#ski test

There are actually many occations to test on your own (and for your own requirements you are probably the best tester ever), i.e. at the opening weekends of large glacier ski resorts (e.g. in Austria: Stubai, Kaunertal, Sölden, Hintertux, Pitztal).

When it comes to magazine ski & snowboard tests, we find there are some outstanding well prepared and performed tests out there.

Good Wood Board Test 2013: Transworld Snowboarding magazine testing with 18 testers at Mt. Bachelor. These 18 testers represent different driving styles, from park to freeride. Also, the terrain set-up has been chosen accordingly, from part to powder. Each board gets tested by 6 riders, who have to fill out a questionnaire afterwards. This is a pretty comprehensive set-up.

Check out the video here. You can find the results in the Transworld Snowboarding Gear Guide, which we have mentioned earlier.

US blog OnTheSnow also tests skis in a decent setting. In their latest test, they went to Aspen with 15 testers testing 113 pairs of ski.

Check out their video here. You can find their results here or if you prefer a German version on their German blog, go here.

Another twist to ski testing is offered by the French blog Skipass.com, which is a crowd sourced approach. Everybody can write an review and they have manged to get a couple of thousand reviews.

We did some number crunching for you: actually, those ski resorts are also significantly above average in ski pass pricing in the respective countries. The range goes from 21% to 59% above average. No wonder, five out of these resorts also belong to the top 48 ski resorts worldwide in respect to skier visits (you have to have more than 1 mio skier visits a year to be on that list).

It is a bit dissappointing that there are no French or German resorts on that list. While there is a reasonable explanation for Germany (about half of the 510 ski areas have only one lift, only 82 have more than 4 lifts), in France it is surprising. France has 325 ski resorts, 233 thereof with more than 4 lifts. France is with over 54 mio skier vists per year one of the top 3 worldwide markets (see 2012 international report on mountain tourism). The author of the Best Ski Resort study believes that the guests in France are mainly locals, who tend to be more critical.