Welcome to Snidecountry, a monthly or semi-annual ski humor column. It should not, under any circumstances, be taken seriously. You’re welcome to laugh, though, either with us or at us. Both work. Our hope is to honor the fact that skiing, perhaps above everything else, is a deeply silly sport, no matter how much we love it. We might look like idiots in the process. But hey, that’s probably the point.
It’s June, but the vast machinery of the ski industry never sleeps. Hot, mysterious products for the 2026-27 season are already in the pipeline, dotting spreadsheets and email chains just out of reach of the regular consumer.
Thankfully for you, POWDER’s corporate spies have been at work for weeks, dutifully gathering intel on the upcoming gear that’s still under wraps. Now, we’re letting the cat out of the bag.
Buckle in. These gizmos, planks, and other nifty bits of ski technology will blow your mind. 2027 seems to be shaping up to be a big year.
Ian Greenwood
Skis for Men
You are balding. You are aging. The last time you hit a cliff, one of your vertebrae dislodged itself and ended up in your left kidney. And there’s some jabroni, who might be from Austria because he has a cool accent, who skied really fast in front of your girlfriend or boyfriend, and now they won’t stop asking why he’s so much better at skiing than you (editor’s note: any parallels between the preceding paragraph and the author of this article are purely coincidental).
For these reasons, you’ve begun to doubt your status as king of the mountain. Doubt no more. The 2027 LongStix will rock your world, restore your confidence, and maybe boost your testosterone levels so high that you start balding even faster (an easy compromise, say the LongStix manufacturers).
These skis come in one beautiful size: 350 centimeters. Yes, that’s improbably long. So long, in fact, that you won’t even have to remind other skiers how long they are. They’ll just take one look and think to themselves—Wow!—that guy’s got lonnnnng skis, he must rip. Then comes the envy. And, for you, slopeside dominance or, as the kids are saying, moginance.
Good luck explaining why you bought 350-centimeter skis to your therapist, though. It would be best, honestly, to avoid anyone who understands human psychology with these in your quiver. Gondolas might be a challenge, too. But take comfort in the fact that every purchase of the LongStix comes with a discount on a really, really, really big truck.
Ian Greenwood
The Avalanche Annihilator
The great guns of Alta have gone quiet and, in their absence, the comforting sense that skiers could take something as scary as an avalanche and simply blow it to smithereens. The shock and awe era isn’t ending, though. In fact, with the Avalanche Annihilator, it’s just beginning.
The portable product for safety-minded backcountry skiers holds a rotating chamber with 12 slots. In them, you can insert charges that, according to a press release, “will launch and travel about half a mile before contacting a start zone and neutralizing a prospective avalanche with a controlled release.” Why 12 slots? In the event that you find yourself surrounded by prospective avalanches, you can dispatch them quickly, making backcountry slopes as safe as a ski resort’s in only a few seconds.
Or, in other words, the Avalanche Annihilator is semi-automatic. The press release added: “The Avalanche Annihilator should NEVER be pointed at people, cars, animals, buildings, or chairlifts.”
Okay, we’ll level with you. This is a missile launcher. We are talking about a missile launcher. We don’t know how any of this is legal, and we’re afraid to ask too many questions. What’s less confusing is this, though: the Avalanche Annihilator and the LongStix will be a great bundled gift for the man in your life.
NathalieNasrallah/Getty Images
A Brand New Multi-Pass
It is true that “locals” passes, which don’t work on the weekend or trim off “peak dates,” provide some reprieve from skiing’s costliness. A gracious start-up business didn’t think this model offered a steep enough deal, though.
Enter the Ski Town Survivalist Pass, available soon for the 2026-27 season. It only costs $150. And please, hold the applause; we aren’t finished yet.
Here are the details. With this pass, you can visit more than 50 world-class resorts with a combined 1,000,000 acres of skiable terrain. There are, of course, a few minor caveats that contribute to its low, low price: you can only use it on Tuesdays between the hours of 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. when there aren’t more than three inches of new snow on the ground and the conditions are considered “packed powder” (perfect for carving!) and it’s overcast and it’s raining and the toilet’s clogged and at least three trucks are jack-knifed on the highway and the one lift you actually like is closed for maintenance and the overflow lot miles down the road isn’t full, because that’s the only place where you’re allowed to park (shuttle tickets are only $15; otherwise you can walk).
All of it adds up to a true, authentic ski bum experience. There’s no such thing as bad conditions, just bad attitudes, right?
VICTOR DRACHEV/AFP via Getty Images
SkiLingo AI
If you recently started skiing but are having a hard time fitting in among the wizened diehards at the bar and on the chairlift, know this: you’re not alone. Ski vernacular and attitude—particularly the grungy, rebellious kind—may as well be a foreign language.
Without spending years soaking in the scene, how could you possibly know what is or isn’t a faux pas?
Welcome to SkiLingo AI. The fancy app translates what you do say into what you should say, per hardcore skier parlance, so you sound like one of the regulars. Just speak a sentence aloud and wait for SkiLingo to provide you with an alternative, as needed.
Let’s work through some examples, created by a real-life SkiLingo beta instance.
- “I just bought a mega pass. It’s actually a pretty good deal! I love skiing!” Don’t say that. Try this SkiLingo-approved translation instead: “I won’t cave to the corporations. I would never buy a mega pass. I just, uh, found this one somewhere and it works?”
- And another one. “Hmm. I’m pretty hungry! I think I’ll treat myself and get a burger at the lodge.” Wrong, again. Here’s the alternative: “I don’t need lunch, dog. I just ate gravel with a little hot sauce in the parking lot and washed it down with a beer that I first opened last night.” (You don’t actually have to eat the gravel unless you want to.)
- A final sample for the road: “I just skied my first double black diamond.” Impressive, but SkiLingo can do you one better. “I just skied Corbet’s Couloir backward. And I was naked. And my skis are 350 centimeters. And no, no one saw it or caught it on video because I’m just that fast, kind of like a … racecar. We should probably talk about something else now.”
