Moment Blister Pro: the History

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[Editor’s Note: You can now order the 18/19 Blister Pro here.]

You’ve been asking, and now we can confirm: the Blister Pro is coming back for its 5th season.

We’re currently working with Moment on the graphics, but today we wanted to (1) let everyone know that the Blister Pro is indeed coming back, and (2) revisit the history of how and why this special edition of the ski came to be for those who might not know the whole backstory.

It all started with the original Moment Bibby Pro, which Jonathan Ellsworth and Joe Augusten were skiing well before Jonathan had ever thought of starting Blister. Back then, as Jonathan put it, “It’s not like we’d skied everything out there, we just knew that we loved what this ski could do.”

Will Brown had also just started skiing the Bibby right around when Jonathan started Blister, and we actually had him post our first review of the ski way back in 2011, and he also felt that this ski was special — a pow ski that was playful enough to throw tricks, maneuverable enough for tight trees, but stable through chop and sketchy runouts.

Will didn’t use the term “playful charger” in his review — we think that Jonathan coined that term at some point in the early days of Blister (though in a bit of Blister archival scholarship, the first appearance of the phrase on Blister is in Will’s 2013 reply in the comments section about the Bibby vs. the Atomic Automatic) — but everyone here agreed that “playful charger” fit the bill, and we still do.

The other standout feature of the ski was that, even on hardpack (i.e., conditions where a 118 mm pow ski should not excel), the Bibby continued to impress. The ski simply performed better in a wider variety of conditions than any other pow ski we’d been on — or continued to get on, as we started to review more and more skis. (And then more and more and more and more skis over the subsequent years.)

Jonathan Ellsworth, Alta Ski Area, Blister Gear Review
Jonathan Ellsworth on the Moment Bibby Pro. (photo by Tom Bear)

The Bibby would come back unchanged apart from its graphics for the 11/12 and 12/13 seasons. And while Moment added a more directional “Bibby Special” during that period (which would eventually morph into the Moment Governor), the original Bibby Pro remained our favorite playful charger.

And then, for the 13/14 season, Moment changed the Bibby.

What???

When Moment’s (now CEO) Luke Jacobson broke the news to Jonathan at SIA, he said, “We changed the Bibby. Please don’t hate the new ski before you ski it.”

Once his head stopped spinning, Jonathan agreed. But before reviewing the new ski down in New Zealand, he posted a Tribute Review of the original 190 cm Bibby as an homage to the ski that no longer was.

He then reviewed the new 13/14 Bibby, and while it was by no means a bad ski, it certainly wasn’t the same ski. It didn’t have the insane versatility that the original offered, and it now seemed more pow-oriented and jibbier than before. It was a good, playful pow ski, but no longer the playful charger that we’d come to love.

So Jonathan went back to Luke and said, “Look, that’s fine that you switched up the ski, but couldn’t you keep making the original ski, too? And we could just call it the … Blister Pro. Or something.”

And in his infinite wisdom, Luke agreed.

When the 14/15 season rolled around, there was a big announcement: the original ski was back, but now as the Blister Pro, and with a new graphic. There was much rejoicing, and we had several Blister reviewers contribute to a review of the first Blister Pro.

For the 15/16 season, Moment then reverted the more powder-oriented, jibbier Bibby back to its original form, but we’ve continued to work with Moment to release a Blister Pro edition each year because we just still really, really like this ski.

Since then, Moment released a lighter version of the Bibby Pro, called the Bibby Tour, which Cy Whitling reviewed, and then published a review of how it compared it the standard Bibby / Blister Pro. Then Noah Bodman chimed in with his thoughts on the Bibby Tour vs. Bibby / Blister Pro.

In between, we launched the 15/16 Blister Pro and 16/17 Blister Pro, and then there was also a special version of the Blister Pro with our very own Cy Whitling’s artwork on it. For 17/18, we brought back the 16/17 Blister Pro’s graphics because we thought those graphics were so nice we’d run them twice.

Moment Blister ProFor 18/19 Moment renamed the Bibby the Wildcat.

And throughout all of that, the Bibby / Blister Pro remained one of our all-time favorite skis, so we’re very happy to bring back again the Blister Pro for 18/19.

So stay tuned for updates — the graphics should be revealed sometime later this fall, and we’re psyched about the current direction it’s headed in. And in the meantime, if you’d like to jump down the entire wormhole of this ski’s history, here’s all of our coverage of every iteration of the Bibby since the beginning of Blister:

34 comments on “Moment Blister Pro: the History”

  2. 2016/17/18 graphic rock. Please bring em back. I dragged my feet and missed them in the past. Won’t make that mistake again.

  5. Yesss. I’m looking forward to seeing the route they go with graphics. That’ll be the deciding factor between the Wildcat and Blister! I can’t wait for this season!

    • Hi Andrew,

      We should be releasing the graphics later in September, with pre-orders available soon after the graphics are finished. We’ll publish a post as soon as the graphics are dialed in and the ski is available.

      – Luke

  9. Which generation Bibby is this? 1st year of not being the OG Bibby? I have this generation and love it. Just trying to place it in the reviews/Bibby round up to draw some comparisons for myself.

  10. Any chance of having a version that’s shorter than 190 or 184?? I’m a relatively short female – would love to get this ski, but need it 174 – 177…

  12. Can we please have them plain?
    -No graphics, just a solid light (signal?) coluor, so the sun will not melt snow on them while touring, and they will be as easy as possible to find when burried in snow.

    DPS and the old bonafide/chochise are the best looking skis I know of. How about going somewhere in that direction?

    -If you absolutley HAVE to put graphics on them, can we please have pornographics?

    Cheers
    Erik

  14. Great news! I’ve been bugging Moment since the end of last season to see if they will be making again this year. Very keen to see the new graphic, I’d be happy to go with last year’s again, looked cool.

  20. Moment said they haven’t received graphics from Blister yet so most likely it would be mid season but who know. Last time they said there hadn’t been discussions about bringing the Blister PRo back and then 3 days later Blister posted an article saying they were ha. I also saw a post from Sept on TGR that they (Moment) have about “2 months of production booked out” which is why the next round of snowblades is a December release

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