Explore every episode of the podcast The Boston Ski Party

In this episode, we break down Blizzard’s brand-new freestyle line, Canvas—arguably the least “Blizzard-y” ski they’ve ever made, in a good way. After some early-season chaos talk (New England snow showing up, who’s spinning already, and a recap of Snowbound Expo and the Blizzard x BSSC event), we dive into what Canvas is, who it’s for, and how the 100/108/118 lineup stacks up against skis from Armada, Black Crows, Line, and Rossi. We get into why this is such a big departure for a brand known for Brahma, Bonafide, Rustler, Black Pearl, and Anomaly, how brand perception affects park skis, and why athletes and comps matter in launching something new. We also cover the graphic story, including artist Penelope Mesa’s painted canvases that give the ski its distinctive black-and-white freestyle look.

00:00 – Winter is here

01:48 – Early-season stoke: Jay Peak snow & who’s spinning

04:36 – Snowbound Expo, BSSC party & Boston ski buzz

11:02 – Meet Blizzard Canvas: Blizzard’s new freestyle/park ski

13:54 – Canvas lineup, specs & Penelope Mesa’s graphic story

20:01 – Who Canvas is for & how it fits into Blizzard’s lineup

23:15 – Brand perception, park heritage & why athletes matter

32:17 – Weird skis, graphics & shapes

48:37 – East vs West: hot laps, rope tows & small-mountain lap machines, Ragged’s new ownership & closing thoughts / go skiing

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Joe and Garrett dive into the ski construction cycle: why brands refresh models, what actually changes year to year, and how those updates affect the way you ski. We compare icons and their latest iterations (Nordica Enforcer, Elan Ripstick + Black Edition, Salomon QST, and Blizzard’s Anomaly replacing Brahma/Bonafide) to show how companies balance “accessibility” with true top-end performance. Is it just the iPhone effect…or meaningful engineering? We break down shape tweaks, metal/wood layups, rocker profiles, and why tails that release easier don’t mean “dumbed down.”

We talk:

• How the update cadence works across top brands (and why it’s surprisingly consistent)
• What “more forgiving” really means and when it’s not a downgrade
• Why mid-width, one-ski-quiver models dominate
• How the market pendulum swings from tanky, metal chargers to lighter, nimble all-mountain skis and where it’s headed next

00:00 Premieres + Big Night Live highlights

03:03 Upcoming premieres (TGR, Armada)

04:34 Main topic: ski construction cycle

05:15 Why brands update (“iPhone effect”)

06:51 Ripstick surge → market reacts

10:23 Enforcer refresh (more forgiving)

12:31 Are updates “dumbed down”? (No)

13:21 Bonafide → Anomaly: modern feel

16:36 Ripstick & QST get stronger

19:40 One-ski-quiver explained

26:15 Why not yearly updates (2–5 yrs)

35:28 Mount point quick take

45:29 Lifecycle summary

51:04 Wrap

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The boys riff on ski brand “cult” followings and why certain gear inspires lifelong loyalty. We start with a fresh pickup, the Bent 110 GDs and use it to unpack the Atomic Bent phenomenon before widening out to other die-hards: Pivots, ZipFits, Black Crows, Mantra, and even indie stalwarts like Surface. Along the way, we revisit frontside carvers and spotlight a few underrated winners (Rossi’s Arcade 94/84, Armada’s Declivity line), plus a practical bindings chat: how Pivots feel different from Griffons, and when that matters for real-world skiers.

A special guest drops in to set the stage for Boston’s ski-film run: Hunter Henderson’s multi-film night at Big Night Live (Oct 24), TGR at House of Blues (Nov 6), and a free in-store screening of Armada Ornada (Nov 8). We also react to some news in the world of skiing.

00:00 – Intro & questionable life choices

02:00 – Buying new skis (Bent 110 GDs)

05:00 – The Bent cult and brand loyalties

09:30 – Ski gear with cult followings

14:00 – Indie brands and who builds what

19:00 – The Pivot binding obsession

25:00 – ZipFit liners

32:00 – Snowboard cults & brand loyalty

36:00 – Underrated skis worth a look

43:00 – X Games rebrand, fantasy & betting

51:00 – Boston ski movie premiere season

55:00 – Hunter Henderson, TGR & Armada Ornada

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Joe and Garrett dig into some of our favorites from the frontside/carving category and why so many skiers (us included) have slept on it while the 90–100mm “do-everything” crowd got all the hype. They discuss how narrower, purpose-built skis can be more fun, faster edge-to-edge, and a smarter second ski for your quiver.

