Tenko are a type of divine beast in Japanese folklore. After reaching 1,000 years of age and gaining its ninth tail, a kitsune (fox) turns a golden color, becoming a Tenko – a celestial fox. In Japanese mythology, a fox who lives long enough and gains a great deal of knowledge will reach an enlightened state, the Eastern sense of the ‘fox spirit’. In creating Tenko skis, our mission was to enable skiers to experience this enlightened spirit state, giving them fox like skills to weave between tress, in and out of deep snow and flow like the divine Tenko.
POWDER SKIS 10 YEARS IN THE MAKING
The skis which shaped the decision to build and shaped the design reasons to buy the ski. Over the past 10 years the Tenko founders have skied a lot of different skis or all shapes and sizes. This exploration of all things ski has enabled us to create a wish list of all we would like to see and ski beneath our feet.
BE IN THE POWDER NOT ON THE POWDER
Built to ski all the mountain and all conditions, maximising the feeling of being ‘IN THE POWDER’ not ‘ON THE POWDER’. An immersive experience being in sync with the mountain and the snow conditions. The powder is being skied out quicker and quicker each season with wider ski platforms combined with lightweight materials allowing more and more people to access both in-resort and out-of-resort unpisted terrain Even on Hokkaido, one of the most consistently snowiest places on earth
QUIVER OF ONE
Unless you’re heli or cat skiing then you’ll experience a wide variety of snow conditions each day – piste, crud, bumps, slush, ice, powder – so you need a ski (and skills) to enjoy them all. You don’t learn to ski powder in powder, you learn on-piste and transfer those newly acquired skills and knowledge to the unpisted terrain.
