Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

Every page on SlopeVerdict is written and signed by one named person. This page explains where the judgements come from, lists what the author is not, and gives an address for corrections.

How this began

It started with a two-digit number on the cuff of a boot. A flex index, read by almost everybody as a statement about the skier rather than the boot. It is nothing of the kind. That figure is a stated resistance measured on a bench at a temperature the listing never names, it is not comparable between two makers, and it stiffens in the cold — so the same 100 is a reasonable boot under one person and a plank under another. Once that gap is visible, the same shape turns up across every shelf. Wax temperature bands that refer to snow and get read as air. Filter categories sold as a quality scale when they describe a light. Run times for a heated hand warmer quoted at the lowest of three settings. And most pages answering these questions look identical: a ranked list, a score, a button, and not one figure a reader could hold against the maker's own sheet.

The second problem arrives after the carton is opened. This equipment is bought on a headline and kept or returned on a fitment. A binding whose brake is narrower than the waist of the ski. A ski crampon of the right width for a binding it cannot enter. A spare lens ordered by shape for a frame it was never cut to. A skin bought to a ski length and trimmed to the tip instead of the waist. A step-on binding bought without the boots it exists for. A snowboard binding disc that does not match the deck's pattern. None of that is on the front of the carton, and each one decides whether the purchase was worth making.

So the site does the tedious part. It reads what manufacturers and standards bodies publish, confirms each reference market by market, and writes down the line that settles the question — a flex next to the fact that it is not comparable between makers, a DIN range next to the fact that it is not a setting, a temperature band next to the snow it refers to, a brake width next to the skis it will and will not meet — and it states plainly when a figure was never published. That last habit matters more than it sounds: a great deal of the disappointment on these shelves comes from a number nobody printed, or one printed without the condition that gives it meaning.

Behind every published page there is a working file for that shelf: the one dimension a purchase turns on, each place a manual and a sales page contradict each other, which fittings tie an owner to one maker for everything bought afterwards, what a figure means when it arrives without its condition, and the particular mistake that shelf invites. The site is those files, sorted and written out, in five languages — the same questions are asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian, and answered worse in most of them.

The write-ups, counted by the build rather than by me

Nothing below is maintained by hand. It comes back out of the catalogue at every build, a line per published page, lengthening and shortening on its own as a shelf opens or a reference vanishes. What it records is what has been written up — and that, said without decorating it, is not the same as what is leaning against anybody’s wall.

Three things that cost me money to learn

The figure set in the largest type is hardly ever the one a purchase turns on. A ski is sold on its length when the waist width decides what snow it works in. A goggle is sold on its field of view when a double lens decides whether it fogs at the first lift queue. A boot is sold on flex when the last width decides whether it can ever be comfortable. A probe is sold on being carbon when the tensioning system decides whether it deploys in two seconds or fifteen with gloves on.

Keeping equipment skiable costs more, over its life, than getting it home ever did. A binding whose brake widths were dropped from the spares list has a service life set by that list. A skin whose glue can be renewed is a skin kept; one sold as non-renewable is a skin replaced whole. A boot belongs to a sole standard for the rest of its life, and that choice sets what every binding bought after it can be.

And whatever you end up judging it by is usually nowhere on the specification sheet: whether the buckles still close square in their fourth season, whether an anti-fog coating survived one wipe with a wet glove, whether a skin still holds after forty days of folding, and whether the part that fails first will still be listed on the day it fails.

What I am not

I am not an instructor, a guide, a bootfitter, a ski technician or a certification body. I hold no qualification in any of those fields, I have never worked for a manufacturer, an importer or a mountain shop, and nothing on this site leans on a professional title. A page here describes a product — its dimensions, its declared figures, any standard it cites — and stops there. In particular, every length, waist width, radius, flex index, last width, Mondopoint size, DIN range, brake width, filter category, temperature band, spike count, stated load and mass on this site is reported from the manufacturer, with its unit as published and its source named, and never derived by me. Where a maker states a figure together with the condition it was taken under, the page credits both to that maker and never separates them, and nothing here is described as warmer, stronger or safer than anything else on the strength of a specification sheet.

This site is not a manual and not training. For the release setting a binding needs and the bench it is set on, for the avalanche education an airbag pack assumes, for the mounting a ski requires, for what may never be repaired at home, and for the standards a product cites, it points to the maker's instructions, to the shop that does the work and to the body behind the standard, rather than paraphrasing them. Two statements are repeated rather than assumed. a published value and the condition it was taken under are one thing in two halves, and no page here prints half of it; each gives the value, its unit and the maker who put it in writing. Second, no helmet, no airbag pack, no wrist guard and no impact short is described here as making anything safe. What a page carries is the figure a maker published and the condition attached to it; everything past that point is settled by the instructions in the box, by the standard printed on the label, and by the day itself.

A name under a page proves nothing, and none of this asks to be believed on one. Every judgement shows its grounds on the page that makes it, and the whole method is set out under how a family ends up in that order.

Five rules that every page here is held to

No figure appears without its source beside it — a datasheet, a manual, the marking moulded into the shell, a named standard, or what owners agree on after a season on snow.
Nothing is filled in to make a table look finished — not a price, not a reference, not a dimension. Where a maker published nothing, the row stays empty and the page says so in words.
Each reference is confirmed market by market before publication. Where a model is not on sale where you are, the button searches there instead of opening a listing that no longer exists.
Where the cheaper option is the right one, the page says so — and where the right answer is a bench check of a binding, an evening spent drying liners or a second lens rather than any purchase at all, it says that instead.
No family is ordered around the number printed largest, and where this year’s model is hard to tell from last year’s, the page says that too.

What it costs to misread one of these figures

This equipment is sold on numbers that state one thing and are read as another, and the gap usually surfaces on the first morning of the holiday. A flex index stands where a skill level is assumed. A DIN range stands where a setting is assumed. A filter category stands where a quality ranking is assumed. Meanwhile the things everybody treats as afterthoughts — liners dried overnight, a binding checked on a bench, a second lens in the pocket, one thin sock instead of two — repeatedly decide whether the week worked.

Much of what matters on these shelves costs nothing to learn and fits into one sentence: a published figure records what a maker was willing to print about its own product, and undertakes nothing about the person who will use it. Most of the rest is the same kind of thing. Sizing a boot on Mondopoint and reading the last width second. Carrying a category 1 lens for the afternoon it snows. Measuring a ski at the waist before buying a brake width. Scraping and brushing wax rather than leaving it on. Sites that exist to shift equipment walk straight past all of that. It is not walked past here.

Sending a correction

Name something that is wrong and it is corrected, with the date of the correction left on the page for anyone to check. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · SlopeVerdict · Montrollet, France