Ski Magazine

2026 Armada Declivity 82 Ti Frontside Ski (Orig. $750) Lengths: 166, 174, 182 cm Dimensions: 130-82-111 mm Pros and Cons + Easy to pivot or carve + Powerful tail – Tips chatter at speed – Can be overpowered The Armada Declivity 82 Ti was the dark horse of our 2020 SKI Test when it first debuted, catching veteran testers off guard who’d long written off Armada as too park-and-pipe to take groomers seriously. The Declivity 82 Ti proved them wrong fast.

Unless you live in Greenland or the remote reaches of Argentinean Patagonia, the concept of skiing on last season’s snow is probably pretty foreign to you. For most of us, the snow melts away not long after the last pond skim and cardboard derby winners have been crowned. That might not be the case this winter.

If you forgot to tune your skis at the end of the winter, don't panic—here's a checklist to help you prep for ski season. For many of us, the ski season ended in spring, and by now, frosty fingers and getting dressed in a frigid parking lot are just distant memories. However, being a skier is a year-long job. And while we’ve got some time before we’re scanning our passes and riding the lifts, there’s plenty of maintenance we should be keeping up with to make our winters even better.

After years of anticipation, freeride skiing and snowboarding will make their Olympic debut at the 2030 Winter Games in France.

After years of anticipation, freeride skiing and snowboarding will make their Olympic debut at the 2030 Winter Games in France. (Photo: Courtesy of Freeride World Tour/Jeremy Bernard) The International Olympic Committee (IOC) just made a historic decision for the world of winter sports. On Tuesday, July 7, the organization announced in a press release that freeride skiing and snowboarding will officially be Olympic sports in the 2030 Alpes Winter Olympic Games in France.

Every skier has thought about packing up, moving to the mountains and living the “ski bum” lifestyle at least once. For many, the fantasy remains just that, especially as the cost of resort-town living becomes hard to swallow once dreamers start dreaming of stability. Still, many have found their place in the mountains, and are showing it’s possible to turn that fantasy into a reality, whether it’s for a season or a lifetime.

2026 Head Kore 100 Ti All-Mountain Ski (Orig. $799) It’s hard to stump our expert testers. They’re quick to identify what they love about a ski—and just as quick to list what they don’t. But when we asked where the Head Kore 100 Ti fell short, we heard crickets. “Did not find any weaknesses,” said one. “Maybe a little too wide for groomers?” offered another. “It’s pretty dang dialed,” admitted one of our vets.

Every skier loves a good challenge, and few are as satisfying as pointing your tips downhill and skiing from summit to base in one uninterrupted shot. The ski runs with the biggest vertical drop in the world offer exactly that: The rare chance to ski an entire mountain in a single descent while racking up miles of turns and thousands of vertical feet. The tricky part is deciding what counts.

Just four years ago, I wrote the headline “Four-Buckle Boots Are About to Become a Relic of the Past.” I’m happy to report that, mostly, I was wrong—boots with traditional buckles are still alive and well. But that doesn’t mean nothing changed: when BOA dials landed on ski boots during the 2023-’24 season, they indelibly altered the ski industry, changing the way manufacturers think about, build, market, and sell boots. I’ve been thinking about what to make of the BOA revolution.

Utah just got June snow as wildfires burn nearby. Here's the surprising reason the same storm fueled both. (Photo: Courtesy of Brighton Resort) A rare late-June winter storm dusted Utah’s highest ski resorts with fresh snow over the weekend—even as the same weather system helped fuel one of the state’s worst wildfire outbreaks in recent memory.