"I thought skis were shorter now."

 Coming out of the 1980s, people complained that cross-country skis were too long, so in the early 1990s the industry came up with compact touring skis: a simplified, weight-based fitting system.

"Now skiers, fitted by body weight instead of height to shorter, wider skis, will get to use much shorter skis than before, that will be easier to maneuver."

And the renting public said, "Oh yeah? Hold my beer, chips, Twinkies, soda, doughnuts, and super-sized burgers, and watch this."

With the surge of interest brought by the pandemic, we're seeing a lot more renters than in previous years, but the trend toward stockier short people had already been developing.

I don't care about anyone's weight except as it relates to ski size. You do you, it's all good, etc. The challenge -- not to call it a problem -- is that fitting cross-country skis is not as simple as it seems. Why were they ever the length they were, and how can they be shorter now?

Skipping most of the technicalities, a cross-country ski of any length needs to be able to grip the snow momentarily on every stride, and then slide relatively freely, so the skier can shuffle along. The shorter the moment of grip, the better the potential glide, but only if the skier can stick the grip zone of the ski at the right time. So touring skis are already made pretty soft, to assure grip at the expense of glide.

The industry, clinging to old design parameters and concepts of glide, built grip zones into the compact skis designed to support wider and heavier weight ranges, to preserve that notion of free-floating forward motion. But most tourists, especially novices on rental equipment, don't need or want a fast ski. There are exceptions, of course. If someone hopes to have a little more excitement and less plodding, they'll need to pay more attention to precise fitting.

Ski length matters. If it didn't, no one would have bothered to invent compact skis. So if your weight puts you solidly in the bracket for a long compact ski, even though you are not tall, you could end up on something near traditional length. To counteract this, the industry would need to offer multiple flexes in each length, as they do with top-end racing skis, where competitors demand precise fitting. Since they don't, whoever fits your rentals has to decide whether to match your height or your weight more closely. Since secure grip and easy maneuverability are especially important to beginner skiers, a short but heavy skier is likely to get skis that don't pop right up and fly.

Anything propelled by the human engine has to be fitted to the specific operator. This is true of skis, bikes, kayaks, you name it. You can approximate it to a large extent, but the more a person tries to use a piece of equipment the more they will notice how far the approximation missed the mark. Skis are especially tricky because of that grip and glide balance.