 I'm Steve from Malish Brigham and this is Luke and we're here today to talk to you about the new Elan Ripstick 96. So the first thing I want to say is that this is our category winner in freeride. So it's our freeride ski of the year. Just to help explain some of the tech behind it, here's Elan. Hi this is the new Elan Ripstick 96 for the 2020-21 season. The Ripsticks have been in the range for quite a long time now and have earned themselves a fantastic reputation and rightly so and we're always very nervous when we make some changes to a ski that everybody loves. But some subtle changes this year has made it even better for us. The Ripstick is a ski in the freeride category so it's for anybody that wants to ski all over the mountain on all kinds of snow. The changes for this year are a subtle change in the front of the ski so you can see a grayed out area on the left hand side of the shovel here and that goes from the shovel to roughly under the heel of the skier and that stiffens up the front part of the ski and helps it to hook into the turn really strongly. The other changes in the tail of the ski we have a lightweight insert in the tip and the one that was in the tail has come out and has made it for a stronger rebound out of the tail of the turn so it's a really poppy ski now. Other than that this is the Ripstick that people know and love so it still has a lightweight wood core, it still has two carbon tubes, gives it all the strength and the bounce and it's still a fantastic ski no matter where you want to go on it. There are lots of people have been testing the skis today and before we came up to Glenshee the main problem with letting people test our skis is getting them back from them. Everybody I've lent the skis to over the last few weeks when we've had the prototypes has just wanted to have them for the rest of the season so I've yet to have someone ski on these and not enjoy them just because it's so much fun and the performance envelope is really wide just from intermediate people who are learning to ski on pace and trying new snow right the way through to instructor levels. Everyone loves them it's a fantastic ski. Okay now you've got all the info on the construction and everything that's going on with the ski we're going to tell you a little bit of how it feels how when we were testing it so we've given this a good test we tried it a lot in Scotland actually and we got to try all kinds of conditions there as you would expect a lot powder a lot chopped up snow and a lot harder snow as well as it was starting to freeze and if ever there was a complaint about it around Elan Ripstick 96 it was maybe it was a little bit soft because it's not a metal ski it's a wood core but what Elan have done here is you've got this carbon line technology they've basically taken all the good bits out of the black edition which was the stiffer version and popped into the 96 so along the inside edge they've stiffened it up and I was a bit skeptical at first about whether I'd feel this but actually you can you ski it on the harder snow you can feel that the ski grips more even in softer snow actually it feels more powerful and that's a nice thing it's still fun it's still playful still very surfy ski but actually yeah you do get that extra power and precision which in a free ride ski it's not just about soft snow and the original version of this was a big favourite of yours so what about the updated version I love the old version because it was easy it was forgiving it was a decent width and a different uh decent shape but it definitely felt a little bit on the soft side and you can notice the difference for sure you know now you know they've beefed up a little bit it just feels a little bit more powerful you know it feels a little it's definitely just a bit more punch to it really but it's still not over the top you know it's not overly unforgiving so yeah it's a great update from what was already an amazing ski so this is going to suit anyone that wants to ski away from the piece as much as possible but they're not looking for stiffness they want precision they want playful and they want easy use it's got it all and it's our free ride ski of the year so if you ski this latest version you've got some comments put them below we'd love to hear from you if you've got any questions again pop them down we'll come back to you otherwise thank you for watching