The Cathedrals are our go to shape for the practically minded who want a daily driver in a Coastal climate. With enough surface area to stay on top but narrow enough to get an edge on firm snow, the rocker tip, camber underfoot and low rise appeals to skiers who enjoy a more traditional shaped ski. If you like to set the first track with nice even wiggles for your friends to spoon, this is the ski for you.
The Cathedrals are the most time tested shape in our lineup. Practical in every sense, these skis naturally lend themselves to a nice round turn shape. Rocker tip and camber underfoot float through the pow and grip in the firm stuff both skiing down and on the skintrack. A slight tail rise allows an easy turn release and makes for a nice falling leaf when needed. Without an excessive twintip, these skis can be ridden a little on the short end of your length spectrum. The flat-ish tail also sticks in the snow better when making snow anchors for climbing or winter camping
The Cathedrals shape comes standard in two different constructions, Birch and Carbon. With a nice local hardwood core, the birch Cathedrals are slightly heavier than their carbon sibling. Also notable is that the Birch Cathedrals sport wood sides along with fiberglass reinforcements above and below the core. Besides looking and skiing great, this production style allows us to create significantly less microplastic waste, saving us trips to the dump and knowing that we are treading a little lighter on the wild places we love. We’ve built and ridden skis with wooden sidewalls for over a decade and have confidence they won’t leave you stranded. We offer these skis at a lower price to encourage folks to support a more sustainable way of doing things, we think they are bad ass and hope you do too.
While the Birch construction certainly has its perks, when lightweight matters the Carbon Cathedrals start to make a lot more sense. A local spruce core is harvested sustainably and wrapped in high tech materials to create a light, strong, ski thats super capable in the mountains. For long wilderness trips or quick laps after work, we often find ourselves stepping into the Carbon Cathedrals when we head into the hills.
With artwork by Klara Maisch, featuring perhaps the most bomb diggity ridge line we can see from the front door of our shop, these skis are undoubtedly the best looking on the mountain.
Additional information
Construction
Birch, Carbon
Length
162, 169, 177, 184
Specs
Turning Radius: 15.5m
Tip Rocker: 41cm
Camber: 2mm
Tail Rocker: 22cm
Length
Dimensions
Weight Carbon
Weight Birch
162cm
136x106x119mm
1376g/ski
1515g/ski
169cm
138x108x120mm
1518g/ski
1650g//ski
177cm
139x110x122mm
1610g/ski
1770g/ski
184cm
141x112x124mm
1732g/ski
1820g/ski
190cm
143x114x126mm
1820g/ski
1936g/ski
Construction Styles
The Cathedrals come standard in two different construction styles, Birch and Carbon. For other options, visit our custom ski page.
Birch
Features local birch wood core and sides, fiberglass reinforcements
Fairweathers with significantly less plastic waste and fewer toxic chemicals are also the most affordable construction style! The most significant difference between this and other constructions is that the sides are wood instead of plastic. At Fairweather, we’ve been building skis and boards with wood sides for over a decade and are so confident in this construction style that we are going to share with you the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good:
Wood is an organic porous material that forms a stronger bond to epoxy (the crucial glue that holds all skis together) than plastic. This virtually eliminates the chances for one of the most common methods of failure; de-lamination between plastic sidewalls and the fiber composites. The strength and dampening properties of a wood core are what makes all our sticks feel lively. By essentially extending the wood core the full width of the skis, you end up with approximately 10% more of this material than non-fiberous boring old plastic. The production of skis with plastic sides uses toxic chemicals and exposes our workers and environment to these hazards. Machining plastic into the shape of a ski creates microplastics, which easily become airborne, are collected with an industrial vacuum and mixed with waste wood core material, all of which must be taken to the local waste collection facility and eventually shipped to the other side of the world where who knows what happens to it. Large industrial ski factories generate hugggge amounts of this waste! Were proud to be one of the few companies to offer this type of construction and remove this step from the equation. Our clean waste wood chips are donated to an organic farm, local duck enthusiasts, or used for landscaping around our home and shop.
