2024 Men’s All-Mountain West Skis
2024 Men’s All-Mountain West Skis
If there is a single, do-it-all ski – particularly for western, big-mountain skiing – it no doubt lives in this category. The reason is simple: up to this girth (95mm-100mm), these relatively wide skis don’t feel fat underfoot, so they ride the groom like a Frontside ski yet provide as much flotation in powder as possible without the width being a negative when the powder is gone. Manufacturers recognize the importance of this genre and therefore give it their very best effort, creating a rich array of options for the high performance skier. It’s remarkable that one category can contain so many different sensations and almost every ski is really, really good. Pay attention to this category, Dear Reader, for if you don’t already own an All-Mountain West ski, you will.
A mere 15 years ago we would have choked on these words, as skis 100mm underfoot then were niche models positioned as ideal for Alaskan heli-guides. The evolution that has taken place in the interim was triggered by the arrival of the Völkl Mantra in 2006, at first in the slightly more svelte waist width of 94mm. As with most Völkls made for men, then as now, there was no skimping on the quality of the construction: the Mantra was a rich, powerful ski right out of the chute. It performed like a soft GS race ski, but in a width that tracked through powder like the blitzkrieg, taking no prisoners. It quickly found a following due to Völkl’s already swollen ranks of faithful adherents, attracting the attention of every other major brand. (Nothing engenders a wave of imitators quite like creating a new niche with a high price tag.)
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If there is a single, do-it-all ski – particularly for western, big-mountain skiing – it no doubt lives in this category. The reason is simple: up to this girth (95mm-100mm), these relatively wide skis don’t feel fat underfoot, so they ride the groom like a Frontside ski yet provide as much flotation in powder as possible without the width being a negative when the powder is gone. Manufacturers recognize the importance of this genre and therefore give it their very best effort, creating a rich array of options for the high performance skier. It’s remarkable that one category can contain so many different sensations and almost every ski is really, really good. Pay attention to this category, Dear Reader, for if you don’t already own an All-Mountain West ski, you will.
A mere 15 years ago we would have choked on these words, as skis 100mm underfoot then were niche models positioned as ideal for Alaskan heli-guides. The evolution that has taken place in the interim was triggered by the arrival of the Völkl Mantra in 2006, at first in the slightly more svelte waist width of 94mm. As with most Völkls made for men, then as now, there was no skimping on the quality of the construction: the Mantra was a rich, powerful ski right out of the chute. It performed like a soft GS race ski, but in a width that tracked through powder like the blitzkrieg, taking no prisoners. It quickly found a following due to Völkl’s already swollen ranks of faithful adherents, attracting the attention of every other major brand. (Nothing engenders a wave of imitators quite like creating a new niche with a high price tag.)
Driving the success of this genre is the eternal hope that part of the do-it-all equation will be a generous dose of fresh, deep powder. If you eliminate powder, and its evil twin, crud, from the mix of conditions in which you’ll use the ski, there’s no compelling reason to increase the ski’s flotation. But unless you live at the base of the ski resort, you can’t be sure what you’ll encounter on a big mountain; if a pocket of powder suddenly becomes available, wouldn’t you rather be on a ski that will embrace the situation? This is the mentality that has persuaded an increasingly large percentage of the market to gravitate to this genre.
Most, if not all, print-published ski tests would include under the All-Mountain West heading skis up to 110mm underfoot. Their inclusion is, in part, driven by the manufacturers, who want to increase the number of star products in this critical genre. But we believe bundling models on either side of the 100mm divide ignores a vital distinguishing trait: narrower skis put less strain on the skier in every condition but powder/crud. Sure, young bucks who log countless miles on western slopes use 108’s (and wider) as their everyday ski, God bless them. But we feel that the skis between 101 and 113mm underfoot should be treated as Big Mountain models that transparently sacrifice certain hard snow behaviors to achieve greater flotation – and presumed ease – in unbroken snow.
Within any genre there are skis that are curl-in-your-lap pussycats – our Finesse Favorites – and skis that are relentless fall-line predators, which we collect into our Power Favorites. The key virtue of the former is they improve ease and terrain access for less aggressive, lighter weight or lower skill skiers. The archetypical trait of the Power posse is they are utterly unflappable no matter where you go or how fast you go once you get there.
