Best Alpine Touring Skis

Faction La Machine 3 Mega - Review 2025

By: Derek Doyle & Annie Gunton - Updated: April 2025

About this guide

We gave our Gear Lovers one job:
Find the best and most popular products and review them.

Our review team always considers durability, price, quality, and value in their reviews.

Our review team:

Derek Doyle

Contributor at SlopeMagazine.com

Hailing from Aspen, Colorado, Derek began his skiing career in the illustrious Powder Pandas ski school program, eventually sort of growing up to ski professionally in slopestyle and big air, while moonlighting as a ski tuner and writer.

Now living in Colorado’s front range, Derek can be found among the i70 crowd racing to find hidden powder stashes on the back bowls of Vail, on Park Lane in Breckenridge, under the lights on Keystone, and returning home to the High Alpine steeps in Snowmass. When he's not skiing he’s wishing he was, or nerding out on mountain biking, climbing, and golf.

Annie Gunton

Editor at SlopeMagazine.com

Annie has lived on 4 continents and traveled through 6. Spending her time in places as different as London and the Kalahari she has adapted how she gets out and enjoys what’s around.

Disclosure: We are reader supported, and earn affiliate commissions If you find a good deal on Slope Magazine, you click to the retailer, and you buy the product, we get a commission of the sale. That's how we pay ourselves. It does not make the product pricier for you. when you buy through us.

Where to buy Faction La Machine 3 Mega:

Amazon

Evo

Faction’s award-winning La Machine 3 Mega skinned its way to the top of our list of touring skis above some other solid options in the brand’s alpine touring line. For a touring ski, these are some of the lightest skis in their class (sub 1800g), which is an obvious perk for climbing. But do they lack anything on the way down? Absolutely not.

These lively and energetic powder hunters feature a 106mm waist, a progressive rocker profile, and a lightweight paulownia carbon and woodcore construction. The flex is what Faction calls its “Mustache Flex” – a softer flex in the tips and tails and a stiffer underfoot flex, which gives it an agile turn radius, and the low swing weight makes jump turns seem effortless.

As avid ski tour adventurers know, the conditions are always unpredictable. The elliptical side cut of the La Machine 3 Mega provides a solid yet floaty and versatile disposition to take on anything the mountain throws at you.

As an added eco-friendly bonus, these skis are constructed with sustainable wood and held together using lightweight bio-based resin.