Piste them small and family-oriented, so comparisons between slope classifications in Japan and "equivalent" slopes in Europe or North America are minimal. Piste A piste () is a marked ski run or path down a mountain for snow skiing, snowboarding, or other mountain sports. This European term is French ("trail", "track") and synonymous with 'trail', 'slope', or 'groomed run' in North America. The word is pronounced using a long "e" sound (e.g. rhymes with "beast"). Increasingly, North Americans employ its common European antonym, 'off piste', to describe backcountry skiing, especially when referring to skiing outside officially approved areas of a ski
Ski geometry sink in soft snow. This left powder skiing and off-piste skis among the few markets not being served by parabolic designs. Several skis aimed at the powder market had appeared over the years, including the Volant Chubb and other "fat-boy skis" from the early to mid 1990s. Free skier Shane McConkey was skiing on the Elan designs in 1996, but found they sank in the snow. As an experiment to get more "float" on the snow, he tried mounting ski bindings on waterskis while skiing in Alaska. He began working with Volant on skis that combined their metal-based production method,