There isn’t a line of copy in any ski supplier’s brochure that would suggest their All-Mountain West ski possesses a single limitation, but this untempered enthusiasm conveniently overlooks a critical factor, namely the prospective skier’s skill level.
To be brief, anyone who would not classify himself or herself as advanced is looking behind the wrong door. To be less brief, if you don’t regularly tip the ski to a high edge angle, if you don’t ski with your feet extended away from your body, if you don’t have separation between the central angle of your upper body and the median that runs from your hips to your feet, if you don’t ski comfortably at speed, then you should look for a Frontside ski that will help you develop these skills.
The problem is that if a lower-skill skier acquires a model with a 100mm waist too early in his/her development, forward progress will freeze, slow down or even regress as the wider ski proves too cumbersome to tilt. The skier will probably feel better in powder and crud, but that’s about the extent of the benefits.
The 2024 Men’s All-Mountain West Field
All unisex All-Mountain West models, whether new or returning, biased towards Power or Finesse properties, lightweight or burly, strive to serve two masters by providing enough surface area to facilitate off-piste skiing while retaining basic carving skills for when the off-trail is off-limits. AMW Finesse models focus on making off-road terrain easier to tame for less aggressive skiers, while Recommended Power skis come alive at higher revs. Once infused with speed, the top Power skis don’t so much float over choppy terrain as demolish it.
Make no mistake about it, the tone of the All-Mountain West field is set by a quintet of Power skis that have established a sustained level of excellence for roughly a decade: the Blizzard Bonafide 97, Nordica Enforcer 100, Stöckli Stormrider 95, Kästle MX98 and the most recent number one in the genre, Völkl’s M6 Mantra. What we wrote here last year remains true: no other category exerts as strong an influence on a brand’s image, in part because the best skiers on a given (most likely western U.S.) mountain most likely ride an AMW model as their daily driver. Weak reeds need not apply.
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With the top of the genre dominated by Power skis, the opportunity to penetrate the market lies in making a Finesse ski that can hold its own with the big boys, and that’s where every new initiative – in both 2023 and again in 2024 – was aimed. Before getting down to the nitty-gritty, we should point out that were only two new AMW models this year, and both were make-overs of existing models. As was the case last year, most of the AMW genre is comprised of unchanged product.
The biggest improvement award goes to Blizzard’s Rustler 9, a new entrant in the genre due to a re-design that included an increase in overall width that resulted in a 96mm waist. Blizzard did a lot more to the new Rustler 9 than just tinker with its surface area: its innovative Fluxform design presents a new twist on how to blend a lightweight wood core with just enough Titanal to keep it stable in choppy snow. Salomon’s second generation of the Stance 96 is the only other nouveauté of note; the new Stance series tweaks the top Titanal laminate to give the ski a looser feel that accentuates its Finesse attributes.
Power Picks: All-Condition Chargers
Not all the best skiers on big mountains use All-Mountain West skis as their everyday ski, but the ones that do are probably on one of our Power Picks. It’s not that less skilled skiers can’t handle them if sized appropriately, but these skis aren’t meant to mosey down the mountain. They’re built to batter down the stiffest crud, an approach that only works if the throttle is open. If you’re an expert skier and you haven’t tried one of these models yet, don’t let another season go by without doing so. To paraphrase the late, great Warren Miller, if you don’t do it this year, you’ll be another year older when you do.
To inject a personal note into the proceedings, I adhere to my own advice, choosing an All-Mountain West Power ski as my daily driver. If you’re a western skier who logs more than 30 days a season and charges the fall line, you probably already have one of these models. If you don’t, get one.
Völkl M6 Mantra
Any time a brand introduces a fundamentally new technology, it takes a couple of years to learn how to optimize it. After Völkl engineers had a few seasons to tinker with Titanal Frame, testing countless iterations, they found a way not only to perfect the benefits of Titanal Frame, but to magnify its virtues with a couple of complementary components. The marriage of Tailored Titanal Frame with 3D Radius Sidecut and Tailored Carbon Tips created a new benchmark for the genre, that will, in all probability, soon be recognized as one of the greatest all-terrain skis of all time.
