The Ord goes to Les Arcs

Jamie Kunka of Lonely Mountain Skis is a fellow Starter For Six awardee, Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow, University of Dundee graduate and all round good guy! I've watched Jamie's business with a keen eye over the last few years as I have a love for all things ski and winter sports related. It's especially exciting to see a young business appear in Perthshire that is making high performance, sustainable and down right beautiful skis here in Scotland!

The focus on the carbon content of Lonely Mountain Skis is really refreshing, it's not something that is typically heard of within the skiing community but for us mountain enthusiasts the amount of carbon that we are consuming should be right at the top of the agenda. “Where we can, we try to keep a low carbon footprint, which is why we use as many sustainable and natural materials as possible. From the wood and bio-resin that holds the ski together, to the flax fibres that give the ski spring and smoothness, 80% of our materials are from grown sources. This way we know we’re not negatively impacting the environment that gives us snow. For every ski we sell, we aim to plant two trees to offset the CO2 we may produce when making the skis.”

Having tried out the ISPO Gold Award winning SNEACHDA and it's powder plank counterpart The ORD at a demo day at Glencoe I had to get some more slope time on these outstanding skis. Jamie was kind enough to give me a pair of The ORD's for my trip to Les Arcs at the end of March. After picking them up from the Lonley Mountain workshop in Birnam my first reaction was that these skis shouldn't be put on snow, they should be mounted on a wall as a piece of art. The top sheet is one single piece of Maple (Cherry is an optional extra) with a Beech/Balsa core which I'm assuming is why they're so unbelievably light for such a big ski. With a waist dimension of 112mm and full tip and tail rocker this is ski would be the cherry on top to any powder day. Unfortunately the snow forecast for Les Arcs wasn't showing any hints of powder days during my time there but as I'm used to skiing fat skis in all conditions I was undeterred and eager to get The ORD's on piste.

The first noticeable feature of these skis is that they don't feel like a big ski, I found them easier to manoeuvre with a less wide stance that I'm used to on my other 100mm+ waist skis. They rail into the turns with very little effort from the user and not once did I have any issues with the tips chattering at high speed. There is the perfect amount of flex along the ski and excellent torsional strength which makes for a really robust yet playful platform for cutting through the majority of snow conditions.