Hey everybody, welcome back to Gear 30 on the Blister podcast network, where we are very proudly based out of Elevation Hotel right here in Crested Butte, Colorado.

I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, the founder of Blister, and you can check out everything. We're doing and

reviewing over at BlisterReview.com. Today, we are kicking off a new Gear 30 mini series where

over the coming weeks, we are going to be identifying the best skis of the century from over 30 ski brands.

So, of course, this is going to include debates about what exactly we mean by best.

Are we talking about the highest performing ski from each brand, or the best selling ski,

or the ski that had the biggest cult following, or do we mean

something like the most iconic ski from each brand over the past 25 years? And joining me today

to kick things off are Luke Kappa, Blister's managing editor, Blister reviewer Paul Forward, who was

recording this conversation from the city of Katsabu, located in the Northwest Arctic

Borough of Alaska, and finally our great friend Rob Dickinson, who grew up skiing and

ski racing in New York, then went on to become a comp skier,

and he is also one of our favorite people, so we wanted him in on this.

So over the next couple of weeks, you are going to be hearing our choices for the best skis

of the century from each brand, but we are also going to be sending out a survey to our

Blister Plus members, our digital access pass subscribers, and a number of pro athletes and

product designers from around the ski industry to get their answers to these questions.

And then in a few weeks, we will be seeing how our selections

match up with all of those answers. And then finally, for the grand finale to this series,

we are going to be offering our selections for the very best skis of the century. So will we be

able to whittle things down and get to some sort of consensus on a top

10 skis of the 21st century?

...