Let’s dive into the details. The key to Titanal Frame is breaking what is normally a uniform topsheet of metal into three sections. The fore and aft sections of Titanal are shaped like an elongated “U”, with metal concentrated around the perimeter. The alu alloy here is .7mm thick, much thicker than usual, which accentuates the tip and tail’s connection to the snow, somewhat counterintuitive for an all-terrain ski.
Read the full review here
Blizzard Bonafide 97
The Blizzard Bonafide has been at or near the top of our All-Mountain West rankings since it burst on the scene over a decade ago. While it’s undergone four or five tweaks since its debut, its enduring excellence is due primarily to what hasn’t changed: the original Flipcore construction that removes all stress from the rocker/camber transition. As soon as the ski is pressured, the transition zone disappears and the full length of the ski finds the snow. A Bonafide feels engaged from tip to tail because it is. This is the foundational reason for its sustained success. The Bonafide came out of the chute so well made that the biggest challenge its designers faced was figuring out how to fix something that wasn’t broken.
While there are worse problems to have, being known as an experts-only ski is a concern nonetheless, one Blizzard addressed last year with the introduction of the TrueBlend core.
Read the full review here
Nordica Enforcer 100
While there are no statistics I can point to substantiate my argument, I would contend that the Enforcer 100 is the most powerful model in the All-Mountain West pantheon. It earns this distinction due to an extra-high camber line that begins to load with stored energy from the moment you stand on it. Nordica alleges that the Enforcer 100 surrenders half of its baseline to rocker: 30% in the front and 20% of the rear running surface are pulled off the snow at one of the most aggressive angles in the genre. Yet despite this inherent loss of snow contact, the Enforcer 100 doesn’t ski “loose,” not at all. The tip and tail are made of the same stern stuffing as the midsection, so they don’t flop around on hard snow and aren’t easily buffeted off course by sodden crud.
One reason the early vintage Enforcer 100’s were so stout is that, due to molding limitations, all sizes used the same baseline. This was one of the major changes introduced just two years ago: each size of the current Enforcer 100 has a unique baseline, sidecut and core profile.
Read the full review here
Kästle MX98
The MX98 is an outlier in the All-Mountain West genre, the only ski in the category that headlines a family of fully cambered carving skis. Its only concession to the requirements of off-trail travel is a long (270mm) front rocker that’s so gradual it’s imperceptible. Given that its classic core of wood (silver fir and poplar), fiberglass and Titanal (.5mm sheets) isn’t particularly lightweight, how can it ski comparably to an armada of competitors with double-rockered baselines and lighter weight constructions?
Well, it doesn’t. It behaves differently from most (not all) of its competition in how well it maintains snow contact. What’s remarkable is how well this translates to the irregularity of off-trail skiing. While the MX98 can float in fresh snow, it’s not bobbing on the top as much as it is trenching through whatever lies ahead, regardless of depth or consistency. Its chassis may be built for carving, but its 98mm girth at the waist allows it to plane sideways – in test-card parlance, to drift – over the most manky crud with a calm that would make the Buddha proud.
Read the full review here
Stockli Stormrider 95
The one condition that separates the best All-Mountain West skis from the merely excellent is crud. It’s the dream of perpetual powder that drives the category – there’s no other reason to have a ski this wide – but the reality is uncut powder is over and done within the first few minutes after any big mountain’s opening bell. Then you have to navigate a wildly variable condition that continues to deteriorate hour by hour. The skis no longer have a clean surface to plane over and the tracked–up terrain tugs them in multi-axis directions. The only way to prevail is to gun it, which on a weak reed will feel like very bad advice.
The Stöckli Stormrider 95 gets it. It knows that the winning strategy is to pummel crud into submission. You don’t have to pick a line, for the Stormrider 95 will create its own path through the rubble. All the pilot has to do is move his feet across the fall line and otherwise remain calm, poised and aimed downhill.
Not everyone is constitutionally equipped for this exercise. If the idea of blazing down a 40-degree pitch covered in total crap sounds more insane than idyllic, there are plenty of Finesse skis in the AMW genre to serve you. But for those who revel in busting through wind berms, there’s only a fistful of models that feel comfortable in the chaos of high-speed crud skiing. The Stormrider 95 is among the best in the world at this game.
