Choosing skis, in the order the decisions actually depend on each other

Step one: where do you actually ski?

Not where you would like to. Where you have skied in the last two seasons.

Groomed pistes, mostly in Europe, a week a year — a piste or all-mountain ski, under about 85 mm at the waist.

Pistes plus the edges of them when it snows — all-mountain, 85 to 95 mm.

Genuinely off-piste, regularly — wider, and a different conversation that starts with avalanche training rather than with a ski.

This answer sets the waist, and the waist sets everything after it.

Step two: the waist, in millimetres

The middle number of the three on the topsheet. It decides how quickly the ski goes from edge to edge and how it behaves in soft snow, and it is the figure the category word — piste, all-mountain, freeride — is standing in for.

It also decides the binding’s brake width, which is why it comes before the binding rather than after.

Step three: the length

Makers publish a range against rider weight for each model. Take that range, and place yourself in it:

• Lower in the range if you are still learning, ski slowly, or want a ski that turns easily.
• Higher in the range if you ski fast, are heavy for your height, or want stability in rough snow.

Ignore the old chin-to-forehead rule. It predates modern shapes and it ignores weight, which is the input the makers actually use.

Step four: the radius, as a sanity check

In metres, published for the length you are looking at. Around 11–13 m is a short-turn ski, 14–17 m is the all-round band, 18 m and up is a long-turn ski. It should match the terrain you described in step one — a 19 m ski on narrow tree-lined pistes is fighting you.

Step five: the binding

If the ski comes with one: check that the DIN range brackets you — not that it merely includes you — and note the brake width against the waist from step two.

If it does not: the brake must be at least the waist and only a few millimetres more, and the binding must accept your boot’s sole standard. Then add the cost of mounting, which is a workshop job.

What to skip

The construction description. Titanal, carbon, poplar, a “damping layer”: all real, none of it comparable across makers, and none of it published as a number.

The graphics, which change yearly while the shape often does not — which is why last season’s model at thirty per cent off is usually the same ski.

Before you order

Write down four things and check them against the listing: waist, length, radius, and what binding is included. If the listing cannot answer all four, this site’s page for that ski says which of them the maker left out — and that silence is itself an answer.