The Blizzard LT 80 represents a light weight ski that’s focused on alpine touring, but not a whole lot of resort skiing. These skis are best when paired with a lighter pin tech binding as they love to be used in an uphill capacity with a keen eye for efficiency and long-distance tours. This is a great ski for hut-to-hut trips and other longer tours, even some skimo races in which you are basically running up the hills on skis. There truly is something for everyone out there, and for skiers who crave the climb, whether you’re ripping up a resort lap on dawn patrol or heading out for a day-long tour out west, the Blizzard LT 80 skis are a fantastic choice and a great ski. The Blizzard LT 80 benefits from the implementation of their TrueBlend Tour construction in which the engineers at Blizzard are able to fine-tune and customize the weight and flex of the ski with different length and density of stringers. They use a 2x6 poplar to paulownia blend in the LT 80, so for every two poplar stringers, there’s six paulownia strips, giving these skis a great blend of uphill speed and downhill stability. In the 171, these skis come in at a paltry 1960 grams per PAIR, so each ski is sub-1000 grams, and that’s pretty darn impressive for touring skis these days. For avid uphill runners, check out the Blizzard LT 80 touring skis.