The Skis We Keep

This place did not start as a lodge.

In some way or another, it started with powder skis.

I loved these skis long before I ever owned one. The first time I saw them flick past on film. The way they looked under the feet of skiers who weren't trying to prove anything. They were wide, playful, unapologetic, and they moved through snow differently. You could feel it even through a screen.

I remember my neighbor's 2012 K2 Hellbents, 189 length. He skied them every day of the winter at Big Mountain in Whitefish. Same skis. Same joy. No question about whether they were "right" for the day.

I remember my first pair of Obsetheds, and how they opened the mountains to me. Lines became possible that hadn't been before. Snow felt deeper. Movement felt lighter.

Then I started working in the ski industry.

New skis became the thing. Next year's skis. Industry deals. Always looking forward. I skied a lot of great skis during that time, but something shifted. Skis became disposable. Seasonal. Meant to be replaced.

I blew through ski after ski on the rocks of Big Sky. That was just part of it. Until one day, a customer in the tune shop where I was working left behind an old pair of Faction Royales.

I stepped into them and something clicked.

A feeling I had forgotten about came back immediately. They were loose. They were strong. They didn't explode when I skied across rocks. I was having more fun than I had in years, on a ski that was already eight years old.

Me and my first pair of Royales, climbing around the upper a to zs at Big Sky MT

That was the moment everything changed.

Keeping Skis Alive

I started searching.

Craigslist. Facebook Marketplace. Ebay. Anywhere I could find them. I looked for every pair of Royales I could. Then Hellbents. Then Line EPs. Then other shapes that carried the same spirit. Faction 3.0s. Rossignol Sickles. Atomic Blogs.

The collection started to grow.

Not because I wanted a collection, but because I wanted to keep skiing these skis. I wanted to keep the feeling alive.

My enthusiasm rubbed off on friends. We each had our favorites. We started hunting together. Sharing finds. Talking about shapes and flex and snow the way people talk about old records.

At some point, we realized something was off.

We had more skis than we could ever reasonably ski. Our goal had been to give these skis life, but now they were piling up. Sitting still. Waiting.

We started joking about a museum. Or a living exhibition. Or something in between.

But skis like these need a place. They need consistent snow. They need depth. They need storms.

We joked about the Kootenays.

We joked about Japan.

Eventually the joke stopped being a joke.

A Home for These Skis

Now the collection has a home.

Not just as something to look at, but as something to use.

These skis were built for deep snow and a different approach to skiing. Many of them were designed with Japan in mind, whether explicitly or not. The snow here lets them do what they were meant to do.

We keep these skis because they still work.

Because they are fun.

Because they are strong.

Because they invite a way of skiing that is playful, patient, and unforced.

They are not demos in the usual sense.

They are tools with memory.

Why This Matters

A lot of people had a pair like this once.

Hellbents. EP Pros. A ski that changed how they thought about snow.

Most people didn't sell them because they stopped being fun. They sold them because the industry moved on. Because skis became narrower, more "universal," more polite.

We want to give people the chance to ski these skis again. In the kind of snow they want to move through.

Not out of nostalgia.

Out of belief.

We believe these skis have a soul. They want to fly. They want to smear. They want to play.

And we want that too.

That feeling is a big part of why Wakaranai exists.

For more on winter at Wakaranai, see our winter page.