Kick it up

Attention, bored skiers: Tired of watching snowboarders seeming to have all the fun jibbing and flipping in half-pipes at terrain parks? Join in without going to the other side by swapping those 200-centimeter-long carvers for shorter, trickier twin-tip skis. With turned-up tips at both ends, twin tips allow users -- called free skiers -- to emulate their boarding brethren, performing spins, jumps, rail slides and even fakeys -- backward takeoffs and landings.

Twin tips are built for fun, not speed. They range in length from 160 to 180 centimeters with bindings mounted closer to the ski’s center, rather than the tail, like they are on traditional downhill skis. This facilitates trickster moves and bestows the ability to ski backward. By dulling the ski’s edges, some twin-tip users even “detune” them so they won’t catch on a rail.

Twin tips, which have been part of the ski scene for about six years, could be just what the ski industry needs. Participation in skiing has declined since the mid-1990s, mainly because of the popularity of snowboarding.

So far, it appears to be working. Snowsports Industries America, which tracks ski sales, reports that from 2000 to 2003, sales of twin-tip skis more than doubled to about 35,000. Most of those skis are being gobbled up by the same young crowd that often ends up riding instead of schussing.

The marketing of twin tips shows that manufacturers are gunning for snowboarders. K2’s popular Public Enemy twin tips come adorned with a gritty urban street scene. An advertisement for the company’s Seth Pistol model blasts, “Angry anarchist, plaid sportin’, twin tip big board of choice.” Freeskier magazine employs snowboarding parlance when evaluating ski resorts, using such terms as “park and pipe,” “babe-watching” and the ever-crucial “overall stoke.”

Free skiing’s psychic connection to snowboarding “is making skiing cool again,” says Oren Tanzer, manager of Mammoth’s Unbound terrain park.

Though free skiing is not new -- Salomon introduced its popular Teneighty twin tip in 1998 -- it is getting hotter every year, says Tanzer, who jokes that twin-tip skiing has grown by “a thousand percent” in the last few years.

Beginning twin-tip skiers should probably perfect their turns before trying to get airborne while free skiing. Intermediate-level skiers willing to try twin tips should learn on smaller jumps known as “hips” that give the skier more control and provide a gentler landing. (Mammoth offers free-skiing lessons on mini-terrain features.)

Tom Cage, owner of Kittredge Sports in Mammoth Lakes, is selling twin-tip skis to youthful customers at a record pace this year. “They’re mostly kids, because the body takes a lot of impact and it takes heart to get the body up in the air,” he says. “Those over 30 lose some of that heart.”