Despite sidecut and tip-shapes looking fairly stagnant since the introduction of taper, rocker and fat skis there are subtle and incredibly important refinements made to your equipment that affect the way new skis handle. Slight changes to the sidecut, to the blending of the tip shapes into the sidecut and to the shape of rocker, have made skis more nimble, predictable and intuitive. At Armada, we focus our energies on making skis that perform to our athletes’ highest demands and, in doing so, develop technologies that benefit your own skiing.
As we look to engineer new products we need to understand where the skis are going to be used, be it Powder/Groomer and everything else mother nature throws at us. This gives us a baseline to tailor the amount of camber, rocker and the various sidecut attributes to maximize your enjoyment and performance.
CAMBER
A ski that spends 100% of its time on hardpack will receive a healthy dollop of camber, a suspension of sorts for your ski. Strong, tall and lengthy camber will keep your ski feeling energetic on groomers, returning the energy you put into your turn to literally propel you across the hill as you exit one turn and enter the next. Of course, some skiers don’t want this forceful rebound of energy, so we design various camber shapes to alleviate the high-performance attribute we’ve learned to create. Take a Powder Ski, for example: you want a minimal amount of Camber on these to reduce the “hookey” and unpredictable steering you get when you bring your Super-G skis into untracked snow. A basic rule of thumb here is that you want lots of camber when the terrain is firm and groomed, and you want minimal yet positive camber when you’re looking soft-snow focused.