Breaking the Mold: Blizzard Launches Brand New Freeride Ski Designed by the Next Generation

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Skiing, it seems, has gotten too serious.

We wax nostalgic for the “good old days” while the sport constantly pushes the envelope of progression. The possibility of more rotations, more elevation, or more remote peaks to ski are the questions asked as winter itself dwindles, and the ways of the world seem to fall into the hands of generations closer to yesterday than tomorrow. 

In its simplest and purest form, skiing is a way to express oneself in relation to the world around us. It’s a creative exploration of movement, environment, and physics. As the status-quo in every possible bit of skiing’s landscape changes and yet still clings hopelessly to what it knows, who better to move it forward than those who will see it through?

A new generation of skiers has not just emerged, but shown that given a little faith, skiing will be kept in good hands. 

The Blizzard Canvas freeski collection reflects just this.

Blizzard Skis has historically been a brand rooted in the turn.

Started in Austria in 1945, Blizzard started as a racing-heavy brand, but has since developed versatile projects such as the Anomaly freeski collection. The brand eventually evolved and turned much of their focus in the North American market to creating skis for skiers who, no doubt, are still masters of the turn, but have brought it to the steepest, deepest, and most formidable of environments. There are arguably few athlete teams who have as many skiers on them that have as picture-perfect a turn as the Blizzard team.

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about “a nice ski turn.” We’re talking about the most beautiful, powerful turns you’ve ever seen. To witness a skier like Marcus Caston, Elyse Saugstad, or Caite Zeliff lay down turns on a mountain face is truly a thing of beauty. 

Despite success with their existing freeride oriented skis like the Rustler and Sheeva lines, Blizzard saw the writing on the wall–or rather heard it from the Gen Z members of their athlete team who had no “good old days” to reminisce on, but rather a hunger for being a part of what was to come.

There’s no doubt that Piper Kunst, Zeb Schreiber, and Kaz Sosnkowski can all make a turn just as beautiful as those who came before them, but their baggy ski pants and propensity to smear and butter their way down the mountain would suggest a different approach. The brand too, would need to take a different approach to skis.

Blizzard had seen success previously in crowd-sourcing extensive information throughout the design and testing processes to develop products, as proved by initiatives like their Women 2 Women program.

For a ski that truly embodied creativity, playfulness, and the spirit of freeride, they turned to their athlete team–but more specifically Kunst, Schreiber, Sosnkowski and Connery Lundin–to show them a path forward.

The initial project was called Carte Blanche—a blank slate of a ski which these athletes could mold and remold until it became Canvas, the ultimate mountain paintbrush. 

The Canvas collection went through the most extensive development processes of any Blizzard ski in recent memory.

One of the first rounds of testing took Lundin, Kunst, and Sosnkowski on a strike mission to Mt. Baker to test early iterations of the ski in Washington’s deep snow and complex and playful terrain. Further testing brought the brand’s entire freeride athlete team to Blizzard’s headquarters in Mittersill, Austria.

Between days skiing a true range of conditions at nearby Kitzsteinhorn and late nights caught deep in debate about the ski over steins of beer, the Canvas began to come to life.

Like with any new-age way of thinking, the development of the Canvas didn’t come without pain points or resistance. What’s the purpose of each width of ski? Are the tips and tails too heavy? What’s the market for a ski like this? Will there be enough snow in 10 years for it to make sense? These were some of the topics debated amongst the athletes, product engineers, and marketing teams. 

In its final iteration, Canvas is a true freeride ski with a twin-tipped and lightly cambered profile, coming in three waist widths: 100mm, 108mm, and 118mm.

There’s a 19m turn radius (at the 180cm length) in the two widest skis, and a 17.5m turn radius in the 100mm. Unlike other Blizzard skis like the Rustler and Sheeva that use their Trueblend core, the Canvas freeski collection uses a poplar and paulownia set up in order to keep a more uniform flex through the ski and stay a bit lighter.

The core is then sandwiched with two layers of fiberglass with uni-directional carbon stripes, which help to add energy and rebound and keep the ski poppy. There’s a small strip of Titanal that runs from the ski’s tip to tail with the sole purpose of keeping the rocker profile, but doesn’t add any stiffness, dampening, or torsional effects. 

Aside from the ski’s shape and construction, Canvas perhaps differs most notably from other Blizzard skis in its topsheet.

Blizzard brought in Utah-based artist Penelope Misa to create the Canvas topsheet. While artist collab topsheets aren’t revolutionary, per se, in the ski industry at large, it’s the first time the brand has done so and further representative of how Canvas breaks Blizzard’s status quo.

Misa’s work ranges from whimsical illustrations of skiers clad in nothing but boots, à la Lange Girl, to large acrylic paintings that transport the viewer headfirst into the mountains. However, for Canvas, she wanted to make something completely different that was in-line with all that the ski represented. 

To create the topsheet, Misa used a printmaking process known as monotyping.

Unlike other print processes that have a repeatable matrix such as an etching or woodcut, the matrix, or thing used to create the image, is one of a kind. Misa manipulated oil-based ink on plexiglass plates with a range of tools from Q-tips to her own fingertips to create textures, shapes, and lines that emulated the mark a skier leaves in the snow.

Paper is then pressed to the plate and the image made by the ink is transferred to the paper, creating a print that cannot be redone or recreated. The process of monotyping, like skiing, invites spontaneity, freedom, and a unique and unrepeatable experience. Each width of the Canvas features a different one of Misa’s monotypes, which were digitized and made into the ski’s topsheet graphic. 

While twin-rocker freeride skis are not a new shape, it is a new territory for Blizzard and thus an opportunity for Blizzard to leave its own mark on the category.

This is to say, what sets the Canvas apart is not necessarily the ski’s concept but rather the resources used to dream it up and bring it to fruition. Whether it be the engineering mind of Kaz Sosnkowski or the artist’s brain in Piper Kunst, the framework of it all is a brand who undeniably makes a fantastic product and a boots on the ground team of athletes working to develop it. 

Just as no ski line is necessarily repeatable, nor are the monotype images like those Misa created, the Canvas was created with a unique and unrepeatable pool of assets and experiences.

Whether or not skiers in 10, 20, or even 50 years look back and say “remember the year the Blizzard Canvas came out? Those were the good old days,” remains to be seen.

What is certain though, is that by allowing themselves the freedom to create and innovate, Blizzard’s new ski places an emphasis on what’s happening now and what’s to come.

The Canvas 108 will be available at select retailers starting December 15, 2025. The Canvas 100 and 118 will hit stores next season.

Related: A Decade of Different: How Blizzard Tecnica Has Changed Women’s Ski Equipment