Six-time Olympic medalist and famed alpine ski racer Bode Miller and ski resort exec Andy Wirth have teamed up to create a direct-to-consumer ski brand, Peak Ski Company.
Announced today, there’s some big news in the ski industry: Olympian Bode Miller has created his own ski company. The Montana-based Peak Ski Company is starting strong with its “Peak by Bode Miller” lineup, a new line of high-performance, all-mountain alpine skis.
“So many people naturally assume a high-level, quality ski that I ski on isn’t going to work for a beginner. And what we want to do at Peak is not do that at all. So the [concept is] the same ski a beginner could get on, I would get on, I’d put my wife on, my friend on. It’s a ski that can work for everyone,” explained Miller.
And that’s Peak Ski Company in a nutshell.
We got an early look this week to see what Miller has been up to and what the new brand is all about.
The Bode Miller Brand
On a phone call with Miller, one of the first things he mentioned was the inspiration for Peak Skis — and the goal of creating a high-performance, truly versatile, all-mountain ski that can work for skiers of varying experience levels and come at an accessible price point. It’s a tall order, but Miller may be the one to accomplish it.
“I’ve been fortunate to have super great-quality, handmade skis for most of my career,” he said. “And I thought, ‘That’s such a shame that the general consumer doesn’t have that.’ So that was the first thing.”
Miller’s idea of making the overall learning experience and general skiing experience better for all is nothing new. It’s reflected in his work with SKEO, a sensor and app system that provides educational instruction and technique improvements to skiers, and Alpine X, an indoor snowsport facility in Virginia aimed at providing access to more people.
“I was thinking, ‘How do we make the experience of skiing better? How do we get beginner skiers that [high-quality] experience?'” Miller continued. “All these ideas happened in sequence, and all are helpful endeavors that work well together to build out a new program of how people can learn to ski.”
Peak Ski Company: Design, Construction, Specs
The lineup of Peak Skis attempts to achieve a few things with its design: compressed mass so there’s more pressure underfoot (rather than in the tip-tail), great stability, and a sidecut design that can work well whether a beginner or expert is skiing it.
In the press release, Miller said:
Just one small example is that if you change the rise or the rocker by a millimeter or two, you change how the ski engages at the initiation of a turn. If you change that, then you need to compensate by adjusting the torsional rigidity of the ski underfoot. It was with that experience, I learned years ago that a cutaway in front of the binding, unlocks the torsional performance of a ski. We’ve integrated this feature, calling it Keyhole Technology, into all our skis.
Miller and his gang of ski builders and testers have gone through two prototypes of the Peak Skis so far — Gen 1 and Gen 2 prototypes — in which a few minor adjustments were made.
Peak Ski Company: The Goods
At the core of Peak Ski Company are six high-performance, all-mountain skis. The lineup of skis for 2022-2023 includes four models predominantly for front-country skiing: the Peak 88, 98, 104, and 110. The brand also offers “side-country” ski models: the Peak SC 98 and SC 104.
The lineup reflects what Miller and ski-builders settled on as the sweet spot for waist width: between 88 and 110 underfoot. Of course, where and how people ski differs greatly, so there are a few models in between. The company developed its first prototypes in late 2021 and enlisted a team of skiers, led by 30-year veteran ski tester David Currier, to review the skis.
The Peak and Peak SC skis use the same mold, same sidecut, and have the same rocker points, with just a slightly different profile. The normal Peak is a more gradual profile, whereas the SC is slightly more aggressive and better for off-piste. They’re in the 1,700g range, but Miller stressed that could change. There’s about a 100g difference between the Peak and Peak SC models in weight.
When I pressed Miller for his favorite ski in the line that’s a “true one-ski quiver,” he chose the Peak 98 or Peak SC 98 — all other variables aside, of course.
“After years of research, design, and experimentation and over 3 months of testing, I can verify that these skis rip; and we are just getting started,” Miller said. If Peak Skis can achieve its goal, you bet we’ll be testing these skis.
Price & Availability
The 2022-2023 Peak by Bode Miller alpine and side-country skis will retail for $890 and be available on PeakSkis.com. And because it’s a new brand with high demand, Peak Ski Company created a way interested parties can reserve a pair in advance: with a fully refundable $50 deposit.
Again, the goal is to get these skis to the masses and get people on the right ski. Peak Ski Company also plans to offer demos next season.
The Peak skis are manufactured in Bozeman, Mont. Look for more Bode Miller ski models in fall 2022.
