Rocky Mountain Underground built its reputation on wide freeride skis. The RMU Zephyr 88 is something different – and it earns it.
Before you ever click into a pair of RMU skis, there’s a good chance you’ll end up in their Breckenridge shop on a late afternoon in February, wondering how a ski brand also became one of the better bars in Summit County. The space takes up two buildings on South Main Street – a ground floor that moves fluidly between ski shop and bar and kitchen, a beer garden out back with fire pits, and a second floor that opens into another bar and retail area where skis hang on the walls like artwork. People who clearly just came off the mountain settle onto stools. The staff wants to talk, not sell.
On the afternoon I came in to meet Spencer Reinhart and pick up the demo skis, the fire pit was going, the flatbreads on the menu looked awesome, and the whole place had the easy energy of somewhere that doesn’t need to try hard because it already knows what it is. That’s RMU. Part ski brand, part community gathering place, part mountain town institution. The skis on the wall are built with the same conviction as everything else in the room – made for people who actually live this life, by people who do the same.
Where It Came From
The origin story is one of the more honest ones in the ski industry, mostly because it involves painting houses. Mike Waesche and Luke Allen started pressing skis in a Breckenridge basement around 2008, driven by the same curiosity that pulls serious skiers toward the technical side of what they ride. The first pair off the press couldn’t be skied. The flex was wrong, the shape slightly asymmetrical, and there wasn’t enough fiberglass in the construction to retain bindings. That was the starting point.
They rebuilt, iterated, and eventually had something skiable. Friends in Summit County wanted pairs. Word spread the way it does when something is new, good and genuinely local. Materials were running around $250 a pair, which wasn’t sustainable as a business, so the solution was practical and unglamorous: they painted houses to raise money needed for their first real production model. In year one, they built 30 pairs and sold every single one.
The real turning point came in 2011 when RMU won an innovation design award at ISPO, the international trade show in Munich. Free booth space, international media coverage. The question that followed was simple and direct: is this a hobby or a business? They chose business.
Today RMU employs over 100 people across locations in Breckenridge, Truckee, and Whistler. The company is employee-owned and still maintains a 50-plus days on snow requirement for staff – a policy that isn’t a perk so much as a prerequisite. When you see us with an office in a major city, Spencer Reinhart says with a straight face, we can probably discuss the transition from passion project to real company a bit more. For now, the culture holds.
Why the Zephyr Exists
RMU built its reputation on wide, freeride-oriented skis. The Apostle series, the Professor line, powder shapes designed for the kind of Summit County terrain where the brand was born. The Zephyr 88 is a departure from all of that – narrower, more directional, built for all conditions. For a North American freeride brand, an aggressive frontside carver is an unusual addition. The backstory behind it is worth knowing.
The idea came from RMU’s own product team rather than from athletes or market research. Reinhart traces it to early season at Loveland, standing on the icy terrain off chair 1 wishing there was a better tool for it. The realization was straightforward: the lineup was missing a ski that could embrace what he calls the “no such thing as bad conditions” mentality. Most brands in that situation reach for something forgiving, a fun carver with some freestyle influence that smooths the edges off the category. RMU went the other direction.
We decided that a more advanced, no-compromises performance ski would match our brand identity better for this project, Reinhart says. The result is a ski that doesn’t apologize for what it is. It is built for skiers who want to pursue better technique.
The name has layers, which is typical for RMU. Many of their models nod to something local and meaningful – the Professor ski line, for instance, is named for a prominent avalanche path on Loveland Pass that offers exceptional skiing in the right conditions. The Zephyr pulls from a few directions at once: the California Zephyr train route connecting the Rockies to the Truckee location and a decommissioned chair at Winter Park named for the same train. For most of the team, Reinhart says, it really came down to the connection between the Rockies where the brand started and the Sierra Nevada community they’ve grown into.
What It Is
The Zephyr 88 is a 88mm-waist frontside carver built around a poplar wood core with a beech mounting plate, two sheets of tapered titanal, 8.5mm ABS sidewalls, pre-preg heavy duty triax fiberglass, and an Okulen graphite race base. At 184cm it weighs 1,925 grams per ski. The sidecut runs 132-88-116. The rocker-camber-rocker profile sits at 20 percent tip, 70 percent camber, and 10 percent tail. Every RMU ski is manufactured at Are Skidfabrik in Sweden on 100 percent renewable energy, and each one carries a full lifetime warranty.