Read the full review here
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Dynastar M-Pro 99
Just two years ago, Dynastar radically altered its all-mountain offering, replacing the long-in-the-tooth Cham/Legend design with the M-Pro series. The M-Pro collection consists of four models, that roughly parallel the ability hierarchy of novice (M-Pro 84), intermediate (M-Pro 90), advanced (M-Pro 99) and pro athlete (M-Pro Rider).
The M-Pro 99 is clearly the sweetspot in the series, with more Titanal in its guts and a more connected-to-the-snow baseline. While there’s metal in its make-up, it’s a relatively mild dose, so the M-Pro 99 Ti doesn’t behave like a typical Austrian wood-and-metal sandwich. It’s lighter and looser, with a baseline and build that are biased to off-trail conditions. It performs best when the surface isn’t too slick, so it has something to push against and improve contact along the length of the ski.
Skiers who don’t barrel straight down the fall line will appreciate the M-Pro 99’s mix of agility and stability. Its natural inclination is to make a medium to long radius turn; short turns will tend to involve a bit of drift at the top and bottom with a clean edge in the belly of the turn.
Read the full review here
Kästle FX96 Ti
Kastle fans everywhere can rejoice now that the latest FX series has been restored to something like its original self, with twin Titanal laminates around a poplar, beech and Paulownia core. Compared to the last FX flagship, the new FX96 Ti is a slightly heavier ski, but the added stability in all conditions has doubled its performance ceiling, well worth the roughly 50 extra grams.
With the FX96 Ti returned to something closer to its original self, its performance ceiling has doubled, leaving little doubt that, within the new FX family, the FX96 Ti is the star product. Not surprisingly, it’s quicker on and off the edge than the plumper FX106 Ti, but what is eyebrow-raising is it feels more tenacious on edge and responsive off it than its narrower sibling, the FX86 Ti. A peek at its test results confirms its off-piste predilections, as its score for Drift out-points its edging accuracy in every phase of the turn.
Read the full review here
Atomic Maverick 100 Ti
In the 2018/19 season, Atomic dove into the deep end of the Lighter is Better pool, emerging with Pro Lite, a skeletal construction that sought to trim mass using all the means at the R&D department’s disposal. Their all-mountain Vantage series went wall-to-wall Pro Lite, which resulted in many of their test scores falling below our Recommended threshold.
Atomic’s Maverik and Maven (for women) series have bid aloha to Pro Lite, returning to a classic, elementary construction that Atomic could build in its sleep: an all-poplar core encased in top and bottom sheets of fiberglass and either Titanal (.4mm) or carbon, depending on the model. The emphasis on lightweight hasn’t been jettisoned – 1800g for a 180 is relatively light in this genre – but it has taken a back seat to performance fundamentals.
The Maverick 100 Ti’s special sauce is the combined effect of its double-rockered baseline (25/60/15), tapered tip and unique HRZN Tech Tip that’s rockered on both axes. Atomic calls this combo the ski’s Flow Profile, a good term for how a ski meets the snow. In the case of the Maverick 100 Ti, the front rocker reveals a decided preference for off-trail skiing, sacrificing early connection at the top of the turn on firm snow for a better buffer when barging through cut-up crud.
Read the full review here
Liberty evolv 100
Small-batch producers like Liberty have a tough row to hoe. Aside from zero name recognition, they have to either work with an established factory or try to start their own facility, both of which have their disadvantages. Their other two biggest problems are how to differentiate themselves from the pack and thereby generate a sense of mission when it’s highly unlikely they’ll have unique materials or processes, and how to make a consistent product when limited demand dictates they work in short production runs.
Liberty broke from the pack with Vertical Metal Technology (VMT), just at the same time that industry powerhouses Rossignol and Blizzard introduced vertical struts in some of their top race-class models. Stunningly, the Liberty version with two aluminum struts seemed to deliver the glued-to-the-snow sensation this design is meant to deliver at a level at or above the big boys. Very impressive.
Read the full review here
Finesse Favorites: All-Terrain Access for All
The main reason to acquire an All-Mountain West ski is to get the widest ski possible you can use as an everyday ride. The reason you want the widest ski is so you can take it into powder and what’s left of powder between storms. To make that all-terrain access as effortless as possible, you want one of our Finesse Favorites.
