Custom Skis, Part IV: Wagners Christened!

By By Catherine Lutz

To read Part I of this blog, click here. To read Part II, click here. To read Part III, click here.

I decided to christen my custom, fat powder skis in – where else? – Highland Bowl. Only the best for the best.

It’s safe to say my Wagners were in love with the Bowl. They charged through the creamy, soft snow and didn’t jar me when we hit the cut-up patches of other skiers' tracks. They bounced effortlessly from steep turn to steep turn, the powder tips keeping the front of the ski from diving. I had been worried that the skis were way too light to hold their own in funky conditions, but after blazing through the Bowl’s runout – tracked up harder snow with increasingly big bumps as it funnels down – my doubts were erased.

It took another Bowl lap and a couple more runs in Steeplechase and Oly Bowl to realize that my skis may have kicked my butt. Maybe my legs were a little tired from hiking, but the Wagners’ performance was not compromised by the pilot’s fatigue. I would have to stop lest I hurt myself.

For those who think custom skis are an unnecessary excess (and Wagners can certainly be considered a luxury items at about $1,600 per pair), I would say that if you are a beginning to advanced male skier of average size and weight who is happy with your current setup you might be right. But if you’re an expert skier who wants to experiment away from the traditional ski to get a different kind of experience, if you’re an expert woman whose always had to choose between flimsy “ladies” skis that are usually too short and beefy “unisex” skis that have two extra sheets of metal in them and seem to be made for guys who huck off cliffs and break skis regularly, or if you are a tech-head who knows exactly where your skis have fallen short in the past – go custom. It’s like those mattresses that conform to the shape of your body, or an ergonomic chair – or probably more analogous in this case to a custom bike frame or golf club (which is how Pete Wagner got his start). When you don’t have to think about the gear, and can trust it will work for you based on your intuitive moves, you’ll have that much more fun skiing.

I’ve now had eight days on my Wagners, in all conditions, and I’m not interested in skiing anything else. Mission accomplished. I’m going out on the hill.