Skiing & Winter Sports

Twin-tips are the latest thing to hit the slopes, and their prospects are good, given that the old guard has now been so comprehensively dismantled.

Last year was a watershed: for the first time there were reported to be more snowboarders than skiers at the resorts of Europe, with a significant and growing number of snowbladers also vying for the snow.

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As for the skiers, most now use the carver model, a radically different design to traditional skis. It’s highly likely, therefore, that if you happen to see anyone belting down the slopes this winter sporting the familiar old straight-up-and-down skis, then it will be your dad. Or possibly your grandad.

The latest skis are perhaps unlikely to appeal to skiers above a certain age. Twin-tips are just as they sound: normal length carver- shape skis pointing upwards at each end, a design intended to enable airborne skiers to land safely whichever direction they happen to be facing up, down or across the slopes.

Along with snowboards and snowblades the latest skis lead the freeriding movement, said by supporters to be an entirely new approach to skiing. Its all about the expression of creativity and freedom, say twin-tip fans, and they offer all sorts of possibilities all over the mountains. Put another way, twin-tips offer yet another means by which people can fly down the mountain with a huge smile on their face.

Two years ago twin-tips existed only as prototypes; now they are being hailed as the new rock’n'roll on snow.

Their phenomenal popularity on the other side of the pond from where, inevitably, they originate suggests that this will also be the picture in Europe over the next few seasons. Illustrating the trend, a new shop, Freeze opened in Edinburgh for the start of the current season. It is the first shop in Scotland to cater exclusively for the freeriding side of the sport, so Neil Mitchell of Freeze obviously has a vested interest in talking up the prospects of twin-tips, but his argument that they’re all about fun echoes that of anyone you speak to who has tried them.

Ian Sodden of Blues, the well-established ski equipment retailer which has outlets in Edinburgh and Glasgow said: “What happened was that skiing had got a bit boring before snowboarding came along. Snowboarding didn’t take off terribly well in Scotland for years but eventually people realised that they were great fun. New products like twin-tips are all about fun too.”