The price of off-trail success can be some stability at high speed on hard snow, but this shouldn’t be a concern for advanced skiers who rarely reach the top end of the recreational speed range. When kept within their comfort zone – mid-radius turns at moderate speeds – our Finesse Favorites can motor through any terrain you care to traverse.
Head Kore 99
Just two years ago, Head invigorated its Kore series by making a handful of product changes that palpably improved every Kore model’s performance. You’d think the Austrian brand would rest on its considerable laurels, but it elected to add a urethane topcoat – like frosting on the proverbial cake – to help protect the top and sides from nicks and scratches. Lo, and behold, the addition of an end-to-end dampening layer gave the new Kores a little extra cush to their ski/snow connection, which showed up in the guise of slightly improved scores for both Finesse and Power properties.
Underneath the new urethane topsheet the 2023 Kore 99 is the same ski, with the same behavior profile, that knocked our collective socks last year. The Kore 99, then and now, epitomizes what makes Head’s unique Kore construction so well adapted to irregular, off-trail conditions without compromising its capacity for holding on hard snow. The All-Mountain West category resides on the boundary line between hard-snow carvers and Big Mountain drifters. The Kore 99 is definitely from the latter camp of looser skis, but its thoughtful design never forgets that is has to meet a certain hard snow performance standard or Head won’t put its name on it.
Read the full review here
Blizzard Rustler 9
The new Rustler 9 from Blizzard isn’t a little bit better than its predecessor; it’s much, much better than its namesake. Among its myriad changes is a slight boost in its overall width, which tipped the new Rustler 9 into the hotly competitive All-Mountain West genre. Instead of slipping in the standings, it rose from a middle-of-the-pack position among All-Mountain East models to near the top of the All-Mountain West category. No other new ski in the 2023/24 season made as great a leap up the performance ladder as the Rustler 9.
When all criteria are considered, the Rustler 9 remains a Finesse ski, but only by the slimmest of margins. It’s still a forgiving, easily steered ski, but it now has a reserve power supply accessible to any skier who can lay it on edge. A great all-terrain ski has to be able to smear or carve on command, a trick the Rustler 9 has down cold. The tip is strong and connected enough to engage at the top of the turn, but the ski can also find the edge by smearing sideways, then tipping the ski so the edge latches onto a carve midway through the turn. This facility at finding an edge anywhere along a mid-radius arc is one of the qualities that distinguish the best all-terrain skis from the also-rans.
Read the full review here
Dynastar M-Free 99
The simplest way to characterize the new M-Free 99 from Dynastar is it’s a narrow Powder ski, a genre that’s otherwise populated by models over 113mm underfoot, compared to this M-Free’s 99mm. In groomed conditions, its tip and tail have nothing to do except dangle above the snow surface, waiting to be called into action. Considering how loose its extremities are, it’s cool, calm and collected underfoot, moving edge to edge in medium-radius turns without drawing attention to the fact that the tip and tail are on sabbatical.
Size selection is always important; with the M-Free 99, it’s critical. The 178cm length isn’t just a scaled-down 186cm, as each length goes through its own development process. To support the strong, fall-line crud skier who is the M-Free 99’s most probable partner, the 186cm length is a must, as it provides a longer, more stable mid-section to distribute a big boy’s pressure and liberate his aggressive instincts.
Read the full review here
K2 Mindbender 99 Ti
Of all the new models introduced last season, K2’s Mindbender 99Ti took by far the greatest leap up in our standings, a stratospheric orbit it wasn’t able to sustain this year as new data knocked it back a few notches. But the slight dip in scores doesn’t negate the two crucial facts: 1) the Mindbender 99 Ti version 2.0 represents a vast improvement over its original incarnation, and 2) it’s one of the best AMW Finesse skis of its era.
Driving the 2023 Mindbender 99Ti’s ascension to the top rung of the Finesse ladder was a re-design of the ski’s signature feature, Titanal Y-Beam. It’s still shaped like a futuristic slingshot, with the forks of the yoke running up each side of the forebody, a wall-to-wall stretch underfoot and a centered tail section. K2 fiddled with the size and shape of the forward forks so the ski hooks up earlier and with more authority, but it’s the transformation of the Y-Beam’s tail design that contributes the most to the Mindbender 99Ti’s newfound tranquility on edge.
