6th Annual Blister Awards, SIA

 • The “Favorite Person We Talked To at SIA” Award •

Staale Moller, co-founder & head of design and development at Sweet Protection

Any meeting that begins with the question, “Would you like a beer?” isn’t going to be bad.

But way beyond that, Staale Moller and Hans Gunleiksrud were ready and willing to be interrogated for 90 minutes straight about helmet design, safety standards, and more.

What became very apparent is that Staale takes a very serious and intentional approach to design details, and we’re going to be talking to him again soon about these topics.

 

• The “The Most Intriguing 3 Millimeters in Skiing” Award •

– 116-118 mm: It seems that the days of ultra-fat, 120+ mm skis may be mostly behind us. Instead, more versatile shapes in the 116 to 118 mm range are all the rage, and there are several that look very interesting.

– ON3P Kartel 116 – the Jeffrey 114 gets a makeover, and it was already a very fun, very floaty ski.

– Volkl Confession – at 117 mm underfoot, the Confession replaces the wider (and more heavily rockered) Volkl Shiro, and we’re eager to ski it.

– Salomon QST 118 – The new QST 118 effectively replaces the Salomon Rocker2 122. The new 118 has a lot of tip rocker, so we really don’t think it’s going to have trouble planing up in deep snow.

– K2 Pinnacle 118 – Another floaty-looking 118. It’s probably about time for us to check this ski out…

 

 • Swagger Award •

Normally this award goes to the company that’s produced the most over-the-top product copy, but this year…

 

• The “Two Women’s Boots We’d Be Willing to Wager On” Award  •

We continue to be very big fans of Fischer’s Vacuum fit technology, so we’re excited to check out how well that tech works in Fischer’s women’s boots. The Trinity 110 brings that vacuum fit to a women’s specific shell, and our testing of this boot begins immediately.

The Salomon MTN Lab and MTN Explore have also won high praise from us, and next year, Salomon is introducing a MTN Explore W for the ladies in sizes down to 23.5.

 

• The “How the Hell have we not skied that yet?” Award  •

– Line Blend: If this award sounds familiar, that’s because we resolved to review the Blend last year, but didn’t get around to it. (Sorry!) But enough is enough, and this year, we’ll buy each of you a beer if we don’t get this ski reviewed. (Or we’ll make our associate editor, Cy Whitling, do 1000 pushups. You can decide.)

 

• The “Let’s See if We Can Start a Fight at SIA” Award •

Put a bunch of founders and engineers from a number of different ski companies, lock them in a room, and start asking specific questions about ski design. We don’t think a summit like this has ever happened before, and if you check out our latest Blister Podcast, you can hear how people from Armada, Blizzard, Line, K2, Moment, and DPS think about skis, and what they predict is going to happen to skis in the next 5 to 10 years.

 • The “Most Intriguing Outerwear” Award •

Non-puffy insulating layers: It seems like this year every outerwear brand we spoke to had something new on the insulation front. Many are creating insulators for high output activities that emphasize breathability, however, pieces like the Patagonia Nano Storm are focused on weatherproofing and versatility.

 

• The “Most Intriguing Underwear” Award •

We love the original Mons Royale Monsie, and Justin Bobb’s review of the Monsie still has the best photos of any review we’ve published. This year Mons Royale is also making the “Super Mons,” with the same Merino wool construction, a zippered neck, no hood, and 3/4 length legs. It’s nice to have options.

• Most Innovative Award •

Actually, we can’t say yet. We talked about this one a lot, and nothing clearly jumped out at us. So this is an award that we’ll have to give out retroactively, once we get a bunch of products out in the mountains…

The “A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words” Award

Yep. We don’t waste any time. And we already have some very, very good days of testing under our belts. Stay tuned for the reviews.