The geometry of the Zephyr is deliberate down to its specifics. Reinhart explains the rocker-camber balance in performance terms: the 20 percent tip rocker is smooth and low, designed to keep the ski forgiving in bumps and crud while keeping it pre-loaded and ready when you put it higher on edge. The tail tells a different story. A very low 10 percent tail rocker paired with a long 70 percent camber section creates what Reinhart describes as a long running length ski with a powerful tail – one that won’t bleed energy coming out of a turn. The ski is built to produce power and give it back, not absorb it.
The titanal configuration does similar work in the construction. Two sheets, tapered from 30mm at the tip to 60mm underfoot and back to 30mm at the tail, running the length of the ski and concentrating stiffness and mass precisely where a carved turn puts the most demand on the ski. The result is enhanced torsional rigidity and edge grip without making the ski feel heavy or dead through its full length.
On the Mountain
Copper Mountain in a low-snow January is an honest testing ground. The upper mountain was thin and rocky in places, the afternoon ice was genuine, and the groomed runs had the kind of firm surface that separates a ski with real edge hold from one that merely suggests it. The Zephyr 88, 184cm, was going to make its case quickly or not at all.
The early runs established the ski’s character without ambiguity. At 88mm underfoot, the platform sits in familiar territory for a skier used to narrower frontside skis. Edge engagement is immediate and confident – the titanal delivers exactly what it is supposed to, which is dampening and stiffness. At speed on hardpack the Zephyr tracks cleanly and holds its line without requiring constant management. You set a turn, commit to it, and the ski handles the rest.
The Sierra lift area opened up more interesting terrain. Revenge is a steep upper-mountain run that asks for short, controlled kick-turns at the top before opening into fast, aggressive side-to-side transitions as the pitch softens below. The Zephyr moved through that sequence smoothly – the tip rocker kept turn entry approachable while the dominant camber section through the middle of the ski generated the authority needed once the run picked up speed. Little Trees, slightly more bumped out and demanding more active skiing, confirmed that the ski has enough engagement to stay interesting when the terrain gets honest.
The hike to Union Peak from the top of the Sierra lift added a different kind of test. A flat approach leading into a steep, sustained pitch where the ski either inspires confidence or quietly suggests you’ve made a wrong choice. The Zephyr was composed throughout. On the groomed runs at speed above 50 miles per hour, the ski stayed planted and stable without feeling locked in or rigid. The 10 percent tail rocker keeps it from being punishing in variable snow while preserving the directional drive that defines the ski at pace.
Late afternoon brought the ice that Colorado’s thin-snow season produces across any exposed face. Mountain knowledge helps as much as ski technology in those conditions – staying toward the tree lines where the snow holds better, threading the pockets that haven’t frozen over. The Zephyr was reliable on what ice did appear underfoot. It didn’t deflect or wash out. It bit and held and let you keep moving.
Who It’s For
Reinhart is clear about this without being elitist. Most skis in ski shops, he points out, are designed to be forgiving – to compensate for skiers’ technique flaws and make the experience accessible. That’s a legitimate design goal. But forgiveness comes at a cost: some sensations and performance attributes simply can’t be accessed in more forgiving designs.
The Zephyr is built the other way. It rewards good fundamentals and actively encourages the pursuit of better ones. A traditional style skier with solid technique will find the performance attributes they’re looking for. A skier still developing those fundamentals will find that the ski is honest about where they are. Reinhart puts it plainly: the Zephyr reminds people how fun it is to pursue technique. The only real qualification for these skis, he says, is an interest in exploring the turn.
That framing matters. It positions the Zephyr not as an expert-only instrument but as a ski for anyone genuinely curious about what a carved turn can feel like when the equipment is working in full. That’s a broader invitation than the construction might initially suggest.
Built in Sweden, Designed in Colorado
Every RMU ski is manufactured at Are Skidfabrik in Jämtland, Sweden – a factory with over 40 years of experience running entirely on hydroelectric and geothermal energy. The environmental numbers are specific: up to 75 percent less CO2 output than conventional ski manufacturing. The quality commitment is backed by a full lifetime warranty on every pair RMU produces.
