Is Kye Petersen Teasing A Secret Völkl Freeride Ski In This Spy Shot?

We have no official specs on this new ski, presumably still in its prototype phase, but we can glean some design details from all the imagery we've seen. Firstly, it looks huge. I'm going to hazard a guess that it's well north of 120mm underfoot. Secondly, based on how Petersen skis it and some grainy side-profile images, it's quite likely reverse cambered, or at least really rockered.

While Petersen is a master of switch skiing, and has clearly spent a lot of time riding backwards on this ski, the mount point and shape look very directional. Interestingly, Petersen has been riding Marker's Comp race binding instead of the popular Jester freeski bindings, perhaps he prefers the lower stand height and higher DINs available? Fun fact: a version of the Comp binding goes up to a 30 DIN!

Shape-wise, the prototype skis look like surfboards, with a massive tip featuring lots of rocker and taper, and a pintail shape that even has a squared-off swallowtail at the end. In fact, the shape reminds me a lot of what Petersen made working with 4FRNT: the 2016-era Kye 110 and 120.

Petersen is no stranger to ski design, having spent much of his career working closely with iconic brands in the industry to produce ski shapes that cater to his very unique style of skiing. The now 35-year-old got his professional start at a very early age, following in the footsteps of his father, Trevor Peterson, an early pioneer of big-mountain skiing in British Columbia and Alaska who was killed in an avalanche in Chamonix in 1996. The younger Petersen was brought up in the same world as his father, a story chronicled in the excellent book The Edge of Never, and a 2009 film of the same name. He has produced and skied in his own video series The Sacred Grounds, and appeared in numerous iconic feature films like All.I.Can, Into the Mind, Numinous, Valhalla, Under the Influence, Light The Wick, Lost and Found, and more.  

Since his early days, Petersen has designed products for brands like 4FRNT (including cult-favorite freeride touring skis like the Kye 110 and 120), and his own short-lived personal brand Kye Shapes (made in collaboration with Pemberton's Foon Skis, a custom ski manufacturer run by Johnny "Foon" Chilton, a close friend and ski partner of late Peterson).

So far, neither Petersen no Völkl have responded to questions about the new skis, so that's all we know for now. Based on Petersen's recent ski antics, though, we're really excited to see these turn into a production ski.