”) skis are bent in the shape of a frown. We call this bending camber. A ski with camber, when placed on a planar surface, is highest in the middle, and touches the plane at its tip and tail, like this:
My Folsom Spar 88 with Directional Rocker Camber.
A positively rippin’ ski for planar, firm snow.
Please don’t judge my workbench. Or my silly little bindings. I #skiuphill a lot.
Everyone thought that the major revelation re: three-dimensional snow was that skis should be fatter. Back then, they called such boards “fat skis.” These days we pretty much just call them “skis.”
Skis got a lot fatter for a while. We now know that we went overboard, for the most part, with the fat skis. You don’t really need a 180mm tip and 140mm waist to have fun in pow.
Which doesn’t mean that the funny idea about three-dimensional snow didn’t cause a revolution. It’s just not the revolution everyone thinks. The actual revolution was: skis don’t need to be bent like a frown. Fun skis can smile.
My daily driver, the Folsom Primary 104 with Shallow Reverse Camber.
These skis touch underneath the bindings, while traditional camber skis do not.
Skis like a smile will make you smile
Wait. WTF. Your daily driver is reverse camber? Are you a crazy person?!
Oh yeah bro. Total nutjob. And I’ve never had more fun on any other skis.
You have my attention! Tell me more!
It kinda took a while to get it figured out, mostly because, when humans started to bend skis so that they looked like a smile instead of a frown, we also inflated their dimensions like…let’s go with…like the pontoons on a floatplane, if ya get me.
All those “other ski companies” who were looking to cash in on three-dimensional snow: the “other ski companies” made their fat skis mega-soft “for floatation,” and did all kinds of wacky crap to the sidecut radii and taper profiles, and therein made a whole bunch of skis that sucked, really bad, for like 15+ years. In all honesty, most of the “other ski companies” never actually recovered.
These too fat, too soft, too smiley skis made everyone think that “reverse camber skis,” which is the proper term for skis that are bent like a smile, well, you get the idea…
Everyone thought reverse camber skis sucked.
So much tailgunning.
It was embarrassing.
Wait! I’m confused! How are those “smiley” Primary 104s different from my old Praxis Pow RX with “ReCurve” that sucked so much in 2k8?!
First and foremost, my Primaries are not “powder skis.” They’re just skis.
They slay all conditions (pow, fo sho, but also old, chopped-up pow; hot pow; refrozen/breakable/“dinner plate” pow; and crud; but more importantly: fresh corduroy groomers; late-in-the-day glassy groomers; bumps of all sizes and firmness; corn especially, they love corn snow; wide open pistes; the tightest trees imaginable; yes, my friend, all the snow, three-dimensional or planar, everyday) my “reverse camber” Primary 104s are the most fun skis I’ve ever clicked into.
The secret is Folsom’s Shallow Reverse Camber profile, which can be built into pretty much any of our totally handmade in the USA, one-of-a-kind, custom designed for you, awesomest on the planet ski shapes and constructions.
You see, Shallow Reverse Camber (SRC, to the cool kids) is pretty much nothing like the “reverse camber” skis of old. Yes, they’re still smile shaped, but it’s a cheeky, knowing smile. Just a little smiley at the corners, mostly. Not a big, dumb, doofus grin like yr “ReCurve” skis of old. Just the exact right amount of smile to make them awesome.
Perfect surf on a fat day. The Primary 104 SRC.
Well, what makes ‘em different?
Operative word here is “shallow.” Just like on Superman’s chest, it’s the \S/ in SRC. The cheeky, knowing smile. Almost like smiling to yourself, because your skis are so darned good. Subtle. Only noticeable if yr really looking for it. It’s the \S/—Super; Subtle; Shallow—that goes to work here for ya.
My Primary 104 SRC (and any other Folsom SRC rip-stick) charges just as hard on firm, planar snow as a ski with camber underfoot. Hard snow performance is more a quality of sidecut radius than it is of camber. When I lean my SRC boards into a turn on firm snow, they’ll dig trenches just like a trad-camber ski. They have edge hold for days. At least when I want them to.
Which segues nicely into what’s different from trad-camber skis, the SRC Secret Sauce. Remember McConkey sliding sideways down that great big face? Cause man, SRC Folsoms can still do that. “Slarving,” they called it back when “Epic” was still an acceptable descriptor.
SRC Folsoms “slarve.” Slide-carve, that is, if the ancient coinage isn’t quite transparent.
So…what’s that mean for me?
The original revelation re: three-dimensional snow was actually a fresh idea about turn shapes. Trad-camber skis, sure, you can muscle them into anything, but their turn shapes are mostly defined by sidecut radius. Short sidecut = short turns, and vice versa.
SRC frees the skier from the…I wanna say “fascism” of sidecut radius, even tho that’s kinda extreme. But it’s true.
With an SRC ski, you can make the quickest, pivot-y turns, like in very tight trees, or firm/steep bumps, despite having chosen a longer-radius sidecut. It is so fun! They just bounce down the fall line! You can turn wherever!
What’s extra-rad tho—the awesome, \Superman/ quality—is that the opposite is also true. Imagine you’ve got a superdeep day in the “Epic” Back Bowls, and just wanna let ‘er rip. SRC skis, since they’re all smiley, float high in three-dimensional snow. Point and shoot.
They ski fast and stable in the deep stuff, and will happily make long radius turns, even with a short sidecut radius. But then—aww yeah—they’re just as awesome in the bumps, and on the groomers back to the lift, or once the pow’s tracked out. In a word: Versatile. In a few more words: Playful As All Getout.
Turn shape? Exactly right. Three-dimensional snow FTW.
Any Drawbacks? Be Honest.
Hmm. While my Primary 104s are my daily driver, I also have both fatter skis (for “Epic” days) and skinnier skis (for “carving”) but only my very skinniest, those Spar 88s, my Frontside skis, only those have regular camber underfoot. All my other skis are SRC. I would ski it everyday, every snow condition, from deepest three-dimensional to firmest planar, and do.
If you love Shallow Reverse Camber so much, why don’t you marry it?
My dearest, darling SRC! How do I love thee?
Haha, world’s shortest love poem:
Oh, Shallow Reverse Camber!
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Poems are hard.
POWDER SKIING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!