Unicorn Skis: G3 Empire Carbon 115

 

 

UNICORN: ˈ(yü-nə-ˌkȯrn), something unusual, rare, or unique. The G3 Empire 115 Carbon, produced from 2013-2017: a unicorn ski.

 

Specs

Dimensions: 145-115-126mm

Lengths: 170-190 in 5cm increments (I’m on the 190cm version)

Weight: claimed 1650g in 170cm

Factory Mount point: -10.5cm back from the ski’s true center.

Features: Power Ride construction with Poplar wood core, two sheets of Titanal, and a carbon weave.

Shape: Continuous reverse camber matched to the sidecut radius (19m at 170cm).

 

Unicorn Spotting

Why am I reviewing a ski that you can’t even buy anymore? Good question. This is less a review and more a reflection on an interesting and inventive piece of touring ski history. What’s done once will often be repeated, albeit slightly refined and reiterated, as we try new solutions to increasingly minute ski design problems. Looking back at what has been done, especially in groundbreaking fashion like what G3 did with the Empire 115, I feed my urge to be a student of skiing and learn new things along the way.

And here we have the G3 Empire Carbon 115, which, according to the marketing jargon still hanging around on the internet, is a full reverse camber powder ski targeted at “freeride powder touring and big mountain skiing.” 

I spotted my recently acquired pair of Empire 115s hiding behind a set of bright-banana-yellow DPS Wailer 112 RPs near the back of one of our local consignment stores. (The editor says those planks are still there. Send an email if you want location details. The skis have been drilled, but otherwise, the skis look keen.) Despite the DPS board’s obvious “pick me!” appeal, I was looking for some slightly different ski candy on that day. Tattered looking with ample binding holes drilled into them, the Empires still glimmered as an exotic relic. For the low price of $169, and presumably an all-sales-final policy, the Empires had a new and loving home.

What makes a unicorn ski a unicorn ski? Is it scarcity, specific use applications, outstanding graphics, Internet forum comments bordering on ski lust, or a combination of all of the above? 

With a ski like the Empire 115, I think we can all agree that the ski fits a tight niche. Ultra-light—to a point weight weenies—fully rockered powder skis are rare even now. Flashback to when these skis were first released, and groundbreaking comes to mind. 

 

 

So what exactly is the Empire 115 Carbon? First and foremost, it is a fully rockered, fairly wide powder ski. Fully rockered to the extent that when you place the skis base-to-base, the portion where the skis are actually touching is about as long as the binding mount area. That flat part is totally flat, with zero camber. The tip rocker is a fair amount higher than the tails, and both tip and tails rise from the flat area in a continuous low arc. The recommended binding mount is -10.5cm from the true center, which, on a fully rockered ski, is fairly far back. Most modern fully rockered skis tend to have mount points quite close to the center of the ski to place the skier in the center of the teeter-totter, so to speak. I suspect that G3 had skinning efficiency prioritized with the mount point, as well as the ability to stand neutrally on the skis in deep snow with such a rearward mount point. Either way, driving these from the shins should be quite effective and easy with minimal tip dive, although, if not skied forward enough, this could lead to the sensation of falling out the back door as rockered tails tend to offer less support to back seat driving.

I mounted the Empires with some pieced-together Plum race bindings with adjustment plates—leading to a per/ski weight of 2253 grams on my 190cm models. I plan to ski these using my Scarpa F1 XT boots, but I might try my bigger Tecnica ZGTP boots if I venture into bigger terrain once I get a feel for how they ski.

I have had a handful of tours so far on the Empires, and they definitely feel different than my go-to touring ski, the Moment Wildcat Tour 108, a ski that has a “mustache rocker” or tip and tail rocker with a pretty significant bit of camber between. The rearward mount point on the Empire, combined with the full rocker, certainly encourages a forward stance and high engagement of the core, but after a few dozen turns, I was able to settle into the sweet spot and just cruise effortlessly in the boot top pow I encountered. It was an unusual yet welcome sensation not to have to wheelie the skis to carry speed through low-angle deep snow, a technique adjustment I’ll need to adapt to for certain to optimize the full rocker profile. 

 

 

The more time I spend on the Empires, the more confident I become in the sensations they provide. Loose, easy to pivot, and actually quite stable at high speeds. Soft snow is their forte, and even a modicum of fresh snow is pleasurable. I have yet to get the Empires out on variable 3D snow or in breakable crust, but I am interested to see if the full rocker discourages tail hooking and allows for easier skiing in less-than-ideal conditions. Skinning performance is normal, with plenty of skin grip despite the full rocker and a nice light feel on my feet. 

