Bamboo down the piste:On almost every set of skis – beneath all that fibreglass, plastic and steel – is a core of the same material that the very first skis were made of: wood. Sometimes it's poplar, or in the case of the Salomon Shogun, it's bamboo. The Shogun (€540 from great outdoors.ie) is a freeride ski that can cope handily on the groomed piste.
Forget edging techniques and weight transfer: the really difficult thing about skiing is trying to unfold a soggy trail map on an icy chairlift.
Podpro (podpro.ca, €1.99) sells trail maps and mountain guide iPhone applications for 70 resorts in Europe and the US, including Verbier and St Moritz in Switzerland and Val d’Isère in France. The Whistler Blackcomb version includes videos showing the best places to ski at the Canadian resort, as well as inside tips from top snowboarders. Just don’t drop your iPhone in the snow: it’ll become the most expensive mountain map ever.
All these iPhone applications are useless, however, if you can’t see the device. The Gorillamobile (€39.95 at joby.com) lets you balance a 3G phone on any surface. If you’re using GPS to find your way around the city, you could wrap the bendy legs of the Gorillamobile around the handlebars of a bicycle. A custom-designed soft-touch iPhone case attaches directly to the legs of the device, without interfering with the camera or the docking ports.