most sandwich construction skis with vertical sidewall will chip, especially if you're sliding-- kinda the way things go with that constuction...
only salomon's ive owned recently that I didn't completely destroy are the Shoguns, but they're capped and I wasn't jibbing with them.
For 2011 K2 is coming out with a new twintech construction that rolls the top material ino the sidewall...we'll see how that works