The HO Hovercraft features the most surface area of any of the Freeride skis that HO offers. Much like the HO Freeride EVO, the Hovercraft has been designed with the entry level skier in mind. HO sees how the Freeride and Freeride EVO have made skiing easy for more people to enjoy and wanted to widen the audience even more with this ultra-wide and super fun Freeride design.
The idea of the Freeride came about many years ago. Instead of taking a high-performance ski and simply widening it to make an entry level ski, HO went back to the drawing board to design a ski specific to a beginner’s needs, just like designing a high-performance ski to the needs of a competitive athlete.
The Hovercraft takes lots of design cues from the HO EVO. Marcus Brown even says, “We basically just took the freeride evo from a couple of years ago, and we cut it down the middle. We made it really wide, we changed the bevels just a little bit, just to give it more lift.” HO also kept the flex tail that was used in the EVO so anyone can jump on the ski and really bend it into a nice, easy turn with little effort.
What’s the point in building this super wide ski? The Hovercraft has been created to be “the ultimate participation ski”. The large surface area of this ski makes it incredibly user friendly, and even easier to get up on than a wakeboard in some cases. The goal of the Hovercraft is simple, to make the sport accessible to as many people as possible.
Thanks to this new addition to the Freeride family of skis, the sport of slalom skiing is more accessible than ever before. The objective of HO’s Freeride series is what helps us get more of our friends and family members out enjoying the water together. Plus, this ski is just plain fun, we think everyone at the lake should have a Hovercraft.