Armada

Kufo 108 Ski

"Kufo" is an acronym, and while we don't want to offend your sensitive ears by telling you what it stands for, it can be roughly understood as, "Don't fall behind, or we'll leave you to freeze on the side of the skinner." The Kufo 108 Ski is the middle child of Armada's touring fleet—lighter than the Declivity and burlier than the Kufo 103—and it maintains a hard-charging design that's well-suited for moderately long tours where ripping big descents is the real goal.

The foundation for the Kufo's rippability is the Hybrid Tour Light core, which is constructed from light and lively wood to keep you skinning quickly and billygoating like a champ when things get tight. Armada wrapped the wood with a fiberglass laminate matrix to keep things from twisting when you're on edge, tossed in a sheet of carbon fiber for a damper and more powerful feel, and finished the internals off with carbon Kevlar stringers, which give the Kufo a lightweight but lively feel that's amenable to popping off terrain features and whipping from edge to edge.

A good touring ski needs to be able to handle pow, hardpack, windslab, suncrust, and corn in equal measure, and the Kufo does so primarily via its AR Nose Rocker, which sports a floaty rockered tip to handle blower, camber underfoot for aggressive edging, and a flat tail I-Clip tail hat lets you rail all the way through turns without feeling sketchy (and provides a bomber skin-attachment point). Armada built the ski with a decently stiff flex, so it won't be overwhelmed by chunder and weird alpine snow, and topped it off with AR50 hybrid sidewalls, which taper to a cap construction in the tip and tail to give you burly edging underfoot and quickness in the extremities.