Hello,
Friends of RAMP, this is Kilch, President and CESnow.
The last two weeks have been full of travel. We were getting underway with magazine tests and music events and I feel that we did very well.
Outside and Mountain magazines ran tests at Snowbird on Feb 27, 28 and Mar 1 with great snow and weather. I was very excited and proud of the fact that we were the only U.S. made skis at the test. We were there with the big companies primarily and you never really know how you did until you see the gear guide reviews, but the scuttlebutt I did hear seemed really positive. We already had very good wider skis but it seems we made huge strides on how well our front-side skis perform, major leaps ahead there. Thank you rock solid bamboo cores and Kevlar.
Freeskier Magazine was the following week at Aspen/Snowmass. I think Freeskier was blessed with the choice of dates because each day lined up perfectly with the type of skis being tested. Day one saw about 16” of dry fluff and it was powder ski test day. The Kapow and Peacepipe rocked; I heard many fantastic comments about both. Day two was bluebird and semi packed out but still plenty of fresh—it was wider all-mountain skis day—perfect day for those. The Peacepipe, Groundhog, and Beaver came out and again I heard rave reviews. Next day was bluebird and it was front-side all mountain day. The snow was perfect for Woodpecker and Chickadee and I felt RAMP did even better as the snow got more packed-hard. Check out the Freeskier Microbrew writeup here.
Again, you don’t really know how you did until you see the magazines, but I couldn’t have been more psyched with what I was hearing.
We then drove to Crested Butte for a FestEVOL event put on by Evol Burritos. The music was amazing with the Whalers rocking the crowd in a snow storm. John Hopper from Blues Traveler played with Twiddle and they were also great. We demo’d up a storm and people were loving the skis and boards. It’s always fun to go to Crested Butte and see how much they love to tele, luckily we had Peacepipes, Groundhogs and Beavers mounted tele.
We’re now on the way to New England for resort shop demos and another big FestEVOL event at Okemo this weekend. This event features Yukon Kornelius, my favorite jam band of all time. Click here for a coupon code that gets RAMP friends a smoking deal, and come join us and try some new skis and boards.
We just made our first snowboard components Friday with our bamboo cores and plan to begin making test boards in the next week. Really excited about that.
Never a dull moment at RAMP.
Kilch
President and CESnow