If these concepts are simply beyond your imagination or you think it’s too good to be true MC suggests you, “Trade skis with a friend for a run. Just to compare what you used to ski on to what you have now. I guarantee you will only try this (Spatula) once….”

When the Austrian engineers received the plans, they returned them to Turner and reportedly commented,“’There’s something wrong with the file you sent us. The curves are all wrong. The ski is backward. You need to resend the file.’ Then when I said, ‘It’s what we want.’ They looked at me like, ‘You have to be kidding.’”

Pouring valuable time and money into developing it and was one hurdle, but selling it was another. There were no proven market examples to estimate revenues. It was nothing short of gamble, even if the design was endorsed by the world’s best freeskier.

In the fall of 1994, the Gaffney brothers convinced MC to go west… to a place where skiers carved out legendary careers. Where mountain faces were so extreme and so rowdy they attracted only the world’s best skiers to give it a shot.

Blatant exaggeration and exaggerated boasting revolved around the day’s powder skiing before the topic finally landed on the ‘ultimate ski design.’ Then within a matter of minutes, the secret to powder skiing was sketched out on a bar napkin for all to see….

Where is the Birthplace of Modern Skiing?

According to the International Skiing History Association, the art of skiing dates back some 3,000 years when archaeological evidence across the Eurasian arctic region shows evidence of primitive skis. But surely that doesn’t reflect today’s modern skiing with perfectly groomed slopes and high-speed lifts. So where do you go to find the birthplace of modern (mechanized) skiing?