This past spring while ski touring with some good friends in the high Sierras, the idea of building a light ski came up. You see, some of my friends will not ski on my skis simply because they are not light enough. Whatever.
But being an avid backcountry skier myself, I can appreciate light skis, especially for those long long routes. So it got me thinking and since that day I have been constantly thinking about building the lightest ski possible. It has consumed me, to be honest.
Anyway, I spent some time looking at some of the 'light' skis out there and found many that I wanted to mimic in terms of weight. One ski in particular is the Movement Logic X-Series. With a length of 168-cm and dimensions of 125-88-115 mm, a pair weighs 4 lbs 6.5 oz (2000 g), so that's 2.20 lbs (1000 g) per ski!! Wow.
But seriously, how hard could it be to make something with similar shape and as light? Well, it's actually not trivial, but certainly possible for a D-I-Yer (e.g., see below).
So I got to work and carefully selected materials and crunched some numbers, then double and triple checked my calculations. You see, making it light isn't really the problem; the challenge is making it light and still strong enough to last more than one run. Light skis are usually used for long trips and the last thing you want is for a ski to break while you're descending a 4000 ft. couloir miles away from your car. A failure means a long walk out, at the very least.
So I made three pairs, all with length of 170 cm, dimensions of 127-93-115 mm, sidecut radius of ~20 m; they're slightly longer and wider than the Movement Logic X-Series. These skis were designed for a good friend S. Wild who is very weight conscious.
We named them the K Wild Jellys -- just a random name we both agreed on.
For the first pair (sorry no photos), I got a weight of 2.49 lbs (1129 g) per ski. The first pair was bare minimum and it was ugly, but it turned out pretty good. Because the first pair was so ugly, I decided to add some graphics, and thus the 2nd and 3rd pair came out looking more pleasing. By adding graphics I had to be more creative to shave off weight to compensate, but the final result was a weight of slightly over 2.5 lbs per ski. Not bad and they were not that ugly, so here's one pair:
What are the ingredients? Well, who wants to guess?
I can tell you the basic list: wood, some metal, some rubber, steel edges, ptex, other plastics, fiber glass, carbon fiber, and epoxy.I think it can get light than this. So for a fair comparison, I'm using this length and shape as the benchmark for more future versions, and my personal target for 'ultralight skis' is 1.99 lbs per ski! Let's hope they don't break....
