Whitedot's skis for "freetouring" have evolved from their original CarbonLite series of freeride skis to embrace the all-mountain touring demands seen around the World.  Whitedot took their skills at designing and constructing lightweight, agile freeride skis and created their Ronde freetour models.  These freetour skis have a signature aluminum skin clip tail insert, light construction for efficient uphill performance, and a polyvalent design to handle a wide variety of downhill surface conditions and terrain for alpine environments.  The goal is to design a ski to take out all day in the mountains and come back happy since the skis can handle all kinds of situations with reliable performance and predictable behaviors with a spunky fun feel for adventure.

Whitedot's Ronde 96 is indeed a light-feeling, agile and extremely friendly ski for backcountry, and it does a decent job in-bounds for resort iusage as long as you don't expect it to be a hard-charging race carver on the groomers or a rock-solid freight train powerhouse through cut-up conditions after everone has skied out the fresh powder.  It's agility and energetic feel in the tight trees makes it a nice choice when you clamp down your heel in woodsy conditions.  While a ski this light has some speed limitations in intensely hard, rough boilerplate conditions and becomes a bit loose at high-speed, GS-like pressure situations, it hits the mark as being a ski with a huge sweet spot for 95% of what every backcountry skier wants in a sub-100mm waisted ski for.  There are wider skis in the Ronde lineup (110mm and 108 [previous models])  if you adventures dictate a fatter ski with more mass underfoot for your type of skiing and downhill antics.  If you watch the sale page on the WhitedotSkis.com website, you can often find their Ronde series on sale for significant discounts.

See the full review HERE.

Whitedot Ronde 96 mounted with Salomon S-LAB MNC 10 bindings for backcountry