from the early to mid 1990s. Free skier Shane McConkey was skiing on the Elan designs in 1996, but found they sank in the snow. As an experiment to get more "float" on the snow, he tried mounting ski bindings on waterskis while skiing in Alaska. He began working with Volant on skis that combined their metal-based production method, producing the aluminum-based Volant Huckster. In 1998 he was testing the Huckster with his friend Scott Gaffney, who reported that his bent Chubbs skied better than the new design because the tips didn't sink in the snow. McConkey took the design and used it to produce the radical Volant Spatula in 2002, which featured not only a banana-like reverse-camber but also a negative sidecut radius. On firm snow the skis were difficult to turn at all, but in powder the tips and tails bent up to produce the curved shape that caused them to carve. McConkey moved to K2 Sports and introduced the similar Pontoon design circa 2006. By 2010 the rocker design was becoming the "in" design, and starting to displace parabolics on the larger mountains. By 2012 the change to rocker designs was well underway, and by 2013/14 almost all new skis claim to be rockers. Many of these have moderated their camber and sidecut to be more traditional, allowing them to be used on the trails as well as powder, but retain the very wide bases and other features of the rocker design. These may be referred to by any number of names depending on the brand and marketing, with terms such as "full rocker", "all mountain rocker", "hybrid" and others. Gender-specificity Women’s skis started to appear in the 1980s. Compared to men's skis, women's skis are typically lighter in weight and limited to shorter lengths. Sidecut Sidecut is the subtle hourglass shape of the ski, viewed from the top. Skis have had some sidecut since before 1808, when it was invented by Norwegian artisans. Since that time, the straight ski with parallel edges is only used as a light cross country ski and for modern jumping skis. In alpine skis, sidecut shape has grown gradually deeper over the decades. Today deep sidecuts are used to help skis carve short, clean turns. Many ski vendors allow selection of skis by turning radius. For a racing slalom ski, this can be as low as 12 metres and for Super-G