SIA bro. Yeah high five! Sweeeeet.

J Dogg — Thu, 1 Feb 2007 02:06:49 -0500

Rating

SIA bro. Yeah high five! Sweeeeet.
Story by Reed Purvis

With tons of new products, innovations, girls, parties, gatherings, girls, friends, hotel casino mazes that leave you walking in circles, hippies, lots of booze, and little sleep, the memories build as the week of SIA passes, seeing old friends, making new ones, the past, present and future all come together in this special place of fast food, cheap buffets, strippers, prostitutes, slot machines, and tourists wanting to live up to the motto, "what happens here stays here."

Each year there are tons of people making deals, signing contracts, asking for money, and pleading for sponsorships. By running a regression analysis we were able to determine what the two most important qualities were that led to a good impression and ultimately success. Our findings are summarized in this equation: quality of impression rating = preparation + ability to bullshit. Once we put all the results on a graph, we measured the standard deviation of the data and two of the test subjects stood out, each taking advantage of different techniques. As you can see below, the subjects are at the top of each curve.

Our first subject, John Sang of South America Snow Sessions uses preparation to prepare himself to be ready to answer questions about his camp. For him, four sets of 50 push-ups do the trick. pumping blood to his arms and chest making him appear larger and stronger to current and potential sponsors of SASS. Crushing beer cans with his biceps is the final step before heading to the tradeshow floor.

John Sang crushing it

For our second test subject, Adam Stern, guide and promoter of Andes Ski Tours, the art of BS strong in him, it is. Approaching random celebrities of the ski industry and pretending to know them is no simple task. It requires little preparation but much strength in the art of BS, one must have. Celebrities such as Shane McConkey meet so many people they have no way of remembering who they have met. Adam acts as if they are old friends and talks as if they had skied together in Chile last summer when, in fact, they have never met. Shane is helpless against the powers and pretends to know Adam in turn. Below, Adam schmoozes his way into a free pair of skis for his cross-country promotional trip of Andes ski tours.

New products abound at SIA and of all the usual improvements made year to year there are a few which seem more significant/interesting/stupid than the rest. Burton is continuing to produce its plaid styles on outerwear collections and travel bags, the matching jacket, pants, and luggage is what does it for me. New this year however is the Burton X Andy Warhol collection, the product of a fruitful collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The collection features Warhol's art creatively adapted to boards, bindings, outerwear, thermals, and travel bags, thus continuing the trend in fusing art and action sports. K2 skis has continued the production of the pontoon with no changes to the design, however the new Maiden AK's now have reverse camber. Having trouble holding your grabs long enough, or maybe you can't tweak them as much as you would like, are your ski buddies talking smack behind your back? For enhanced pleasure and greater longevity, try the new public enemy's with ice cream as K2 graphics designer Ryan Schmies demonstrates here, the results speak for themselves.

Continuing on with the product review, the new Eric Pollard pro models by Line are probably the softest skis I have ever felt. Thats all I have to say about that. Of all the companies whose products are focused on enhancing on-snow enjoyment/experience/ whatever, there is one which is focusing its products on off-hill enjoyment. Created by Walk-EZ, the ski-shuttle allows people to roll their skis around on wheels instead of carrying them over the shoulder. While this product is not new this year I found it entertaining. There is no possible way for a male of our species to correctly represent his sex while using this product, actually I don't believe a male of any species could properly represent his sex while using this product. It also comes in six different colors so you can buy one that matches your cell phone. They should have made it in seven colors so you can have one for each day of the week.

Walk-EZ also produces the revolutionary revolution G-II which is a cushion that attaches to the bottom of your boots to make walking easier and provides better traction. The two promotional models pictured were walking around in them all day throughout the entirety of SIA and had no complaints, at least thats what they told us. The focus of the attention they recieved throughout the day was actually directed more towards their latex body suits. Apparently latex body suits adapt to the surrounding air temperature, if its cold, well, use your imagination, if its hot, its ah.. hot i guess.

Back to skis, a new ski company has emerged out of Colorado known as Ellison skis. They have three different skis, park, all around park and powder, and powder. The powder ski is called "cold smoke" and is huge at 147-126-130 in lengths 178 and 188. The graphics are a little strange, the founder has some fixation with neon green and his own last name since he named the company after himself and neon green seems to dominate the graphics and brochure. The skis could be dope though, who knows, they definitely claim this with the motto "best damn skis period". I like how they actually put a period after the word period. I guess they really mean it or something.

Unity snowboards has broadened its product line with the introduction of skis to the market. The graphics are cool with a gigantic wave on one ski and a gigantic mountain on the other. The largest of the line is the Hiatt twin designed by Trevor Hiatt and is symmetrical with dimensions 190, 155-140-155, there's the pow ski 181, at 132-102-120, as well as a park ski and bigmt ski at 191, 134-105-123. This new development from Unity further represents the growth of the twintip and big mountain markets of the ski industry. Jess McMillan tests the skis "wiggliness" right.

In terms of booth presentation, two significant standouts in my mind were Volcom with their hippie theme and all day long karaoke stage, and Glissade snowboards, their entire booth being a bar with snowboards around the walls. The one chance I did get to stop by for a drink, they were only serving tequila and whiskey with nothing left to mix with, they know what they're doing. Volcom definitely gets the spirit award and Glissade the best bar award or something like that. I guess thats it, if you've read this far, thats amazing. So is Vegas.

For South American ski camps/adventures check out www.sasnowsessions.com and www.andesskitours.com

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SIA bro. Yeah high five! Sweeeeet.