/ Stephan Drake adjusts his bindings at 33 miles in Haines, AK. Haines is an annual spring pilgrimage. Drake has been filmed in ski movies in Haines for the past five seasons. / A ski sits in a rack for refinishing at DPS’ new factory in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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snowboards, which allowed them to float on the top surfaces of the snow. Drake, however, used conventional skis, which tended to sink down into the snow, forcing him to make a long series of jumps, hopping up and down to get his skis out of the snow and into the new turn. “That’s fun,” Drake says, “but it’s also incredibly exhausting, especially for 3000 feet.” At the bottom of the mountain, after completing about 100 of these jumping turns, Drake collapsed into the snow, too tired to move. Then he heard joyous whoops: A friend of his on a snowboard flew past him at about 50 mph, surfing the tops of the powder
like waves, performed an “Ollie,” and kept going. Drake thought, “This is ridiculous. I want to be able to do that.”
Revelation
He didn’t give up his sticks, but Drake did start to contemplate how to make skis that would be as good in deep powder as a snowboard, and he began by modifying his own skis. He had no training in engineering or physics—he was an English major—but he had discovered by accident what would prove to be an enormous breakthrough in ski design. While skiing in Aspen, Drake jumped off a cliff, landed, and bent the front “shovels” of