There’s wave skiing and there’s wave skiing. The former has been around for awhile and would more appropriately called wave sledding or luging, because you sit as you ride. But the latter truly is skiing–and it’s sick. Mike Douglas and Cody Townsend spent the last year incubating their idea to take the best of snow into the best of water, and this footage from their recent trip to Maui is the result.

The Adventure Life caught up with Douglas yesterday. Here’s what he had to say…

Whose idea was it?
It’s been burning in the back of our minds for years, but we came up with the idea at a Salomon party in Tignes, France, in October ‘08. Cody and I were standing around chatting with a few other guys from the company who surf and someone mentioned that it would be cool to try and ski on waves. Right away the lightbulbs went off in our heads. With Salomon Freeski TV gaining momentum, we thought that it might be possible to pull together enough budget to make it happen.

What was your first impression on your first wave? Was it what you expected? What surprised you?
We were definitely nervous on the first day out. Would it work? Would we destroy our knees when we wiped out? Would we drown? Luckily, all our fears were put to rest after the first couple of waves and we were relieved that we were actually going to make it happen. It pretty much worked as we expected.

How does it feel compared to snow skiing?
It feels like skiing in deep slush. The bigger the waves get, the faster you go, and the more it feels like real skiing. It’s very different from surfing, but being a surfer is important because you need to know how to read waves or you’ll get your ass kicked real fast.

It looked like you guys were going pretty fast. Could you control your speed?
The whole time we were trying to go as fast as we could. It was easy to slow down, but tough to speed up. A change in ski design would help us go much faster.

Were there any tubes? The waves looked pretty crumbly.
There were no tubes on the waves we were surfing. We were limited to where we could go because you can’t just show up at any break with a jet ski and say ‘get out of the way’. After two days we knew that tube riding was very possible and I would say it would even be easier on skis than on a board. In the end we only got out four days thanks to tough conditions. I’d love to have a go on a barreling wave.

What’s it like having two skis out there instead of one? Was it hard to control them?
Having two skis on wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. The toughest thing was getting used to have such wide skis on. It was hard to slash turns because you really had to have a wide stance. Add to that the wind chop we were dealing with, and the fact that the shape of the skis was wrong, and it made for a bit of a challenge. Each day we made good improvements in our ability, but I still feel like we are just beginners trying figure out how it all works.

Did the bindings release? What was your DIN?
The reason we used ski boots and binding was first, for safety, and second, for performance. We tried a bunch of different boot and binding systems and found that we could get the ski bindings off the fastest and most consistently. We skied our DIN low, around 7 – 8. Ski boots actually float in water and from a performance standpoint they are light-years ahead of what is being offered by the water ski world.

Where were you on Maui?
We were on the North Shore of Maui, based around the Paia/Hookipa area.

Were there any surfers around? If so, what was their response?
Aside from simply pulling off the project, I’m most happy about how well we were received by the surf community on Maui. Cody and I were definitely worried about that before we went over. The response was 99% positive and we were well respected by just about everyone over there. The people on Maui are pretty open-minded when it comes to things like this and they were stoked to see us try to do something new.

Where were the skis built? How many pairs did you take?
We chose two pair of water ski wake skis and we brought a pair made for us by Jason Starr of Starr Surf Skis, who is trying to make a business out of wave skiing. Each pair of skis had good things and bad. None of them were made to take the pounding we put them through. If we ever do it again we would make some skis that would be quite different from what we used.

What’s the next evolution in wave-ski design? More float? Less? Rocker?
It’s tough to put into words the attributes that would make a good wave ski, because we’d borrow design ideas from everything we’ve tried. The shape would likely be quite different from what we used.

Does Salomon have any plans to develop them commercially?
Salomon has no plans to make any product for skiing on waves. We are very thankful that they were open-minded enough to back us on this project. One thing that surprised me a bit when I got home, is that I’ve found my experience gained from skiing on waves, is changing the way I do R+D with new Salomon powder skis. I feel like I’m approaching it with a more open mind, and that’s always a good thing.

When’s the next session?
When Cody and I left Maui, we gave all our boots and bindings to Dave Kalama. He’s really fired up on the idea, and we’d love to see him and the boys over there take the ball and run with it.

Tagged as: skiing, surfing