Read the full review here
Fischer Ranger 96
For the past several seasons, Fischer has subdivided its Ranger family of off-trail models into two distinct clans, indicated by their suffixes: Ti, for those with metal in the mix, and FR, for those without. Like the Ti’s of yesteryear, there’s metal in the new Rangers, just not as much as before. The metal is confined to the area underfoot, and while there are some changes in how the metal part is configured across the line, none possess enough Titanal to suppress the loose extremities that appealed to FR fans. Because the metal is mostly underfoot, the tip and tail feel lighter, easier to pivot sideways and generally more genial than a ski with tip-to-tail Ti laminates.
Given that its double-rockered baseline is biased towards soft snow that gives the tip and tail something to push against, the Ranger 96 is more at home off-trail than on. Skiers who possess a more upright, centered stance may share the reaction of Peter Glenn’s Mark Rafferty, who pondered the question, “How can a ski be both playful and hard charging? Magic, I guess. But the Ranger 96 has all the carve that the Ranger series has been great at for years with an easy-going feel.”
Read the full review here
Kästle ZX100
Kästle’s MSRP’s hover near the peak of the retail pricing mountain, where the air is so thin only a few brands can survive in it. The relatively new Czech ownership wants to expand the line by dropping a few experimental models down to a lower altitude, where the people, particularly less affluent younger people, can afford to acquire them.
Hence the ‘Z” in its name, a reference to Gen Z, otherwise known as young adults. The first foray in this direction was the ZX108, a non-metal, robustly rockered Big Mountain model with surprising moxie, introduced just last year. The ZX100 is its first offspring, with a retail tag of $799, a pittance for a Kästle and right in line with the rest of the market.
The low price wouldn’t be worth much if the ski couldn’t cut it, but the ZX100 is a knockout, particularly in the softer snow it’s made for. Although it has no Titanal in its guts, its classic wood-and-fiberglass sandwich is strong on the edge and peppy coming off it. It’s sidecut is also right out of the time-honored playbook, with just a little more shape and tip-to-tail taper angle than the norm.
Read the full review here
Salomon Stance 96
Last winter I was able to ski all the new Stances from Salomon on several occasions, from a foot of fresh to manicured corduroy. More by accident than design, I even skied them with two different boots. The more I skied them, the more I was led to a conclusion that, at first, I didn’t quite believe: they all ski remarkably alike.
That may sound like a particularly unremarkable observation: if they’re all built the same way, why shouldn’t they ski alike? Fair enough, but it’s rarely the case that all members of a product family ski identically, and in the case of the new Stances, they don’t just ski kinda like their siblings: any two adjacent widths are all but indistinguishable on the snow, particularly in the off-trail conditions they were made for.
The obvious implication of this interchangeability is that the middle-of-the-range, All-Mountain West Stance 96 not only exhibits the same quickness to the edge as the All-Mountain East Stance 90 displays on a groomer, it also mimics the Big Mountain Stance 102’s Finesse properties in broken powder. That’s a great thumbnail description of what one hopes to find in any All-Mountain West model.
Skiers who want to smash through crud at max velocity have plenty of other options; the Stance 96 is more for the technician than the daredevil. It doesn’t rush through the turn, nor does it explode off the edge; its talent is for maintaining contact on a secure platform that adapts to terrain rather than trying to subdue it. Its defining trait is its predictability, moving confidently from turn to turn whether the snow surface is perfectly manicured or a hot mess that’s never seen a grooming machine.
Read the full review here
Atomic Bent 100
To give you an idea of what a steal the Bent Chetler 100 was when it was introduced four years ago, Atomic understandably raised its retail price by $100 a year later, and it was still the best value in the category. But the Bent Chetler 100 is more than just a good deal; it’s a wonderfully versatile ski that’s as easy to ski in off-trail conditions as any AMW model at any price.
The key to the Bent Chetler 100’s charms is its Horizon Tech tip and tail which are rockered on both axes. By crowning its extremities, the littler Chetler feels like it can drift in any direction on a whim without losing control of trajectory. When in its element, it’s the epitome of ease, rolling over terrain like a spatula over icing.
The Bent Chetler 100 is all about freedom of expression rather than the tyranny of technical turns. If you evaluate the Bent Chetler 100 for what it does rather than what it isn’t meant to do, it’s an all-star in a league of its own.
Read the full review here