SKU: 5304 Voile Vector BC Skis

These skis started a whole new sport for me that I call "Vectoring". I've had a couple of pairs over the last 10 years (one pair got stolen) and I love them. On a day when you want to mix a little cross country with a little downhill, go out for some solid aerobic workouts without interruption in the flow, these are the bomb. They feel so sweet gliding across the land. You can climb up to 16 or 17 degrees on a sticky snow day (or 20 with some crab-stepping and track-locking) or as low as 13-14 degrees on crystals. A simple click-click and you are ready to descend. You can work a few hundred feet of great powder slope over and over if you want. Super fun. There's no downside (except for a long shallow angle cat track inbounds they are slower) . You can always slap on skins.

I’ve had these skis for 5-6 years. They are super great where I live in lake-effect snow country SE of Lake Ontario. Typically I tour free-heel on some Madshus XC skis which are mounted with Voile 3-pin cable bindings, which engage my heel in a wonderful way when cranking turns. The Vector BCs let me take things up a few notches. I became a good skier relatively late in life. I won’t risk my body with free-heel technique when the going gets steep and tree-filled. For that I have these Vector BCs mounted with Dynafit bindings! I can tour where I want to, and when the terrain demands it, I lock down my heel and let ‘em rip! It makes sketchy spots in the rolling hills behind my house fun. The close-by foothills of the southern Adirondacks also become quite accessible. My son lives in the Wasatch Mountains of central Utah. I found myself out there when COVID shut down all of the ski lifts. I got in dozens and dozens of days in the backcountry with my BCs. Sometimes I would don skins and climb steeper stuff for gnarly downhills. Many times, however, I simply used the great fish scales on the base of these skis for the uphill. It always was great to ski around and up and down without having to transition to/from climbing skins. I employed the old cross-country technique: when the uphill slope gets a mite steep, I just go into switchback mode and angle my way up, kicking and gliding and getting righteous exercise. Sometimes there are flat spots and minor down-slopes on the uphill, and it’s always nice to glide those without skins complicating matters. The scales are grippy on the up, while the design also allows for great turning uphill and down. The “mid-wide” profile is tweaked to a fine degree. With good control, precision turns can be made, while they still handle decent powder in a satisfying way. Of course, I have wider skis with non-scaled bases for skinning and shredding the deep! All in all, these Vectors are a fantastic and well-used addition to my quiver of skis. I enjoy them so much, and appreciate Voile for offering them, for sure.

Coming back to free-heel skiing after two decades of exclusive backcountry splitboarding these skis are pure pleasure for exploring off the radar rolling terrain and laying down riffs in rarely visited terrain. They are extremely light, responsive to subtle inputs and turn almost intuitively. The patterned base works great for moderate climbs and yet allows for unfettered turns on the powdery downhills I seek out. It’s amazing to see how far tele skis have come since my previous pair so many years ago, Kazama Headwalls.