The largest attribute I am adjusting to is the lack of a stout tail on these skis. When things get rowdy, or I get a bit out of shape, the rocker tail provides less support than I am used to, and it is easy to get tossed pretty far into the back seat. This has led to some loop-outs during testing, i.e., a full wheelie to the point where my skis shoot out in front of me. But this sensation has been reduced as I adjust my skiing style to reflect the ski shape, and it can turn into a useful trait while galloping through wind lips and cruising deep low-angle snow because just subtle weight shifts easily lift the ski tips up and keep momentum going forward.

My questions now pivot towards why G3 developed this ski, how successful it was, why it was discontinued, and whether we will see other brands, or even G3, focus on these hyper-specific quiver slots in the future. A super light, fat, full rocker touring ski has a somewhat narrow use case but is undeniably enticing, especially on those “too deep” days we get here in the PNW where anything steep enough to actually ski is off-limits due to high avalanche hazard, and we are relegated to low angle tree mand meadow skipping. 

In search of answers, I reached out to Cam Shute, a former engineer at G3, to get an inside look at the development of the Empire 115 and hear the Empire 115 story from the horse’s mouth. 

 

 

***

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

Barry Wicks: What is the process that happens when you’re going to design a new ski and what does the process look like for making that ski come to life?

Cam Shute: Well, at G3 at the time, we would start with a product brief. We would look at a segment of the market, pick a customer, or a condition, and we’d really be trying to solve a certain problem where we saw a hole in the market, where there was a need not being fulfilled. And at that time, there were a lot of fat skis, but not fat touring skis. 

Up in BC [G3 is Located in Vancouver, BC], it’s pretty similar to the Pacific Northwest. We’re doing a lot of skiing in deep snow, but human-powered skiing, so we really felt like the market was lacking light, fat skis. Remember, this was pretty early on, it was 2013 2014, so that’s key.

At the time, you’re competing against skis that are 1800 to 1900, or even 2000+ grams in 185 length, and we’re aiming for around 1500 and-a-bit grams. So, it was a marked difference. That was the real goal. It’s like if we’re touring, and we’re putting all this work into skiing pow, let’s at least make it fun to ski and awesome to ski. Those were the parameters we worked within when we were developing that ski.

 

Wicks: You were saying that the first iteration was really wide, like 127mm underfoot?

Shute: Yeah, that was the start. We tried to start a more freeride oriented line, but you know, our DNA and our roots are in touring. And skis are probably one of the most unhealthy business segments in the industry—it’s so competitive, everybody and their dog does it. And we found that the freeride stuff didn’t really resonate with our core customers. And so we made the ski light, we made it in carbon, and we put it on a bit of a dimension-diet. Then it really resonated, and, yeah, we developed a little bit of a cult following. I believe G3 will still even run that mold for the athletes every once in a while.

 

Wicks: That’s pretty cool. It’s interesting because the first time I actually came across the ski, one of the ski guides I worked with was using it, and I just remember him getting off the helicopter with these crazy light, full-rockered skis. I started talking to him about the skis and he was so pumped. He was like, “Oh, yeah, these things are awesome. They don’t make them anymore, but they’re super light and awesome for trail braking because they’re so light and floaty, and they ski pow better than anything else out there.”

It was fun to have that experience as my first introduction to this ski, and then I actually saw a pair on the used wall at the shop. I was like, “Oh, man, I gotta pick those up.”

But let’s go back to the design and why it was discontinued. Do you think that it was too much of a niche product? Or do you think it was just the evolution of the design that moved away from being such a specialized powder tool? What was the end of a line for that ski?

Shute: So when the Empire was discontinued, which is a bit of a bummer because product wise, the ski is killer, we could have kept refining it, and that is basically what I did when I designed the Slayer 114, but we went even lighter. 

You have to be really careful on a backcountry ski that you actually skin with. If it is a full rocker ski, like the Empire, what we tried to do is keep it really just almost close to flat, rather than, you know, in that era, a lot of the reverse camber skis, like the K2 Pontoon, and stuff like that, were just bananas, you’d have zero skinning grip whatsoever. 

And when you take camber away, if you’re traversing icy sections, the ski gets hard to hold an edge with when you’re skinning as well. So that’s one of the reasons why we introduced a very small little camber pocket on the Slayer. It stayed really loose and surfy, but we would have improved the grip on the skin track.

