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Ideal Target Skier: Legit Competitor: If you have a competition coming up this weekend (sorry, ski club rail jams don't count), and you seriously need the gear that pros are using, then we'll let you buy these. Otherwise, you'll have some explaining to do. Skier Ability: Expert: Skiing comfortably anywhere on the mountain, and at any speed, jumping off cliffs and overall craziness. Speed: Racer: Always pushing the limit of top speed, these skiers get in trouble from Ski Patrol on occasion, and are always the fastest skiers on the mountain. Double Titanal Layering: This ski features two layers of Titanal metal alloy, one just above the base, one just below the topsheet. This gives the ski extra stiffness and strength while creating a dampening, or shock absorbing, effect to the ski. This is usually found in the highest grade of racing and competition level freeride skis.  Sandwich Construction (SW): SW means that the sides of the skis are a vertical wall rather the rounded Cap construction found on most skis. Since none of the skis material needs to be exerting force maintaining shape at the edges, SW skis are stiffer than their Cap counterparts. Most people find SW skis to be damper, that is more glued to the snow, superior at high speed GS turns and top notch at busting through crud or choppy snow.
 Wood Core: The standard core which has throughout time provided the best performance and durability. Each model may have it's own density level to help define flex and maximum speed but every wood core ski will be solid.
Die Cut Graphic: The base has a die cut graphic, which is made up of at least two different colors of base material, cut to different shapes to create a design or graphic. This base is popular because the graphics don't fade over time and just looks cool, even though there is no performance benefit to a die cut base.  Textured Surface: Ideal for repelling wear and tear on the skis surface. Textured ski surfaces are rough surfaces to the ski that hide or repel scratches keep your skis looking new long after they are not. Originally designed for rental skis for obvious reasons, this surface is now available on a wide variety of retail skis as well since everyone likes their skis to look nice.
Racing Lifter Plate: To get extra edging power, this ski features a plate that the bindings mount directly to. The plate gives skiers extra leverage to roll the ski up on edge, and to hold that edge, especially on hard snow and ice. Plates like this are typically found on racing skis, and other high performance skis that specialize in groomed run performance. Head's Intelligence technology: is essentially an array of fibers inside of the ski or snowboard that absorb the mechanical energy that your muscles are putting into the ski, and convert them to electrical energy. The more energy the fibers absorb, the stiffer the ski becomes. So the faster you go the more stable this ski is. We were the first one to say that this was just some gimmick jargon, but the stuff actually works. VHMW base: Very High Molecular Weight base. This translates to a very dense, hard base. This type of base is used for race skis and high performance skis. However, this base material doesn't hold wax as well as the lesser expensive and more porous types, so waxing needs to be done a little more frequently.  Liquidmetal: is another physics experiment by Head, and this one is more complicated. The idea behind all of this is that the solid molecules can be compressed when force is applied to them, whereas liquid molecules do not get compressed but instead simply reposition themselves. This means two things important to a ski: There is no loss of energy resulting in maximum energy rebound. Whatever you put into a turn, you get out of a turn on the other side. The second thing is that since these liquid molecules aren't being constantly compressed (remember they just reposition themselves), there is no breakdown over time, meaning the Liquidmetal will provide maximum rebound for the life of the ski.
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