RMU’s relationship with Are is worth understanding. The product team in Colorado provides complete blueprints – shape, core and flex profile, rocker profile, and full bill of materials for every model. Are takes those specs and handles the CNC milling of molds and materials, the pressing, and quality control before shipment. Reinhart describes Are as the best facility in the world for this kind of work and says the partnership doesn’t feel confining at all. We feel very lucky to have our skis built by skiers in the cleanest factory in the world, he says.
The question of why a Colorado brand manufactures in Sweden is one Reinhart doesn’t sidestep. Building domestically would be meaningful in a lot of ways, he acknowledges, but not at the expense of the product. It’s a straight answer and a consistent one. They’ve earned the right to make it.
The Place Behind the Brand
The Breckenridge location opened in November 2016. What RMU built was something the town didn’t know it needed: a place where the gear and the culture surrounding the gear share the same room without either one diminishing the other. Exposed brick, bar staves from Breckenridge Distillery, a dozen beers on tap, a kitchen serious enough to have regulars. A beer garden out back. A rooftop. Skis everywhere. And when the snow melts, mountain bike accessories fill the gaps – packs, fanny packs, utility belts built for trails rather than lifts – because for RMU the mountain doesn’t have an off-season, just a different set of gear requirements.
Reinhart describes what the locations actually do in concrete terms. We’ll fill avalanche canisters for Search and Rescue while they drink a beer, he says. That’s not a marketing anecdote – it’s a description of how a genuine community hub operates.
The beer, it turns out, is doing more than keeping the lights on. RMU’s Climate Kegs program directs proceeds to One Tree Planted, a reforestation nonprofit, with each beer projected to offset at least one tonne of CO2 over the 20-year life of the trees it funds. The program builds on an existing Karma Keg initiative, where all keg proceeds go to rotating charities and community causes – RMU simply pointed one of those kegs directly at the forests that wildfire and climate pressure are steadily reducing. It is, by the most pleasurable mechanism imaginable, helping the environment by drinking beer.
The Truckee and Whistler locations carry the same model into different mountain communities. Each one is anchored by the same conviction that a ski brand should be a place as much as a product – a space where the mountain culture the company was built on can exist in physical form.
Whether the brand could exist without these spaces is a question Reinhart considers honestly. It’s hard to speak to how people perceive RMU’s identity, he says. Some people know the skis and have no idea about the bars. Others come for a beer and eventually end up on a pair of Apostles. The connection runs in both directions, and it’s built on something more durable than marketing – a genuine shared interest in the mountains and the people who organize their lives around them.
How the Company Actually Works
Employee ownership isn’t a tagline at RMU – it’s the operating model. The current structure runs a profit-sharing program where employees are incentivized across all four quarters, with a percentage tied to their sweat equity at no cost to them. The framing matters: this isn’t a stock option program for executives. It’s a structure that gives everyone who shows up a stake in what the company does and how well it does it.
That structure shapes the culture in ways that are harder to quantify than a profit-sharing percentage. A company where the employees own a piece of the outcome tends to look different from one where they don’t – in how decisions get made, in how problems get solved, in whether the person helping you find a ski actually wants to find you the right one. At RMU Breckenridge on a Frebruary afternoon, it showed. The people working in the upstairs shop weren’t managing or selling a customer. They were having a conversation.
The Verdict
The Zephyr 88 is a confident, precise frontside carver from a brand that spent most of its life building wider skis for bigger snow. The fact that it doesn’t feel like a brand stepping outside its comfort zone says something about how seriously RMU approached the project. The titanal construction delivers edge hold and stability at speed without making the ski feel stiff or punishing. The 20/70/10 rocker profile keeps turn entry approachable and the tail powerful through the finish. On icy Colorado hardpack in January, it was exactly where it needed to be.
At $919 (currently on sale for $735.20), the price reflects the construction, the manufacturing standards, and a lifetime warranty that isn’t a footnote. For a skier with solid fundamentals who wants a ski that will reward the pursuit of better ones, the Zephyr is a compelling case.
