Renoun

Z-90 Ski

It's safe to say the ski industry is pretty much saturated with new shapes and designs to give powder skis more float, big mountain boards more power, and freeride planks more pop. But when it comes to more traditional frontside carving skis, the last truly game-changing innovation we've seen would have to be the monoski, and we all know how that went. All jokes aside, Renoun's Z-90 Ski is shaking things up a bit with the advent of Hyper Dampening Technology (or HDT), which basically consists of a polymer material that's inlaid in the maple wood core to absorb vibration, giving the ski an incredibly damp and stable feel on the mountain.

Its 90mm waist, early rise tip, and slightly raised tail make the Z-90 a nimble beast, while plenty of camber underfoot and sheets of titanal and carbon laid over a maple wood core ensure the Z-90 has that stiff, yet damp feel hard-charging carvers love and makes finding the max speed on the ski difficult to find. Full-length UHMW sidewalls drive power to the 1.8-mill hardened steel edges, adding the ski's already stable and powerful feel. The addition of an early rise tip makes turn initiation a breeze, while the barely raised tail prevents hooking without making the ski feel washy coming out of a tight turn.