The Bad:
Wood is an organic porous material that will eventually decompose! We have yet to see this type of failure on any of our skis but it is surely possible if neglected. If you have a propensity to collide with hidden rocks under the snow on a regular basis, or love to smash your skis together for whatever reason, birch sided skis also have lower impact strength than plastic. If you find yourself skiing in a soggy location like, ahem, Southeast Alaska, Birch tech skis should probably not be stored outside in the elements when not in use. The hardest environment we have found for wood skis has been multi week ski trips off the ocean. The salt water environment causes the edges to rust and stain the wood sides an ugly blotchy color. Our busy lifestyle means that skis often get left in the rocket box or out in the snow and rain occasionally during the ski season. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it can get ugly.
The Ugly:
The most common issues we see with wood sided skis are cosmetic. Our standard wood sidewalls are birch, the hardest wood locally available. When your left birch ski meets the hardened steel edge of your right ski at high speed, it can leave a mark. The good news about the ugly is that most of this cosmetic damage is quick to repair, or simply left untreated will wear to an aesthetically pleasing classic patina. For those who are hard on gear but still want to be soft on the environment, we also offer a premium wood option (more details below) at an additional charge, where the sides of the skis are wrapped in whatever our tropical hardwood du jour is. Please follow this link for more information on the care, maintenance, and refinishing of wood sidewalled skis.
Fairweathers built with Birch construction still use two layers of triaxial fiberglass reinforcements on the top and bottom of the wood core as per industry standard and the bottoms are sintered P-tex with hardened steel edges.
Carbon
Features local spruce core, metal binding mount, fiberglass and carbon fiber reinforcements
A pound on your feet is like five on your back! Weight savings on gear are crucial if you are shooting for big alpine objectives. Heck, most of the staff at Fairweather are aging millennials who rely on ultralight gear just to keep up with the youngin’s on an afternoon lap. Whatever your reason for going carbon, you have likely realized that type A fun on the skintrack is directly proportional to the amount of weight you are lugging around on your feet. To reach our weight goals, we combine carbon fiber cloth with fiberglass, a locally harvested spruce core, a metal binding reenforcement, and polyurethane sidewalls for a ski thats light on the skintrack but still ample and durable enough to handle the Alaskan mountains. You can expect an extended service life when you add carbon to your Fairweathers (carbon fiber retains its flex properties longer than fiberglass), so when investing in an ultralight setup, you can have confidence that it is BartTech approved!
Artwork by Klara Maisch
The art on these skis is by Klara Maisch. We first met Klara around the same time we started building skis. She burst into our workshop, and in a blur of enthusiasm busted out an paint job for her first set of sticks that knocked our socks off. She regularly shreds hard with a backpack full of painting supplies and a canvas strapped to the outside. We’ve been honored to collaborate with her ever since.
More info on Klara and her most up to date work can be found at her website, https://www.klaramaisch.com
Touring Bindings
We now offer bindings on our skis! For ski touring, we recommend Dynafit bindings as they have the longest track record and have proven themselves as reliable as anything in our harsh environment. Though we try to keep a variety of bindings in stock, styles, colors and inventory fluctuate and their stock quantity is not necessarily reflected in our webstore. If we don’t have your selected binding in stock, we will contact you to make arrangements for an exchange. We recommend either :
Dynafit Radical ST 10
The industry standard tech binding. When Dynafits patent ran out a few years ago on this binding, most other binding manufacturers jumped on the opportunity to copy it. Some succeeded, others failed, we love this binding because of its simplicity and combination of strength, weight ($535g) and brakes.
Dynafit ST Rotation 10
Seems to be Dynafits improvement on the ST Radical 10. Features a toe piece that rotates to release for safety. Adds a bit of weight (599g) which is a small price if it prevents a knee injury!
Dynafit TLT Speedfit
The TLT Speedfit Binding is a 310-gram, minimalistic ski touring binding that combines the characteristics of a lightweight, ascent binding with the advantages of a classic ski touring binding. The heel unit can be adjusted to release values from 5 to 10. The TLT Speedfit binding has less length adjustment compared to the ST models, weighs less and doesn’t include brakes.
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