ISPO

Once again this year, we are reporting from ISPO in Munich. This article is about touring ski boots and touring bindings suitable for downhill skiing, a sector that has been booming for several years and is therefore being provided with some interesting innovations by the various manufacturers.

As a kind of afterthought to ISPO, which has now been over for a while, we would like to highlight a few highlights that our partner companies emphasized at the trade fair.

"ISPO in Munich is of secondary importance for the snowboard industry. The pulse of the industry beats at the retailer trade fair (Shops 1st try) in Alpbachtal."

In our partner news you will find information that we received directly from our partner companies at ISPO in Munich. We mainly asked about news and new products for the 2018/19 season.

The trend in recent years for all manufacturers to advertise ecological production is declining in comparison. However, there are still a few highlights, such as a new type of "Prima Loft" insulation, which uses plant down from the kapok tree. Many manufacturers now use the body mapping principle in their base layers.

As in previous years, there are many technical innovations in ski touring boots. More and more manufacturers are coming onto the market with ever lighter models that are still very suitable for downhill skiing. One of the most interesting new models, the Hoji Pro Tour from Dynafit, won an ISPO Award but could only be admired in reality to a limited extent due to the lack of a Dynafit stand.

The new products in the ski sector are very limited this year, as is the number of manufacturers still represented at ISPO. Amer Sports (Atomic, Salomon, Armada) was no longer at the trade fair this year and other companies are also exercising more and more restraint in terms of their stand presence.

As every year, PowderGuide is once again reporting on the new products from our partners at Ispo 2017 with a slight delay. Some of the articles have already been mentioned in the other ISPO reports, but here we will once again explicitly cover the ISPO highlights from our partners for the coming winter 2017/2018. The first part is about the products from Arc'teryx, Bergans, Evoc, Fritschi, FRM, G3, IAS and Julbo. Enjoy reading and find out about highly functional ski clothing, new ski touring bindings, ski touring boots specially adapted for women, backpacks that are particularly comfortable to wear, new topo maps for freeriding, innovative skis, women's ski goggles and an avalanche backpack that can do more than just inflate balloons.

After some manufacturers launched the big "powder shape competition" last year, this trend is now entering its second season. In addition to well-known concepts (swallowtail), the trend among many manufacturers is towards short but wide boards, as K2 demonstrated last year.

This year's ISPO is once again all about ecological clothing and recycling in the textile sector. Like last year, the trend towards muted colors is continuing. As in previous years, the pioneers in the ecological clothing sector are the companies Vaude, Pya and Picture. In general, more and more manufacturers are doing away with harmful PFCs. In addition, more and more companies are trying to impregnate their clothing without fluorocarbons.

As in previous years, a number of innovations from the booming ski touring sector were presented at ISPO 2017. Both the "classic" ski tourer and the "modern" freetourer are addressed. And the ever-growing sector of piste tourers and ski tour racers will also be provided with new equipment. We took a look around the trade fair and provide an overview of new ski boots and bindings that will be of interest to freeriders and downhill-oriented ski tourers.

As was to be expected, there are hardly any innovations or groundbreaking new products in the ski sector for the 2017/18 season. Ultimately, almost all manufacturers are taking up the ideas from previous years and presenting them in the form of further expanded freetouring series. They try to differentiate themselves from one another through various lightweight construction methods and sometimes incorporate complex designs into the ski structure, or offer a cheaper price point or entry-level model. Flagship models are given an asymmetric sidecut with an asymmetric tip design, which is presumably a foretaste of the ski design in the coming years. As we saw last year, powder twin tips continue to die out for many major manufacturers. There are more and more directional, lightweight skis with center widths of 90-110mm or for "bad snow".