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Garrett and Joe break down what’s new in ski boots for 2025-26: the surge in double-BOA designs, smarter LV/MV/HV fit options, and liner upgrades. They dive into a few different categories, out of the box fit, break-in vs heat molding, picking the right flex and last, and who benefits from these updates, whether you’re all-mountain, freeride, or an ex-racer. If you’re shopping 2026 ski boots, this episode hits the big trends, practical fit tips, and how to choose confidently.

👉 Full Blog: https://theskimonster.com/blogs/posts/best-new-ski-boots-for-the-2025-2026-season

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Garrett and Joe are back in the podcast studio to discuss skis and boots they're excited about for the 2025/2026 winter. Joe recaps his trip to the Tyrolia/Head factory last spring.

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Garrett and Joe are in studio to recap some big business (ski testing) they've done over the past few weeks. This conversation focuses mainly on specialized frontside skis along with narrow all-mountain skis. These skis can be difficult to place and rank just by reading about them, so we hope this conversation can clarify some things!

Garrett and Joe sit down to go over some new or updated thoughts on product they have tested for next season!

After a quick hiatus, Garrett is back with a solo episode folks! He talks about skiing in Vermont this past weekend, products he's tested, and goes through some industry news. He also mentions the Ski Monster Fest Demo Day, which you can find more info on at the link below:

https://bssc.com/events/ski-snowboard-demo-day/?mc_cid=d40f0b9486&mc_eid=bc18436a6c

Joe takes us through his big weekend at Killington! He spent a couple of days skiing on next year’s product so we dive into his thoughts on how each one skied. What could be better?

Joe and Garrett do a not-so-deep dive into some more gear we’ve seen for the 2025/2026 season. Double BOA, other new boots, new skis - plenty to be hyped on.

Garrett sat down with George to discuss the new Armada AR One ski boot and some other new ski boots we have on the way.

We were unable to record a new podcast this week so here is a bonus episode...

One of the most popular lineup of skis of the last decade gets rebuilt from the ground up. The 2025 Nordica Enforcers and Santa Ana just got even better! We sat down with Product Mangers, Florian Seer and Ethan Korpi to discuss what changed and why with the new collection of Nordica Enforcers and Santa Anas for 2025.

Video:

https://youtu.be/m_ID2yVPOF0?si=nvDvx13JIsTycFHz

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Colter Hinchliffe stopped by to chat about developing the next generation of the Volkl Revolt series, his 10+ year run skiing in TGR movies, and more.

We welcome Hunter back to the studio this time with his sister Grace, another rising star on the U.S. Freeski team. Grace and Hunter were back east visiting family and getting some training days at their home mountain of Waterville Valley, which currently has one of the most impressive early-season parks we’ve ever seen.

Caite Zeliff grew up in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where she fell in love with skiing through racing. Eventually, she moved to Jackson, Wyoming, to chase the big mountain skiing dream—and she achieved it. With back-to-back Queen of Corbet's titles and segments with top-tier ski production companies, her career has been filled with huge milestones.

This past spring while filming in Alaska, Caite took two hard falls that changed her life. What seemed like a “normal concussion” turned out to be much more serious. As her symptoms persisted and intensified, Caite sought medical help, uncovering the extent of the damage to her brain and nervous system. Now, she’s focused on a full recovery, diving deep into understanding her body and mind.

Garrett sits down with George and Joe to discuss some of the buyers' guides and reviews we've seen this fall. We shout out a couple of outlets we think are doing great jobs with their gear reviews and dissect some flaws we see far too consistently across the rest. The goal of this episode isn't to go scorched earth on these media outlets, it's to address the problems with most of the ski industry's approach to reviewing ski gear and to present our case as to why there needs to be more effort put toward improving these reviews.

Drew Petersen is a ripping skier who has spent the past few years of his life defining himself beyond the sport. He's used films, public speaking, and social media to shine a light on important conversations regarding mental health and our approach to the issue within our winter sports community, and as a society as a whole. Drew's recent project, "Feel it All" expands on these ideas and gives insight to his perspective and experience dealing with his personal mental health challenges and how they are intertwined with his two biggest passions, skiing and ultrarunning. Drew stopped by The Ski Monster when he was in town for the Salomon QST Film Tour to chat with Garrett, mainly about the film and what drives him to do projects like this.

Introducing our first bonus episode to the feed...

The Ski Monster's George and Matt sat down with product manager Ben Fresco and president/CEO Jeff Mechura to make a video discussing the reconstructed Elan Ripstick series.

Here is the audio from that conversation for those who prefer listening!

Marcus Goguen is one of the fastest rising stars in big mountain skiing. At 20 years old he's already shot multiple major film segments and collected a gold medal on the freeride world tour. His resume is already impressive and he's just getting started.

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Peter "Peru" Chrzanowski is a renowned extreme skier and filmmaker who has been pushing the boundaries of skiing since the 1970s. In his recent memoir, "I Survived Myself" Peter details his life from the beginning, telling stories of wild adventures, mishaps, milestones, and formative events that turned him into the person he is today.

