If you’re a ski history fanatic, you might balk at the title of this article. Let me help. In the 1940s aluminum-laminate skis with a wood core were coming about but didn’t take off until Howard Head jumped in the game. After his own challenge in learning to ski on hickory planks in Vermont, he put his aircraft manufacturing experience working for the Glenn L. Martin Company to use. He wrapped two sheets of aircraft-grade aluminum around a core of honeycomb plywood with plastic sidewalls. Howard called it the Head Standard and launched the Head Ski Company in 1950.

That advantage lasted a little over a decade before advances in fiberglass technology inverted the formula. Metal and wood were put on the inside of the ski, then wrapped and pressed in plastic of various sorts.

The big changes in ski construction over the past 60 years has been the introduction of new blends of different types of wood; internal structures like honeycomb, ribbing, and grooving; as well as new materials such as carbon fiber, rubber, foam, aramid, and other metals—so much so that some skis have more than 50 parts sandwiched together in a big heated press.

Interestingly, it was again someone working in the aircraft manufacturing industry who hit upon the next spark of inspiration—to mill the exact shape of ski desired from a solid block of aerospace-grade 7000-series aluminum in a computer numerical control (CNC) machine.

Brian Rosenberger has worked for years at an aircraft manufacturing company with, coincidentally, lineage back to the Glenn L. Martin Company. On long drives in 2010 from his home in Texas to the snow of Colorado, Rosenberger, with his son and friends, would cover a lot of topics, but the one that Rosenberger kept coming back to was to make a snowboard (his plank of choice at the time) in the way of some airplane parts—out of a single piece of aluminum.

One friend in particular, Ron Chambers, finally got tired of all the talk and said he’d finance the effort to get things started. In 2013, Rosenberger connected with Leif Sunde, founder of Denver Sports Lab, an olympic-level ski tuning shop, to start testing flex qualities of various composite snowboards on the market. By 2014 Rosenberger had some all-aluminum prototypes ready to test. Apparently, the on-snow results were very encouraging.

Over the years more prototypes were made, and the switch was made from snowboards to skis. In July of 2023, Metal1 Skis Corporation (M1 Skis) was formed: Rosenberger as CEO, Chambers as COO, Sana Fathima heading up fundraising and strategy, and Sunde as director of product.

Why Aluminum?

The first question that comes to mind for many is whether the metal associated with soda cans or cooking foil is strong enough to tolerate the rigors of the mountain—especially along the edges, traditionally made of steel.

“Aluminum is harder by an order of magnitude than the ice a ski will encounter,” says Rosenberger. The trade-off in many materials, including metals, is the harder they are, the more brittle they become. Aluminum, according to M1, is hard enough to handle the ice but is ductile enough so it won’t easily chip or shatter when it encounters rocks, even in cold winter conditions. Indeed, some ski manufacturers opt for a softer steel edge when making park-oriented skis because the harder steel is more likely to chip or crack from sliding on the rails in the ski park.

Core shots—when the ski’s core is exposed to moisture and leads to warping or rotting—will never happen, because there is no core, and the aluminum base will deflect rocks way better than any extruded polyethylene base. And, for that reason, no rock will ever rip the edges out.

Speaking of the edges, they’ll never rust. Nor will any part of the ski. And the 7000-series aluminum supposedly holds an edge tune just as well as steel and is just as easy (if not easier) to sharpen and maintain.

What About Wax?

Let’s get back to the base, because the next question is usually about waxing and glide. An aluminum base will not absorb wax. Instead, the base takes a topical wax, much like when waxing a car. These waxes come in the form of liquid or paste and do not need to be heated up to apply.

According to Sunde, who brought his ski tuning experience to M1 when he joined as head of product, when the wax is properly applied on the base (which takes only five to 10 minutes per pair) it lasts just as long as a hot wax on plastic-base skis. That is, three to four full days of skiing (40,000 to 60,000 vertical feet).

