David's Ski Picking Update Part 1

Picking Trip 2025

It is early summer and that means it is ski picking time!  First stop this year was the Fischer factory in Ried im Inkreiss in upper Austria.  I spent the last three days in the race room picking skis with Chris Hall from Fischer USA.   There were plenty of skis to pick from when I arrived and more were brought out during the last few days.   Fischer has made some changes to their naming system and it was good to see the new skis and graphics up close.  In my opinion the new yellow and green will be a nice improvement.  For skate skis the Helium ski with DK construction from last year has been renamed to the Speedmax 100HE Skate Plus.  Also available to pick was the regular Speedmax 100 Skate Plus using the 61k construction and the Speedmax 100 Skate Cold with the new 31 base material.  The lines between the DK and 61K construction continue to be blurred with plenty of cross over beween the two lines.  The 61K has always been a very good wet construction and the more rugged materials of the core in the regular 100 Skate will keep the ski from getting bounced around in aggressive snow.  In most lengths there were equal numbers to pick from and the skis looked very nice.  Fischer made some changes to the classic line-up this year by omitting the 812 from production and adding the 702, a new construction aimed at making a faster ski with a hardwax pocket. It is always inspiring to be in Ried and get a chance to talk with the guys on the floor about their experiences over the year and what might be coming up.

Next I am headed to Altenmarkt and the Amer facility to meet with Salomon and Atomic.  Looking forward to some time in the mountains.  Stay tuned for more updates coming soon.