Buy Peter's book: https://a.co/d/34YE57p

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Ski season is just around the corner, ski reviews are dropping, buyer's guides are hitting the shelves, and the mountains out west are already seeing their first snowfalls—we're STOKED! Garrett and Joe sit down to chat about all the hype in the skiing world over the past few weeks and what’s coming up in the months ahead. Fall is an exciting time for skiers. Winter’s not quite here yet, but we can feel it!

Garrett and Joe dive into the questions you've been asking on our YouTube channel and social media pages! We hope this new format can help clear up some misconceptions or confusion about skis and boots that might be out there.

Keep an eye out for consistent episodes through this winter and beyond! Give us a follow on our new Instagram page @thebostonskiparty to stay in the loop.

The Boston Ski Party is back! In our first episode for the 24/25 season, we dive into the collection of new ski models coming at us for the upcoming winter. This could be the most exciting year for new skis of all time, so we had plenty to discuss. Listen now for an overview of what's coming in hot!

Keep an eye out for consistent episodes through this winter and beyond! Give us a follow on our new Instagram page @thebostonskiparty to stay in the loop.

We're joined in studio by Tom Ritsch during his stop in Boston with the TGR team to premiere their 2023 film. Tom is an Austrian-born freeskier who unexpectedly got the call to shoot with TGR last March. This was Tom’s first time shooting with TGR and he took full advantage of the opportunity and ended up playing a huge role in a banger heli-skiing segment in the new movie.

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We are joined in studio by Jonathan Ellsworth, founder of Blister Review. Blister is one of the most popular and well-respected outlets for gear reviews in the world of winter sports. Since Jonathan is the man behind the vision it only makes sense that most of our conversation was centered in gear review talk.

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We are joined in studio by Salomon athletes Stan Rey, Alexi Godbout, and Josh Daiek on their stop in Boston for the QST Film Tour. We covered a wide range of topics from how these three became pro skiers, pivotal moments in their careers, to what it was like working on their recent projects last winter.

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We are joined in studio by Jonah Williams, who was in Boston to premiere his newly released project "Who is Sim." Jonah’s a pro skier out of Utah who started gaining recognition after winning Level 1’s Superunkown contest back in 2015. Since then, he's become known as one of the dopest and most well-rounded skiers in the game. From major film segments, to edits that broke the internet, to clips that take over the ski social media algorithm, he's been absolutely crushing it in front of the camera and there's proof of that everywhere. We talked to Jonah about his impressive resume, and shooting his newest project this past winter.

We sat down for a phone call with Joe Johnson, the Alpine and Nordic marketing manager at Salomon. Joe starts off by telling us how he got from "Alta University" to the position he's in today. Joe gives his perspective on the past, present, and future state of skis, boots, and bindings at Salomon. The brand is a major player in all 3 hardgoods categories, so Joe has a lot to juggle.

We are joined in studio by none other than Dan Egan. If you're not familiar with Dan, he's a pioneer of extreme skiing, starred in 13 Warren Miller films, and worked closely with Warren Miller Entertainment spanning from the late 80s to the early 2010s. This was a perfect time to talk to Dan because of a recent announcement that for the first time in 74 years, Warren Miller Entertainment will not be shooting a new film, and instead will be repurposing archival footage for their annual release. We get Dan's opinion on the current state of WME and some of the things that lead to where the company is at today. We also have some awesome back-and-forth about Dan's Boston routes, his epic career, and some of the wild experiences that have come along with it!

We are joined in studio by Jason Roe and Valarie Kechian from Atomic to talk Atomic boots. Jason grew up in Canada and moved to Austria 20 years ago to start at Atomic and is now the Business Director of the Alpine Boots side of the brand. Valarie has been in the industry for about a decade and is now a Commercial Product Specialist at Atomic. We talked a little bit about the history of ski boots, what Atomic has going on at the ski boot development level, and of course, BOA (so hot right now).

We are joined in studio by Christian Avery, the North American Product manager at Blizzard-Tenica to discuss the all-new 23/24 Blizzard Rustler and Sheeva collection. The bulk of our conversation revolves around the new skis; Christian tells us about the development process from start to finish and the decision-making that goes into changing an established product. We also chopped it up about BOA ski boots if that's something you're into.

We are joined in studio by Tanner McCarty, the former team manager at Ride Snowboards. Tanner has been one of the most important behind-the-scenes guys in snowboarding for the better part of a decade, spending the majority of those years at Ride. We talk about how he went from working at Eastern Boarder when he might have been too young to work at Eastern Boarder, to playing a huge role at one of the biggest brands in snowboarding.

