Griffin Post

Been working on something special with for the last 12+ months…

As someone that loves gear and is lucky enough to give feedback on a lot of it, there’s an important distinction to make between working on soft goods vs hard goods. Generally, the former has no downside to cranking the up performance and quality. A Summit Series jacket or pack from will be appreciated by anyone—even if it’s not used to its full potential. That is, it’s unlikely that you’ll have a negative experience using high end soft goods because your item is overpowered for a given objective or ability. To my knowledge, no one has been injured because they were in too much jacket. 😂

If you applied to the same philosophy to skis you’d end up on a pair of world cup race skis—the highest quality, most well-made skis in the world—and it would be terrifying. The extreme end of high-performance skis is not for everyone, myself included.

I bring all this up because, with a few exceptions, there must be a business case for creating something. Every product has to have a reason to exist.

With skis, the art lies in striking the balance between high-end performance and broad market appeal. The ideal ski is stable at speed yet still nimble while going slow. They hold an edge yet break free easily if you need to dump speed or pivot in the middle of a turn. They’re playful yet mean business when they need to. I could go on. Oh, and they should look cool… I won’t even get into graphics. As far as I know there’s never been a ski graphic that has been unanimously liked. Pic 5 is an example of something we tossed after months of working on it because it wasn’t well received when we printed it.

All that said, super proud to be a part of the Transcend from Kästle, the deepest dive into ski building I’ve ever had (and I was only a small part of it). Five rounds of protos, countless laps of the exact same run (that’s how you test) and a lot of 7AM Zooms with Austria. Excited to release this to the world this fall, or get a sneak peak next week at the summit. 🙌

📸: 1-2: ; 7:

Twas a simpler time, a snowier time.

📸: