Volkl Chopstick Blog

I decided to take out the Chopsticks on the first dump of the season to see how they’d hold up, and they did pretty well.  Some friends and I decided to do some hiking off of Hwy 88 near Kirkwood, and the conditions weren’t too bad.  Even though it was only about a foot and a half to two feet of fresh, they held their own and gave me a pretty good day.

I’m looking forward to some more snow when I can actually take the Volkls off some natural hits, and maybe even hit a few pillows.  I did spend a lot of time riding switch and they carved super well in powder.  Looking forward to spending a few days on them throughout the season.

Until then.

There is a large majority of the skiing community who have experienced the precision and performance of a Volkl ski, but over the past few years there has been some resistance from the freestyle market towards the brand most know and love.  With versatile offerings like the Karma and Dogan, Volkl continued having a hard time getting the “kiddos” on their skis.  The 07/08 Wall was a giant step in the right direction of getting the “traditional” ski company image out of freestyle skiing’s head, and for 08/09 they have one of the most progressive ski line-ups for freestyle/freeride skiing by a big market company.  Leading the charge of bringing true all-mountain skiers and more freestyle/freeride oriented skiers together is a ski keeping Volkl ahead of the curve… the Volkl Chopstick.

With praise already coming from different magazine’s tests, the symmetrical 148-128-148 shaped, almost full rockered Chopstick, turns any mountain covered in fresh snow into a playground.  Traditional skiers will love the benefit of being able to release the rockered tail easily when in tighter trees, and the stability of a medium-stiff rockered ski when the going gets tough.  Newschool skiers will feel right home doing butters and landing switch in the backcountry.  The production of the Chopstick will do for skiing what the collapse of the Berlin Wall did for the Cold War.  Volkl, bringing people together.