Testing the world’s first battery-powered skis
A Swiss start-up aims to do for ski-touring what e-bikes did for cycling. James Stewart gets an exclusive preview
There’s a school of thought among certain skiers that leans towards the puritanical. The pleasure of a descent, it argues, is earned through the penance of a manual ascent — walking uphill using textured skins stuck to the base of the skis, so that they slide forwards but not back. No ski lifts for these ski-touring idealists. You have to “earn your turns”.
Each to their own, I think. In front of me rises a slope unblemished by footprints, let alone ski tracks. It’s steep — under normal circumstances you’d find an alternative route or traverse rather than slog straight up. Instead, I squeeze triggers on each ski pole. Lights on my skis switch from red to green and, with the next step, I swish uphill with little more effort than sliding across the flats. Earn my turns? Maybe next time.
I’m in Verbier for an exclusive preview of E-Skimo, the world’s first powered skis, just launched after five years’ research and development. It was bound to happen eventually. With e-bikes ubiquitous and even hikers strapping on powered exoskeletons, it was only a matter of time before someone developed e-skis for touring. His name is Nicola Colombo.
It’s tempting to see Colombo as an eccentric — motorised skis have a Wallace and Gromit wackiness about them. Then you learn that he has a successful background as a software and technology entrepreneur, as well as co-founding Italian Volt electric motorbikes, building the prototype himself and setting a distance record riding it from Shanghai to Milan in 2013.
In 2020, while many of us tinkered with sourdough recipes during pandemic lockdowns, Colombo finessed a design for electrically powered skis. “There was a spike in ski touring because resorts were closed,” he explains. “My friends came out with me for the first time and found it too intense. They complained it took forever to get up, then only two minutes to descend. That’s when the idea sparked.”
On a rudimentary level, E-Skimo is a pair of freeride skis, each with a battery at the front and motor at the back. (For readers of a technical bent, each motor delivers up to 850W, while the lithium batteries are each rated 246Wh.) A “traction skin” feeds around the motor’s drive wheel, stretches along the top of the ski (beneath the boot) then passes through a hole at the front, running back along the base and returning to the motor through another hole at the rear. It thus forms a sort of looped conveyor belt, roughly in the middle two-thirds of the ski, which pushes the ski forwards.
There’s also a more conventional adhesive skin, known as the “ascent skin”, which users stick to the base first. Its tip has the usual textured fibres stopping the ski slipping backwards but the mid-section is smooth, to sit beneath the rotating traction skin and stop it polishing all the wax off the base of the ski.
When you reach the top of your climb, you unclip the batteries and motors (and stow them in a backpack), snap in plugs for the holes, and E-Skimo transforms into standard downhill skis. Sound straightforward? It really isn’t.
The idea is not to stand motionless, as on an escalator, while the skis carry you uphill. Rather, they are designed to assist the normal rhythm and motion of ski touring — so sensors note when you lift your heel, and the motors begin to apply power, adjusting it over the course of each stride. As with e-bikes, there are various modes, Eco, Climb and Boost, which change power levels from 30 to 60 then 100 per cent respectively. When I say I’m happiest on blue pistes and flattering reds, Colombo advises I stick to Eco. Fair call. He adds: “I’m thinking of changing the mode names to Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced.”
Modes are changed via buttons on the poles but you’re unlikely to switch. An accelerometer and gyroscope monitor terrain — the steeper things get, the shorter the skis’ movement forward. In addition, clever software engineering allows the skis to communicate via Bluetooth while AI assesses snow conditions. “The same route done 30 minutes apart may require totally different traction,” Colombo explains. “Power settings change according to a slip factor calculation. The amount of data involved is crazy.”
Do we really want e-skis, though, I wonder as we soar over snow-dusted pines in a gondola from Verbier. To this occasional skier, touring’s appeal is its blend of escapism and cardio workout. E-Skimo seems to negate both.
Colombo points out that his heartbeat is 125bpm whether touring normally or using E-Skimo. The difference is that he can ascend 700 metres per hour under power instead of 300. The website promises climbs can be four times faster for a third less effort, so you can “conquer every ascent . . . keep your energy focused on the thrill ahead . . . and turn every descent into an unforgettable rush of adventure”.
