A handmade Colorado ski gets put through its paces on hardpack, groomers, and 2,200 vertical feet of early-morning corduroy.
First Runs
Colorado is having a drought of a winter. That fact announced itself at Copper Mountain almost immediately – thin cover on the upper mountain, exposed rock lurking beneath anything ungroomed, and a cold that had locked the snowpack into a surface somewhere between hardpack and stubbornness. Not ideal conditions for a ski review. But pretty good conditions for finding out what a ski is actually made of.
The skis in question were a pair of Meier Wranglers, demo’d courtesy of the brand. A 185cm all-mountain ski handmade roughly 75 miles east, in a Denver shop on South Broadway where the cores are milled, the layers pressed, and the finished product skied by the people who built it. That last part matters more than it might sound. You can feel it underfoot.
Given the thin cover and the fact that these were demo skis on loan, the first order of business was staying low and staying smart. The Sierra lift area and Super Bee offered some steeper terrain worth exploring, but the bumps were off the table. Thin snow and aging knees made that an easy call. What remained was hardpack, groomers, and a mission to hit early-morning corduroy before the crowds got to it first.
Getting Acquainted
The Wrangler runs 94mm underfoot. My normal frontside skis measure 82mm. That 12mm difference is noticeable from the first turn – it shifts the geometry, changes the timing of edge engagement, and makes itself known when you’re pushing speed. The first couple of runs were an honest adjustment period.
Turns to the left, with my dominant right foot driving, felt comfortable from the start. Edge hold was clean and the ski went where it was pointed. Turns to the right were a different story early on. The edge of the left ski was sliding out a touch, not holding the way I was accustomed to. That turned out to be a skier technique issue rather than a ski issue. A wider platform asks for more deliberate pressure across the whole foot, especially through the ball of the foot and the big toe on the inside edge. Once I started consciously committing my left foot into each turn the same way my right side was doing it naturally, the Wrangler locked in and stopped sliding.
That adjustment period is worth understanding. A softer, more forgiving ski might have masked the imbalance and let it go unnoticed. The Wrangler asked for proper technique and rewarded it when it got there. For a skier paying attention, that kind of honest feedback is genuinely useful.
Michelle Kidd Eynon, who handles marketing at Meier, describes the Wrangler’s design intent in a way that matches what the mountain confirmed. The goal, she explains, was to build something that felt quicker edge-to-edge and more versatile across firm conditions than the wider Big Hoss, without losing that ski’s personality. Dropping it 10mm underfoot made it more accessible to a broader range of skier sizes and ability levels, she says, while keeping the stability and confidence. On the hardpack over President’s Day at Copper, that balance was exactly as she described it.
When It All Came Together
The second morning was when the Wrangler really started to show what it could do. American Eagle lift, then the Excelerator, and from the top any number of long sustained runs down – Copperopolis or Partmigan into Main Vein or Bittersweet. Two thousand two hundred vertical feet, top to bottom, with the morning corduroy still intact and the mountain mostly to ourselves.
At 50-plus miles per hour, the Wrangler stays composed in a way that encourages you to push rather than back off. The 134-94-118 sidecut lays out long, flowing arcs without demanding constant correction – once you’re committed to a turn, the ski handles its end and lets you think about the next one. Weight transfer side to side comes naturally for a ski this length, so you find yourself flowing through transitions rather than muscling through them. The hardpack that felt demanding on day one had become exactly the kind of surface the Wrangler seems to enjoy most.
Kidd Eynon points to variable conditions as the terrain where the Wrangler consistently stands apart. It can take you from groomed corduroy in the morning to chopped-up snow by midday and softer pockets off-trail in the afternoon, she says. It transitions naturally between firm and soft snow, which is exactly what we designed it to do. Two days at Copper bore that out. The ski doesn’t demand a particular kind of mountain. It adapts to what’s there.
What’s Inside
The Wrangler’s core is a blend of three wood species – hard maple, Colorado beetle-kill pine, and aspen – and each one has a specific job in the construction. Understanding what they contribute helps explain why the ski feels the way it does.
The hard maple is there for durability and binding retention. It’s a dense hardwood that provides strong screw retention and long-term structural integrity, which matters especially for aggressive skiers and becomes critical in telemark setups where binding forces concentrate in a small area at the toe.
The Colorado beetle-kill pine serves both a performance and an environmental purpose. It contributes a consistent flex pattern and torsional stability while keeping overall weight in check. It also comes from trees already killed by bark beetle infestation across Colorado’s forests, timber that would otherwise sit and increase wildfire risk. Meier works with the Colorado State Forest Service on this sourcing, which puts the beetle-kill story in a different category than most sustainability talking points. It’s genuinely connected to the mountains these skis are built to ride.
The aspen brings the energy. It’s lightweight and lively and gives the ski what Kidd Eynon calls that poppy feel coming out of turns. The wider the ski in Meier’s lineup, the more aspen it contains – which is why the powder models lean on it more heavily. In the Wrangler, the aspen is a big part of why the ski doesn’t feel inert at speed. There’s a responsiveness to it that you notice on long runs.
Blending three species gives Meier the ability to tune flex, weight, and durability in ways a single-species core simply can’t deliver. Density and strength where the bindings are, stability through the body of the ski, and liveliness at the tips. It’s a construction philosophy that translates into something you can feel.
