2021 Black Crows Camox Birdie

The Camox Birdie women's skis from Black Crows are playful, versatile all-mountain skis. There's some obvious freestyle influence in their design as the skis use a twin tip, dual rockered shape with a progressive flex that gets softer as you reach the tips and tails. That shape and flex pattern allows for a lot of playfulness and even some significant capabilities as a park ski, but the ski performs just as well around the rest of the mountain too. It's not the stiffest, most powerful ski, but camber underfoot and the poplar wood core does retain some good stability and good edge grip too, especially for a twin tip ski that's this playful. The 97 mm waist width gives the ski a great feel in softer snow conditions, helping it to not get bogged down even in deeper, heavier conditions. On the other hand, it's not too wide, so it still feels pretty quick edge to edge and responsive to skier input.

Kelly Carroll tested the 168.1 cm length and loved it! How do we know? She said so! "I loved this ski! They were incredibly versatile, moving with me through the bumps and unbelievably playful. They're begging you to rip down the run. Balancing on them was second nature." The Camox Birdie is definitely an intuitive ski. As long as you're of the advanced intermediate level on up, you'll find that when you get on it, the ski basically does whatever you want without needing too much skier input. Kelly gave the Camox Birdie some really high scores, including 5 out of 5 for stability, playfulness, forgiveness, and overall impression. The only score that dropped lower than 4 out of 5 was for torsional stiffness/edge grip, which isn't tremendously surprising as that's not really the focus of the ski. "The edges didn't hold as much as I wanted, but if you're not bringing them to the mountain solely to carve on groomers, you'll love them for everything else." Kelly makes a great point. If you're looking for high level carving performance, there are better options, but those skis don't touch the versatility of the Camox Birdie.

Catherine Ferguson is the type of skier we expect to see on a pair of Camox Birdie skis. She has a freestyle background, an alpine race background, and these days can be found darting around the mountain enjoying every aspect it has to offer. For that application, the Camox Birdie is excellent. "These skis were a lot of fun, especially on a day like today (firm in the morning, soft in the afternoon). They could hold their own on firmer snow conditions, but felt super comfortable when the snow got softer at the bottom. I would recommend this for an aggressive all mountain skier." We think Catherine hit the nail on the head in her description, although we would add that we don't necessarily think you need to be the world's most aggressive skier to enjoy them. The progressive flex pattern lets a less aggressive skier benefit from them as well. Sam Purnell found similar versatility as Catherine, and for Sam, none of her scores dropped below 4 out of 5! "Really sturdy fat skis. Would be awesome in powder. Really playful, and great on groomers too. Tested on fast, hard packed groomers and a little woods skiing too!" Both Catherine and Sam tested the 168.1 cm length.

The Camox Birdie is a distinctly playful all-mountain ski. It's maneuverable in tricky terrain and it handles softer snow conditions really well too. Anyone with a bit of a freestyle background will certainly love them, but we think other skis will too. If you're not concerned with having the best edge grip in the world, and care more about versatility for un-groomed terrain and softer snow, it's a fantastic choice. Black Crows ends their description of it with "Creativity for everybody on all types of terrain." That's pretty vague, but it also makes sense. The Camox Birdie is the type of ski that feels like it adapts to your own personal skiing style, and feels right at home in any and all conditions.