La Chaux, a high pasture in the Verbier ski area, doesn’t feel especially adventurous on the beautiful Sunday morning of our test. On the snow-covered road where we begin, couples amble with their dogs. A group taking a cross-country ski lesson glides past, the instructor tutting as we attach the motors. “C’est grave,” he says with impressive disdain. “To ski with motors is not organically human.”
I clip into the bindings while Colombo fiddles with poles. Ten minutes later, he’s still fiddling. A flat pole battery. The motors have a run-time of about three hours or roughly 1,500 metres of vertical gain on one charge (though it depends on factors including temperature, type of snow and weight of user). The pole batteries last for four hours. But no pole power means no motors.
While Colombo returns to Verbier for charged poles, the FT photographer marches me unmotorised across surrounding slopes. The Corbassière glacier winks silver-blue across the valley and the Mont Blanc massif is a crown of white peaks beneath a cobalt sky. I imagine how enjoyable the experience might be were I not dragging 2.8kg of battery and motor on each ski. Still, the view’s beautiful when I get my breath.
Colombo returns with semi-recharged poles. Except now the motors aren’t firing. It turns out the problem is my boots — they are calibrated for Colombo’s, and the sensors don’t recognise when my soles lift. The app to change this is on his phone and, inevitably, his phone is in Verbier. We swap boots — same size, fortunately — and I finally step forwards.
It’s an unnerving thing to feel a ski move without your input. As each heel lifts, there’s a thrum of motors and rotating skins and the skis slide forwards around 80cm. All the effort is outsourced. When the photographer asks if I can attempt that steep slope, passers-by stop to watch. If not entirely effort-free, it’s literally no sweat. I am a ski-touring Terminator, undaunted, unstoppable. At least until the batteries drain.
I climb at a decent clip beneath drinkers on a mountain restaurant terrace. After a short ascent up the edge of the piste, we cut away on to another track, which loops towards an amphitheatre of jagged peaks. The Bec des Rosses, venue for the Xtreme Verbier freeride event, rises like a monstrous pyramid.
It’s an impressive sight but I’m distracted by the motors — their whirr feels intrusive compared with the crunch of snow and creak of boots. I expect that will disappear with time, and the satisfaction of finding a rhythm on an ascent remains unchanged. It’s certainly easier. While I had laboured up this incline on skins the day before, we breeze up to a celebrated mountain refuge, the Cabane Mont Fort.
Inside its wooden cocoon, Colombo enthuses about E-Skimo’s potential. It’s for “the friend of a ski tourer who is not as fast, the chalet owner who has to go up and down, ski tourers who want to go further or older people who want to get back to skiing”. Also, I suspect, for skiers who like gadgets.
Regular app updates will tweak the algorithm as real-world data floods in, Colombo continues. Users will be able to create bespoke power modes. There’ll be an E-Skimo community: “I’ll go for a spin with customers. We’re all different in how we use technology.”
Terrific, but what about those batteries? Colombo argues that two hours’ touring is enough for most people. But what if you fancy a full day on the slopes? The short answer is to find an accommodating lodge for lunch — pole batteries recharge in 45 minutes, motor batteries in two hours. The long answer is a potential update that will allow recharges via a powerbank. Failing that, I guess you could always clip on old-fashioned skins.
We detach the motors and batteries, snap in the infills and ski down to La Chaux in minutes. This so-so skier can’t tell the difference from standard skis. With batteries low, I take a ski lift up to a longer piste to be sure. Nope, identical.
Can E-Skimo ever win over advanced skiers? Tom Crothall, sales manager at Mountain Air, a specialist Verbier ski shop, thinks “hardcore skiers” will resist just as cycle purists were hostile to the first e-bikes (one writer on Cyclist magazine called them a “betrayal”). E-Skimo is a similar “breakthrough product”, Crothall says. “I’m a pure touring guy, but like e-bikes this enables people to get out in nature and go places they wouldn’t otherwise go.” Colombo thinks “haters” see E-Skimo as a threat: “It means more people. When we ski, we pretend the mountain is our own.”
I’m torn. After the battery issues on this test, I can understand why purists might rail against motorised skis. Equally, E-Skimo let me pack far more into an afternoon than I would usually manage. The mountains belong to everyone, Colombo had said at one point, the thing was to enjoy them responsibly. You’d hope both purists and battery-assisted tourers could agree on that.