Made in Denver
Meier has been building skis in Denver since 2009. Not designed in Colorado and manufactured somewhere else – built completely at 1775 South Broadway, where the cores are milled in-house and the finished skis come with a three-year warranty. In an industry where the word handmade can mean almost anything, Meier’s version is specific enough to walk through and watch.
The feedback loop between customer and builder is shorter here than almost anywhere else in the ski business. Kidd Eynon describes it simply: there’s a very direct line between the skiers demoing and buying skis out front and the builders pressing them in the back. Consistent feedback moves quickly from the retail floor to the build team, often within days. When a decision needs to be made, everyone is in the same building having that conversation in real time. That proximity keeps the product connected to the people actually skiing it.
The lineup reflects this kind of responsiveness. Meier has been working through a deliberate simplification, retiring models that don’t earn their place and unifying best-sellers. The goal isn’t more skis, Kidd Eynon says, it’s a cleaner lineup that makes it easier for people to find the right product. For an independent brand, that kind of editorial discipline takes some courage. There’s usually someone on the team who feels strongly about a particular model, she acknowledges. Occasionally they’ll step out of the conversation because they know they can’t be fully objective. The ultimate goal is for the data to lead decision making.
The Environmental Side
Ski manufacturing isn’t inherently eco-friendly, and Meier doesn’t pretend otherwise. They’ve tested hemp as a replacement for fiberglass, but in its current form it didn’t perform at the level they’d hoped. The position is straightforward: they won’t trade ski performance for a sustainability checkbox. That honesty is refreshing and keeps the conversation grounded.
What they have done is build up a collection of specific, practical improvements. The epoxy used in construction is entirely bio-based. The full tip-to-tail shrink wrap that once covered each pair has been replaced with a durable sticker wrap, saving roughly 12 feet of single-use plastic per pair – which adds up meaningfully across a production run. The beetle-kill pine sourcing actively supports forest health in Colorado. The minimal graphic coverage on the topsheet avoids the toxic inks most ski brands apply across the full surface.
The next meaningful steps, Kidd Eynon says, will likely come from plant-based materials that can genuinely match the performance of traditional composites. When that happens, we’ll be first in line to test them. It’s a measured position – not overstating what’s been solved, but staying close enough to the problem to move quickly when the right solution shows up.
What It Costs and How to Buy It
The Wrangler carries an MSRP of $895, though during the current low-snow season Meier has dropped in-season pricing to $695 on their best-selling models to keep production running and skis on snow. That flexibility comes directly from a recent shift away from wholesale toward direct-to-consumer sales. Traditional wholesale margins are tight and limit how quickly a brand can respond, Kidd Eynon explains. Selling direct lets Meier adjust pricing in real time without being tied to retailer agreements.
More than 86 percent of Meier’s customers buy without demoing first, a figure the brand surfaced through its own annual customer satisfaction survey. The reason, Kidd Eynon says, is that when someone from the brand talks directly with a skier – by phone, email, or text – they’re able to make the right match the vast majority of the time. The conversation replaces what a demo would otherwise accomplish.
For skiers who do want time on snow before committing, the Love Your Skis Guarantee lets you ski a purchase for up to five days and return it if the fit isn’t right. The demo program runs $50 a day with $100 applied toward a purchase. But the bigger takeaway is that most people don’t want to spend a ski trip cycling through demos. They want to talk to someone who knows the product well enough to get them in the right ski on the first try. At Meier, that conversation tends to happen with someone who watched the ski being built.
What’s Next
Meier is clear about the categories they’ve chosen to stay out of. Park skis are one of them. When steel rails meet wood 20 times a day, the steel tends to win – it’s a high-warranty, low-margin segment where Meier doesn’t feel they add much value. They tend to find those skiers eventually, Kidd Eynon says, once they’re ready for something that can handle the whole mountain rather than just the terrain park.
That focus on the whole mountain is actually the thread that connects to what Meier is doing next. If the ski is built for the full experience of being in the mountains, it follows that the space around it should be too. Opening this month inside the Craft Skiery on South Broadway is The Couloir, an apres bar with large windows behind the bar looking directly into the ski press room. Have a local beer, watch the next pair of skis come together a few feet away.
Skiing is social at its core, Kidd Eynon says. Expanding that community under our own roof feels like the most natural next step for Meier. It’s a reasonable way to describe it. The Craft Skiery has always been part factory, part gathering place. The Couloir just makes the second part official.
The Verdict
The Wrangler is a 94mm all-mountain ski that skis narrower than it measures. It’s responsive and honest, built from materials whose story holds up when you look into it. At $695 this season and $895 in a normal winter, it comes in well below most comparable skis from major brands without asking you to give much up in return.
It’s not the right ski for everyone. It rewards deliberate technique, especially from the downhill foot, and it’ll let you know when it’s not getting what it needs. Skiers who want something more forgiving will find softer options in the lineup. But for skiers willing to engage with it on its own terms, the Wrangler gives back considerably more than it asks for.
The second morning on Copperopolis – two thousand vertical feet, 50-plus miles per hour, the corduroy under the edges turn by turn – that’s the run that stays with you. Meier built that and it’s worth knowing.
