Protesting the Backcountry: Building a Better Backcountry Ski

I and many others have made thousands of turns on skis that have the exact opposite sidecut and had a great time in every kind of three dimensional snow. Those two skis and their ilk work like a champ in powder. I hiked and sled skied all last season on some Armada JJs, and loved them in all that record tickling snow the west coast got.

But once conditions began to deviate a little, I found them lacking every single time, whether in rotten/wet/condensed powder, afternoon crust, stiff windboard or just general ‘non ideal’ snow. The Praxis Mountain Jibs I had before the JJs felt the same way. So did the Volkl Gotamas I had before that. So did the Dynastar Legend Pros I had before that….All my touring skis have been better than the previous ones, but they’ve all still shared that throwback to traditional hardpack design: a sidecut that wants to grab when the ski is leaned over, while the center of the ski wants to sink. We’ve already found the answer to this problem years ago. Thanks again, Shane.

(And yes I just called the Armada JJ hooky, and in far more conditions than most people would think. The best you know is the best you’ve ridden.)

For all my gushing over the Spatula, there’s pretty universal agreement that those things sucked hard on hard snow. Even as someone without a racing background (and almost zero skiing background at the time), and no life-long programming to do everything with your shins pressing the tongue of the boot, the Spatulas were hard to figure out. And even once you had figured them out, they were still just annoying: ride their tails, or ride the ambulance to fix that separated groin you just got from skis going in opposite directions at 40 mph.

Equally universal, however, is just how much better that shape worked in virtually every other type of snow—types of snow, for instance, that comprise 90% of what many of us are encountering in the backcountry, mid-winter. I knew guys who hiked on Fritschis and snowshoes just to get their Spatulas (and similar subsequent designs) into the backcountry. They were simply that good and worth the extra effort, as long as you weren’t going to be on hard snow.

Then came along the Praxis Protest. Let’s do a little more history.

Drew Tabke was one of the freaks who loved the Spatula so much that he skied it everywhere, literally everwhere. We all knew the type. Snow storms would be a distant memory, but these guys loved the ability to throw the Spats completely perpendicular to a fall line on ANY kind of snow, so they just kept them on their feet despite their severe lack of ‘carveability’. To some degree, Keith O’Meara was also one of these guys.

The demise of the Spatula left a void in both the industry and in the new mindset that these guys had, since they knew they’d experienced the biggest single leap in powder skiing in its industrialized history. So Keith started making his own Spatulas. They were a little wider, a little straighter in the tip, but definitely a Spatula, and Praxis skis was born.