#Black diamond helio 95 ski review driver#
#Black diamond helio 95 ski review skin#
#Black diamond helio 95 ski review full#

#Black diamond helio 95 ski review skin#

It handles well, doesn’t hold you up on the skin track, and gets the job done all day. Small and nimble enough for technical skiing or long tours, big enough for soft-snow on that favorite shoulder lap. They drive better in variable snow and have lost the chatter that plagues many carbon skis, gen 1 Helio included. Overall I have found the new Helio Carbons a hard-charging stable ride.

Looking for the entrance on the Helio Carbon 95. Once the pow returned, I happily squeezed extravert with a ski that was light and zippy in good snow. Jump turns down icy couloirs feel precise and stable. For afterwork laps, they power through bad snow, edge on wind board, and charge downhill. Nevertheless, I found myself reaching for them over other tried and true skis. The Helio Carbon felt plenty light on my feet (especially mounted with Helio 200 bindings), but gave plenty of power to carve through a bit of crud on the down.Īfter another couple weeks of feeling out the Helio Carbon 95, I realized that I’d been skiing them through the first dry spell of winter, followed by back-to-back wind events, and I hadn’t actually skied the Helio Carbon in anything close to good snow. Some 8,000 feet later, I figured the snow couldn’t have really been that bad. So, we skied another, and another, and another. My partner and I begrudgingly skied a lap in the trees, it was ‘okay’ I thought. Strong winds the week before made for variable snow, overcast skies made for flat light, and cold air made for cold lungs. My first day out on them was a day at Tincan in Turnagain Pass. The Helio Carbon is not a featherweight division contender like say the Movement Alp Tracks or Fischer TransAlp, but a lightweight ski that maintains a bit of the umph of a heavier setup, akin to the Atomic Backland, the Scott Superguide, or the Blizzard Zero G. These skis feel heavier on the down, but at the same lightweight for the up. Along with a bidirectional carbon weave and ‘elastomeric’ core damping materials – yea, I’m not really sure what that means either – the new construction gives the Helio Carbon a more stable ride, smooth ‘carvier’ turn, and playful edge. The biggest change between the old Helio and the new Helio Carbon is an engineered paulownia wood core (trading out a balsa falx core). After this winter’s redesign, I am converted. I know some lighter folks out there loved this ski (likely getting the ride I got out of the 105s), but I couldn’t quite find their lane.

#Black diamond helio 95 ski review driver#

The first generation 95 was easy to ski, but not quite zippy enough for a daily driver and not quite nimble enough for objective skiing-while a jack-of-all trades, it felt like a bit of a master of none. Out of the old Helio widths offered, the old 95 was my least favorite. The most interesting thing to me about this year’s Helio Carbon 95 is that it doesn’t remind me of the earlier Helio 95. Improved balance and power transfer make it a Black Diamond ski for black belt skiers. The Helio Carbon 95 offered the chance to find out. The line got a redesign this year and I couldn’t wait to see what had changed and what stayed the same. The 105s were my daily driver, soft-snow ski for a few seasons ( reviewed and compared to the 95 here). The 88s have been my go-to ski mountaineering, long approach, techy ski for a while. I have had more days on Helios in the last few years than any other ski.

The Black Diamond Helio, BDs lightweight line-up for the past five seasons, aims to allow for a burly ski feel in a light-ish package. (Interestingly, Lundgren’s 1985 major motion picture debut, A View to Kill, starts off with Roger Moore’s James Bond in perhaps the big screen’s most infamous ski chase…a story for another day).

Clearly this is no secret to the folks at Black Diamond, as the Helio Carbon ski’s redesign quite similarly utilizes a foundation in top-notch engineering to pack a precision punch: hard-charging, impressively stable, and surprisingly nimble for their size.

#Black diamond helio 95 ski review full#

Sunshine in the Chugach! Photo: Taylor BracherĪnyone who’s read Dolph Lundgren’s Wikipedia page knows full well that it takes a Fulbright Scholarship at MIT in chemical engineering to fully develop one’s appreciation for the hard-hitting, yet smooth style of Kyokushin Karate.