Ski length by weight

Most ski length charts start from your height. Weight tells you more. A heavier skier loads a ski harder, so needs more length and more stiffness to keep the ski bending the way it was designed to. Put your numbers into the calculator above and you get a range with the reasons behind it.

The rule is simple and it is a rule of thumb. The range is centred on 160 cm at 60 kg, with half a centimetre more for every extra kilo. Ability then moves it: shorter for beginners, who benefit from a ski that turns and releases easily, and a few centimetres longer for experts, who want stability at speed. Snow moves it too: shorter for groomed and icy snow, where quick edge changes matter, and longer for powder, where there is more ski to float on. We give a range of four centimetres either side.

Height only caps the range. A ski that runs much past your height plus 5 cm is hard to turn, so if your weight pushes the range beyond that, the calculator holds it back and says so.

The physics column shows what your weight asks of a ski. A beam bends in proportion to its load and the cube of its length, so the stiffness you need goes up with your mass, and up again, steeply, with every extra centimetre. Slide the length above. At 80 kg, you need about 117 N·m² at 140 cm, about 216 at 172 cm and about 340 at 200 cm. The carver archetype has 230 N·m², so it is stiffer than you need at the short end and softer than you need at the long end.

Be clear about what this does not tell you. In the lab, edge hold barely changes with length, so it is not the reason to pick one. What length mostly changes is stability and turn size, and the lab does not model either. That is why the range is a range, and why ability and snow matter as much as the physics.

The stiffness figure is a scaling from a reference skier, 85 kg on a 172 cm carver, not a measurement of any ski. Use it to read the direction. Makers also size differently, so check their chart and, if you can, demo a length either side.