BLIZZARD INTRODUCES TRUEBLEND TECHNOLOGY

Blizzard Skis is a brand that evokes a great many questions. First, why does everybody pronounce it with a French accent? It’s Austrian. Also, we have the word “blizzard” in the English language. The next question: Where does a company find the imagination to continue tweaking the very essence of a ski when it’s already so refined? The answer might have more to do with obsession than imagination, but it’s one we’re happy to reap the benefits from.

With a heritage inextricably grounded in the foundation of our sport—arcing sweet, sweet turns in perfect parabola—Blizzard is releasing a new core technology called TrueBlend that innovates on their Flipcore process (whereby they use the core upside down so the natural shape of the ski doesn’t resist rocker). TrueBlend fine-tunes Flipcore, plus the hallmark of every great ski, by mixing up the wood types by zone through the laminated stringers in the ski’s core. In other words, you’ll have more than one kind of wood, and more than one kind of property running the length of some stringers.

Back in December, Blizzard-Tecnica invited us down to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to test their upcoming line of all-mountain skis, newly laced with this fancy engineering. The fresh tech now goes into the Bonafide 97, Brahma 88, Black Pearl 97, and Black Pearl 88 (North America’s top-selling ski.)

Put to the gauntlet of early season chalk, bumps, crud and steeps, the skis all had noticeably more precise flex patterns than past iterations. The thing Blizzard does really well is macro design each ski with a specific skier in mind, and a specific range of conditions. With new shapes and dimensions to go with the new cores, none of their skis take for granted that good conditions will last all day—they’re designed to be full-time fun on anything you can edge into—and that they are! The result, in lay person’s terms, is better power and a smoother ride. Something everyone’s trying to achieve, but few are. Or as Blizzard athlete Marcus Caston says, “You can ski them hard, but they’re not hard to ski.” We at Forecast agreed.

For 2020, the company will also relaunch the Cochise, bringing it back to a design that more closely resembles the first-ever iteration of the ski back in 2011, which was the most popular version of the 106-mm-under-foot big mountain charger. They’re also working on a new Spur (their most audacious powder ski), in collaboration with CMH Heli-Skiing, whose retro graphics once again evoke legacy and heritage.

Your boots still not filled? Try filling these ones from Tecnica. The forthcoming Mach 1 MV 130 uses a wider last and more anatomical design than the past, according to the brand (along with more volume, 100 millimetres of it with a 130 flex), but the big change is what they call T-Drive. They’ve borrowed from touring-boot technology to use a carbon bar to link the lower to the cuff. This allows them to fine tune flex within the properties of that carbon, which can be engineered to their exact specs and is less changeable with temperature, and reduces the burden of the lower to provide stiffness through the cuff. Tecnica says their testing shows this reduces distortion through flexion by 20 per cent.

The per cent to which that ups the fun factor, of course, we’ll find out when this stuff hits the market later this season, and on into 2021. At Forecast, we’re excited to see the future put into action by some of our longest-standing friends in the industry—whom we know from experience, ski just as hard as they work. —MATT COTÉ, ASSOCIATE EDITOR