When the resort first opens for the season in Crested Butte, the dreaded Ribbon of Death is the only terrain available. It's a blue run—a strip of firm, manmade snow with grass still showing on either side. I like to get out skiing in these early days of the season to get my ski legs back.
Last year, I chose our Zorro 89 in a 172cm length for my early season ski. I chose it because it has a fairly tight radius and carves well at slower speeds. I made a good choice. The skis carved turns and floated over roll-overs, making the very mediocre terrain and conditions genuinely fun.
This experience sparked a thought: What is the perfect ski for these conditions?
The Romp Design Process
This is how my ski design process starts. A single run, a day, or an entire trip gets me thinking about what the best ski for the conditions would be, and I develop the concept from there. For example, the Shepherd 110 was born from my desire for a ski that could go fast but then shut down quickly on Crested Butte’s steep terrain, where clean runouts are rare.
Once the concept is born, I dive into the details. I run through a checklist of features and decide which direction I want to take each one. Should the running length be long or short? Does it need to ski switch well? Should it feel carvey or buttery? Each one of these traits will affect the shape of the ski as well as its flex profile.
Romp’s proprietary prototyping allows us to test our ski shapes without committing to expensive tooling. This means that, unlike many larger brands, we can test and then tweak our shapes as we develop new models.
This fall, we moved our Ribbon of Death prototype from the drawing board to the production. It’s designed to make conditions that can make skiing feel like work into grin-inducing play. The Sidehit is the ski born from the Ribbon of Death, it will be available for sale and demo in 2025.
- Morgan Wienberg
