A old friend of mine, Rainer Nootz, started his own ski company in Konstanz last year. Together with Werner Früh - a snowboard veteran and designer of various boards including the Jester series - he founded Powder Equipment. Powder Equipment specialises on Freeride and Big-Mountain skis and boards - hand made in Germany, with only the finest and laest materials.

Currently they have two product lines: Type A and Type B. Both series offer skies and snowboard - made for similar usage!

Type A is a ultralight series for Freeriding and Backcountry. The board is a Race-Snowboard.

Type B is a unique Big-Mountain ski and a Longboard. The board is available as a 3 piece Touringboard as well - very technical piece!

I am looking forward meeting Rainer and his skies the next weeks - and check them out in the mountains. Check back for
my reviews, once we have enough snow to test these guys.

For further details and shopping check out: www.powderequipment.de

Okay, after a long time I finally have to retire my old friends: It is time for some new skiing boots, or to be more precise, time for some new freeride boots! But which ones? So far, I used two pairs, that is a Scarpa Denali XT for longer hiking and my good old Salomon Equipe 9.0 for shorter hikes an freeride session. But to be honest, I’d rather prefer having one pair, that combines both worlds of skiing.

So I looked around and found some contestants: Scarpa Tornado Thermo and two Garmonts, the Garmont Endorphin G-Fit and the Garmont Shaman. The first two a hybrids between randonee/hiking and freeride boots, the Shaman seems to be a pure race/ downhill/ freeride boots: no release or walk mechanism, but exchangeable soles (whoever that needs).

Tested length 185cm
First impression: unobtrusive and nearly a little boring… no surprises, just a very nice ski.
Tried it in various conditions…

Hard and freshly groomed run: good grip, easy turns of various radiuses
Soft runs: just a funmaker, from short to long turns, fast change of turns … a steamroller!?
Soft off-piste: not quite a ski for deep-deep pow, but perfect for easter conditions, easy short-turns, requires little effort to turn

Summary: a perfect all-mountain weapon, stiff enough for groomed runs, wide enough for off-piste: is your perfect friend, without being cheeky

and guess what? I bought these guys a couple of days later

And here it is!

Tested length 179cm
First impression: WOW, that weapon turns fast!

Hard and freshly groomed run: interesting! why? perfect grip when skied at its natural radius, but difficult with longer (no significant grip) or shorter radius (doesn’t like being pushed into short turns)

Soft runs: no troublemaker, but no fun-maker… runs okay

Soft off-piste: not quite a pow ski, dimensions not pow-enough! That is: although wide tip, tight is by far no wide enough

Summary: a good fun-machine for on-piste skiers, that love to ride one perfect radius all day long!

www.stoeckli.ch

Only for the best sums it up. The Thunder is brilliant and let’s you look and feel like a pro - but beware: no mistakes or else! Being above-average hard flex this advanced fun-tool demands muscle-power and skill. Spark is agile and fun-to-play but again: for advanced or expert. with little tolerance this ski excuses no mistakes and bounces around.

 www.movementskis.com