Weston Grizzly Skis

Inside the Grizzly Skis you’ll find a Paulownia wood core to help keep things lightweight and responsive and add to this aluminum stringers for targeted stiffness and support. Things are then finished off with a lightweight carbon layup to dampen vibrations and further increase stiffness—the end result is a fat, medium stiffness ski that’s aggressive and capable in any terrain.

Huge rockered tips starting quite low on the skis provide plenty of float on the deepest of days while less aggressive and shorter rockered tails allow you to butter, play and surf the Grizzly Skis with ease.

Underfoot you’ll find ample camber which provides pop and personality on harder snow while also improving stability at speed. Crust, chunder and broken snow are all manageable with the width and profile of the Grizzly Skis.

Fat rounded tips accommodate skins with any size and configuration of clips while on the tails of the Grizzly’s you’ll find a built in skin notch to ensure that your skins never migrate off the otherwise rounded tails.

• Sandwich construction
• Carbon fibre, fibreglass, aluminum stringer laminate
• Paulownia wood core is exceptionally lightweight for the skin track
• Aluminum stringers help absorb vibrations from variable snow
• Carbon laminate provides the rigidity of a resort ski at a touring weight

• Rocker/Camber/Rocker profile
• Paulownia wood core
• Rugged polyamide top sheet
• Sintered 4000 bases
• Carbon weave layup
• UHMW PE sidewalls
• Binding plates 
• Vertical aluminum stringers

Grizzly is an appropriate name for these skis since they’re powerful, burly and aggressive. Weston has created a true powder slayer with these skis but they are also very confident in broken chop, chunder and crud. Their massive 144mm tips simply plow through anything in their way and their ample early rise tips float you over uneven terrain and obstacles. Only 142cm of the Grizzly’s 186cm length is actually in contact with the snow given the huge tip and tail rocker. This relatively minimal effective edge allows the Grizzly Skis to surf, slash and slarve like there’s no tomorrow. As long as there is soft snow underfoot and preferably about 10cm or more of it then you’ll be like a 12-year-old kid again playing on anything and everything in sight. With fresh snow the Grizzly Skis are so much fun and I just couldn’t stop smiling as they are one of the most playful skis I’ve tested in a long while. Their partial twin tip design means that you can slash to dump speed, drift and butter anywhere and they also make you want to jump off things for some strange reason.

The Grizzly Skis are definitely not my go-to everyday daily driver ski though, with that amount of girth underfoot they are best relegated to deep pow days. While I did get out in the backcountry for several pow laps they were a lot of ski to lug up the skin track, no matter how well they skied on the way down. Instead, I mostly used them for big fluffy resort days and side-country sorties.

On groomers, the Grizzly Skis don’t really carve with a firm bite and this is understandable given their aggressive rocker profile. Setting an edge was not that effective on hardback snow and definitely not in icy conditions but with 10cm of fresh soft snow the groomers became as fun as deep pow days. Laying down an edge and carving big lines was very rewarding as were reactive turns in tighter treed glades. If your speed ramps up you can easily dump it and get things back in control as you don’t want to be caught off guard with such a fat ski as their medium-stiffness has little forgiveness tip to tail.

In order to drive such a big ski, I paired them with the Marker Duke PT 12 Bindings since they are also made to ski the resort and backcountry with confidence. At 2,700g per pair, the Duke PT 12’s are no slouch in the weight department and match the Grizzly Ski’s need for a powerful binding to connect skier to skis. A lightweight tech binding may have worked for those looking to just slay backcountry pow but I wanted to be able to ski the Grizzly’s inbounds as well. The Grizzly and Duke PT are an ideal match-up of power, confidence and go anywhere fun but at over 6,500g for the pair, you need to be strong or young (better yet both) to be able to add up the vertical with this setup. 

While the Grizzly skis qualify as a heavier ski for big backcountry days (in my opinion) they are still relatively light considering their dimensions. At 120mm underfoot and weighing in at 3,880g or 8.56lb for the pair in the 186cm length they are by no means light but compare them to the Ramp KaPow Skis (4,900g), DPS Tour1 Lotus 124 Skis (3,230), Volkl V-Werks BMT 122 Skis (3,880g) or the Faction La Machine Skis (4,400g) and they come in at the light end of these skis.

If you live in the west where big snow days are the norm you will absolutely love Weston’s Grizzly Skis. They are made for soft deep snow and if that’s inbounds, be prepared to smile all day long, out of bounds you’ll need to work a little harder. Considering their size they are still impressively light but likely more ski than most people need for big vert days.