We headed up to the Marker/Dalbello/Volkl US headquarters to check out their DOPE new showroom space, get a sneak peek of their 2024 line-up, and record this pod. We sat down with Ivar Dahl, the National Sales Manager at MDV. We hear a bit about the Ivar origin story, some of the exciting stuff they have going on at MDV, and we discuss the current demands of the ski-buying market and what Volkl is doing to keep up with them.

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We sat down with Cyrus Schenck, founder of Renoun, a (mostly) ski brand based out of Burlington, VT. We chopped it up with Cyrus about his window-washing career, how that led to him launching Renoun, and what went into the revolutionary technology that goes into his skis. On top of all that the episode also features some interaction between the crew and an AI bot that might know more about skis than humans.

We are joined by Tom Monterosso a.k.a. T Bird. T Bird spent 13 years at Snowboarder Magazine where he made a name for himself covering some of snowboarding's most iconic stories for the publication. In recent years, T Bird has taken on different types of media-related projects than he had typically done for Snowboarder. He's announced some of the biggest events in snowboarding, and most recently was tasked with writing and directing a documentary called “Rough Around the Edges: 30 years of Ride Snowboards," which will be available on Youtube in the coming months.

We are joined by Jim Ryan, who dropped by the studio during his trip to Boston for the premiere of the new Teton Gravity Research movie, Magic Hour. After Jim blows our minds with a story about a recent ski trip he took in which he found himself bushwhacking through the Chilean jungle with cowboys and horses, we talk to Jim about his massive 2022 season. He spent the year crafting an epic segment for the new TGR movie in which he scoped out, hiked, and ripped on some of Grand Teton National Park's highest peaks.

We are joined in studio by Madison Rose Ostergren who was in Boston with Warren Miller Entertainment premiering their 2022 movie, Daymaker. Madison is a pro skier out of Jackson Hole and has spent the last few seasons emerging onto the scene taking part in a number of badass film projects. Madison gives us some background on how being a ski racer from the midwest turned into landing a two page spread in a ski magazine and ultimately launched her professional ski career to where it’s at today.

We traveled up to Burlington, Vermont, and sat down with Jason Levinthal in his new Intergalactic Headquarters. We get into his early days starting the first company to bring twin tip skis to market, some of the groundbreaking products he introduced with Line Skis, to being bought by K2 Sports and handed the responsibility of creating the Full Tilt boot brand on top of continuing Line, and how that all lead to where he’s at today with J Skis.

We sat down with Kyle Smaine on a video call from the house that he sort of owns in Lake Tahoe. We talk to the former halfpipe world champ about what he's been up to since leaving the competition scene roughly 5 years ago. Kyle talks about how his relationship with his long-time sponsor, Fischer Skis has progressed from just an athlete-brand relationship into a much more involved role on the product development side of things.

We sat down with Neil Soucy, the snowboard buyer here at TSM, to discuss some of the differences that we’re seeing between the ski industry and the snowboard industry right now. We talk about some of the things we see on both sides of the business and compare how they’re done in skiing vs. how they’re done in snowboarding. As a snowboard buyer, Neil provides a strong perspective on what he thinks the snowboard side of the business is doing well and where he thinks things could be done better.

We sat down with Ben Fresco, the Marketing and Product Manager at Elan Skis USA. We get into Ben’s ski industry background, starting off with stories of selling gear to Geraldo Rivera and MLB umpires in Lake Tahoe, to eventually moving back east to get started at Elan. We talk about the rampant success the Elan brand has seen in recent years, specifically in the free ride category with the Ripstick Series. Eric and George recently joined Ben and some members of the Elan team on a trip to their factory right outside Bled, Slovenia, so they were really stoked to be able to recap the trip. The boys discussed their round of golf, Slovenian cowboy parties, and most importantly, the biggest takeaways from seeing Elan’s production process.

For the 10th episode of the Boston Ski Party, we have a very special episode for you. The Ski Monster cofounders George and Eric sit down to give you the full, unfiltered TSM origin story. Starting from their days as ambitious college kids with an idea to start a ski retail site, all the way through the insane twists and turns it’s taken to get TSM to where it’s at today. There has been no shortage of roadblocks and wild stories over the years, so sit back and enjoy the show.

We sat down with Justin Heanue, the National Sales Manager of Blizzard Tecnica USA. We started it off by catching up with Justin and discussing the last time he was in Boston, when he and the Tec/Bliz team joined the TSM crew for an afternoon at America’s most beloved ballpark (Fenway). We then got into how Justin got started in the ski industry and he explained some of the steps he had to take before finding himself in the role he’s in today. Heanue then discussed his current role at Tec/Bliz, while getting into some of the differences between his day-to-day on the ski side with Blizzard, and the boot side with Tecnica. We ended the episode with a massive revelation in regard to the pronunciation of our guest’s last name.