Ski Canada has been testing skis in North America longer than any other magazine and the tradition continued last April when our cast of thousands descended on the newest Ski Canada Test Centre: Panorama Mountain Village. Testers and ski manufacturers from across Canada, together with magazine staff, reported for duty for a week of regimented laps on varying terrain and conditions, among the many other softer pursuits that Panorama is able to offer.

Indeed, the resort set a new standard for testing with its impressive ski-in-and-out village of slopeside pools, patios and posh digs at the 1000 Peaks Lodge after our testers enjoyed playing on the training slopes chosen by the Canadian Alpine Ski Team as well as others from around the world. Special thanks go to Panorama’s Ken Wilder and the unstoppable Ryan Stimming.

Among the increase in number of ski manufacturers represented, the test featured a few new angles, too. As usual we welcomed some new names to the tester roster, but this time we included our park and pipe specialists to wring out the new twintips in Panorama’s terrain park. Impression reports are also back again this year. These reviews are written by testers who did a little extra and simply offered us their impressions afterward. And just to crank things up a notch, we expanded the Test to include powder skis. Not an easy thing to do at any ski area let alone in April 2005—unless of course you have a helicopter and the appropriate terrain. Thanks to RK Heli-skiing, a small group of lucky testers spent a day sampling the deep and steep on the biggest boards available at retail. Watch for Test results Part II and III over the next two issues.

When Ski Canada started ski testing more than a quarter-century ago, it was a relatively straightforward task. There were recreational skis and racing skis. And truth be told, there were some bad skis in those days of early plastics. But those days of unmanageable skis are virtually gone and the range of choices has increased three-fold. One result is that in any given category, there are a lot of similarities and poor skis are virtually non-existent. That has caused ski test results to be more and more similar. In fact, it’s not uncommon to have the top half of the group within a few tenths of a point of each other. In the end there’s no “best” ski and there are no “bad” skis on the racks anymore. That makes the choices tougher but also makes it even more important to survey results carefully to find which ski among all these over-achievers is your “best” ski. Let our ski test help you narrow the search and then test the finalists yourself. We were impressed with the offerings and you will be, too.

from Fall 2005 issue

All Mountain categories (Fall 2005 issue)

All Mountain categories numeric test results

High performance on-piste (November 2005 issue)

Standard on-piste (November 2005 issue)

On-piste categories numeric test results

Rec skis: 17 sport models(December 2005 issue)
Sport category numeric test results (December 2005 issue)

Park & Pipe @ Panorama - 18 hot twintips (December 2005 issue)

Impressions! 15 skis from the Ski Canada demo van (December 2005 issue)

Powder Test with RK Heliski (Winter 2006 issue)

Join Ski Canada at Panorama in April 2006

Ski Canada Test Week photo gallery