Settling on a ski can be tricky. Committing a to plank that excels under only certain conditions is a heady proposition.
But if you’ve ever been intimidated by the prospect of committing to a ski, consider the Kore 93 from Head. This ultra-light freeride ski for experienced-to-advanced skiers is stripped of any and all extraneous features (top sheet? fuhgettaboutit) and made with only the lightest materials. And you don’t have to be a professional shredder to benefit from the KORE 93s innovative construction.
It all starts with a lightweight karuba wood core and features a graphene-Koroyd-carbon sandwich cap construction.
(The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences called graphene “a thin flake of ordinary carbon, just one atom thick,” that is “not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest,” when it awarded its discoverers a Nobel Prize for physics in 2010. It’s light.)
The Koroyd underfoot in the KORE series is all about dampening vibration, so ultralight doesn’t mean feeling like you’re skiing on tin cans. This was especially appreciated on steep, scraped-off conditions that could’ve started some teeth chattering.
Triaxial woven carbon sandwich these elements and graphene fills out the tip and tail. As mentioned, this ski also goes topless, subbing out a traditional topsheet for a heated polyester fleece finish, another feature helping to secure it the title of lightest in its category.
“The triaxle weave of its carbon layer provides additional torsional rigidity for supreme responsiveness and solid edge hold.” – Head.com
Specs:
- Lengths: 153/162/171/180/189
- Radius: 16,4 @ Length 180
- Sidecut: 133/93/115 @ Length 180
- Karuba Core
- Split Sidewalls
The result of this material science sandwich is a ski that’s fun as hell in almost any conditions. All the materials used in the KORE line seem to have been chosen to maximize strength-to-weight ratio for a lightweight ski that floats, but that’s still strong enough to charge hard on piste.
And if you’re looking for something a little more underfoot, the KORE series also features 99, 105, and 117 options.