The other thing was some of our athletes who go really hard and ski really fast and jump big things want a slightly flatter tail—which you see in the Slayer—so they wouldn’t wheelie the ski when landing. So, you know, there’s always room for improvement. But I’ll go on the record and say that I think the Empire is the best ski that G3 ever made. That thing was a legendary ski and very ahead of its time.

 

Wicks: I come from the bike world. I worked in bike development a lot with Kona bikes, and I raced for them for a long time. And we definitely had some models that, from the athlete perspective, we had these bikes that were just super, super cool. But that didn’t always translate into sales. And so it’s always hard to hear, “Man, we really love this bike, but it’s just not as popular and selling as much, so we aren’t going to make it anymore.” Those bikes were sort of the cult classics from back in the day, and I feel like this ski is the same sort of thing. The people that know, they really love it. 

Shute: You know, that’s interesting. Everything in ski design basically has been done. And everything else is just sales or marketing. We spent so much time on that ski because, actually, the Empire was the first ski we designed in-house without any outside consultant help. And we didn’t want to screw it up. So we went to town to test all the theories, we measured countless skis, and we really put our time into that thing, like matching the rocker to the side cut. It was definitely a product of love. And it took a whole lot of time to get it right. So I’m stoked that it’s getting a little bit of recognition or, you know, a nod. That was a cool product from the past. 

 

Wicks: At times, it’s as if there’s not really much new to say about skis that hasn’t been said before or isn’t just rehashing the marketing copy. It’s fun to look at this unique and interesting stuff. Examining this ski on the timeline of ski development, the whole fat, fully rockered thing, the idea of matching side cut to rocker*, is cool. Is it maybe Armada that tends to get credited with that idea when they came out with the JJ ski? Applying that design philosophy and thinking about applying it to a backcountry touring specific type of ski is super cool.

*The relationship between the rocker and side cut when you match up the profile like on the Empire is that as you lay the skis over on edge, the rocker engages along the same path as the sidecut, meaning there’s less hookiness in the tip or tail resulting in a smooth transition from sliding the ski to engaging the edge

Shute: I still remember the first first trade show where we launched that ski. I remember Hoji coming over to the booth and checking it out. And because there just aren’t that many fully rockered skis that you could go touring on, he thought it was super cool. And so it was a cool year, he came over and checked it out. And then we went over, and I think he had just launched that crazy Dynafit binding the Beast. And he walked us through that. It was a neat time in gear development.

 

Wicks: That’s a great anecdote. It’s interesting that all of those developments happened simultaneously. My final thought on this ski is this: I picked up the pair I found, and they probably had at least three mounts on them, and I was like, “Oh, man, I don’t know if I’m able to get my bindings on there without a bunch of overlap.” But it actually worked out really well. I was able to use some existing holes for the toe piece, and it was fine. I think a lot of people get scared away from a ski that’s got so many mounts. But I’m just going for it and seeing what happens, especially on a ski as special as this one. 

Shute: For sure, I mean, I’m a ski and binding developer. So I’ll sometimes just have to shift my binding forward because we didn’t nail the mount position. And if I’m testing it as a touring ski, I’m doing it in touring bindings, not Alpine bindings that are really easy to bump around, right? So people are terrified of that. I typically have at least two hole patterns in most of my skis and just do a good mount. You know, if you make a mess of it, put in some inserts, and you can revive a lot of skis that have a compromised mount pattern by just…you could throw in a quiver killer or any other kind of insert. People very much treat skis like they’re disposable, like once they’ve been touched or mounted a single time, they’re just garbage, which is, you know, that’s something that’s gonna change in the future if we care about the world. 

 

Wicks: I think that’s why these skis were so cheap. This super sweet pair of G3s is not that old—I just bought them for $169 simply because people were scared of all the holes in them. But I’m all for it. It’s really fun to be able to find such a cool ski for such a low price just because of something like that. 

Shute: Full thrift score.

 

Wicks: Now I’m on the hunt. I’ve got the itch to find all these other old skis like the Volkl BMT 94, a fully rockered, pretty narrow ski…stuff like that is very interesting to me.

Shute: An iconic design.

***

So, there you have it. An interesting ski with an interesting story. As I get more days on my pair, trying my best not to tear the bindings off, my personal discovery and investigation of full rocker will be ongoing. In these days of boom or bust snow cycles, with every storm ending in rain and storms so big the avalanche hazard goes through the roof, so all we can ski is hippy meadow pow; I am excited to ski on the “best powder touring ski ever made.”