Ski Equipment

Choosing Equipment

Our job at the Rookie Academy is to give you the best chance we can when it comes to obtaining Certification. In part, this comes down to your dedication to improve, part is down to us as trainers, but both of these can hit a huge obstacle if your gear is not right for you.

· BOOTS

You will be spending AT LEAST 6 hours a day in your boots. If they don’t fit properly…..PAIN!
Ski boots are your single most important piece of equipment in skiing.
Your boot is the link between your foot, the ski and the snow. So obviously, the better the fit of your boot, the more control you'll have. Your ski boots should fit tightly or snugly without hurting your feet and still allowing "wiggle room" for your toes.
When first trying ski boots on, start with ones that are a full size smaller than your street shoe. A boot technician will usually measure your foot in the shell without the liner. You should be able to get two fingers behind your heel when the foot is forward in the shell and your toes touching the plastic. Once you know you have the right shell size, try the boot on with the liner.
Here in Wanaka we have some of the best boot fitters in the industry, and they can custom fit your boot so it fits like a glove. A custom fit can include orthotics (custom fitted foot beds) or even a custom liner. Custom foot beds are molded and form to your foot to give added stability and support. Custom liners are either injected with foam or heated and mold to the shape of your entire foot. These liners give a perfect fit and are worth the expense if you have trouble with your feet or want more precision.

If you have boots already, great, if you don’t, our advice is to buy when you get here and get a great fit.

· BINDINGS

All the movements and pressures you place on your Boots are directed to your Skis through your Bindings.
With new ski technology most skis now have an integrated binding attached to them, this limits the options available to you when purchasing bindings so the main thing to look for is the DIN* range, you want to make sure that "your" DIN* setting sits around the middle of the range on the binding. The advantages of having an integrated ski and binding are they allow the ski to flex evenly from tip to tail without the binding and boot creating a flat spot in the arc when the ski is carving. They also increase the height between the ski and your boot. The resulting extra height increases the leverage you can apply to the edge of the ski. From a safety stand point we would recommend the following brands Salomon, Marker, Look/Rossignol, Atomic.

DIN* Settings, This scale - otherwise known as the Deutsche Industrie Norm - is standardised across all makes of bindings. The appropriate setting depends on your weight, boot size, height and level of skiing

· SKIS

Skis have become quite specialized over the last few years with categories including:
Big Mountain
Park & Pipe
All Mountain
On Piste Carve

The type of ski best suited to our course needs to be versatile and perform well on the groomed and in off-piste situations like bumps, crud and powder, the category best suited to this is "All Mountain" this type of ski will have a waist width (narrowest point of the ski) of between 68mm to 75mm this gives the ski the ability to go from edge to edge quickly for groomed snow and bumps, but is also wide enough to give you some float in crud and powder.
The length of the ski is also an important factor we recommend a ski that is between your chin and nose in length.

We can get you THE BEST deal on the top Brands and we offer 2007 model skis, so next years gear NOW! Especially cool if you are planning on working in the States, as you can ski them for a season then take it overseas and there still new!!

We want to give you every opportunity to improve, so please don’t make any hasty decisions when it comes to buying equipment- it can be a costly mistake, both in wasted training time and your hard earned cash. If you have any questions or doubts on product, please drop me an e-mail.

Volkl, Marker and Tecnica are the official ski, binding and boot used by the Rookie Academy.