But Sunde notes another advantage: “Because the aluminum base is so much harder than a polyethylene base, the grooving structure applied to the base by a professional ski tuning machine will last much longer.” Yes, the aluminum skis can go through the same machines.

Another boon of aluminum is its graceful nature of material failure, if that ever happens. Anyone who has been on a composite ski when it fails will tell you it’s usually catastrophic. The bindings come ripping out, the wood, metal, fiberglass, and other plastics come apart in a sudden and almost explosive way. If by some chance enough stress is put on the aluminum ski, it will first start to show cracks and slowly bend or tear instead of explode.

The performance of the ski as defined by the flex, profile, shape, and weight can also be precisely controlled in the manufacturing process, apparently. Specific ribbing and shaping patterns will give the ski more flex or make it more firm. The desired camber and rocker can be cut right into the shape. The milling process has an accuracy to just smaller than one millimeter, offering incredibly nuanced differences.

Since it takes only a number of hours to mill out a pair of skis, a designer could finish revisions to a model, program it into the CNC machine to mill it out overnight, and have the new skis ready for final prep to get on-snow the next day.

Eco-Friendly Form

Let’s start with the obvious recycling factor. Since it’s all aluminum, the whole ski can just get chucked in the recycling bin. No deconstructing or separating out different materials necessary. Also, in the manufacturing process, all the shards of aluminum milled from the original block can be captured in the CNC machine and recycled. Plus, because it’s a more durable product, M1 says it’s unlikely that the ski will be damaged so badly that it’s no longer usable.

Slightly less obvious is the energy cost of aluminum skis compared to composite skis. While comparing the two kilojoules-to-kilojoules would be nice and clean, it’s not that easy. But let’s just recognize it will be much easier to track the energy needed to go from raw material to finished product of the M1 skis, because, well, it’s just one material. Compare that to figuring out the energy needed to produce the up to 50 different materials used in some composite skis.

Also, for composites there’s quite a bit more waste in the manufacturing process that can’t be recovered or recycled. And when the composite ski has reached its end of life, it either goes in a landfill or becomes an Adirondack chair.

Shop Talk

Surprisingly, the M1 skis do not require ski shops to make any special considerations or adjustments to tune or accommodate any maintenance on the aluminum skis. As mentioned above, the skis can go on the same ski tuning machines made by Reichman or Wintersteiger found in ski shops. For maintenance at home, flat files and gummy stones work like they do on composite skis with steel edges.

For the time being, the M1 skis will come with a Head mounting plate installed and Tyrolia bindings ready for mounting by a certified dealer or service partner. But there are plans in the works for M1 to develop its own mounting plate—a block of plastic that can be drilled to accommodate whatever type of binding you want. There won’t be a need for ski shops to invest in drilling and tapping directly into the aluminum.

Let’s Race

In 2024, M1 skis were submitted to and approved by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) to be used in its ski racing competitions. The M1 team flew to Europe with a number of skis and felt the initial skepticism as they walked into the room with the four members of the Alpine Technical Committee. But as the M1 team unwrapped the skis from the ski bag and the committee members got their first look at the kit themselves, apparently there was a palpable change of mood in the room.

Over the course of the multiday annual FIS meeting, the M1 team showed the skis to the different heads of racing divisions, the people who will be on-site at races. This way if a pair of M1 skis show up at a race, the race directors will know they have been approved for use in any FIS race. Massimo Rinaldi, chairman of the FIS Alpine Committee, said of the M1s: “Seeing the all-aluminum ski in person has definitely changed my perspective. I’m excited to try and ski it. The design and innovation the team have put into it is truly impressive and stands out from anything I’ve seen.”

But if, like Rinaldi, you’re now sold on trying all-aluminum skis for next year’s season, supply and price may be an issue. M1 will have just a limited run available for the fall of 2025 priced on par with equivalent high-end race and other alpine skis. But for the true early adopters, the company has established a waiting list for anyone interested in getting in line.