Field Report
Conditions could not have been much better for ski testing at the dealer trade fairs held the second week of February at Alpine Meadows and Mammoth Mountain, with both venues providing great cover and snow surface preparation. Mammoth, by the way, as usual one of the best-kept secrets in ski resort-dom, may well have the best snow conditions in the country. Whatever one may consider the demerits of the entire ski testing enterprise, at least on these occasions one couldn’t fault the prevailing slope conditions, that generally remained stable all day, every day.
The view from 10,000 feet reveals an industry still reeling from the blows of the last year. No one is overhauling their line or introducing as yet unheard of technologies. This is an era of prudence, of trimming lines rather than expanding them, culling out weaker models and filling in the occasional gap with something fresh. As such, there is unlikely to be much changing of the guard regarding which models within the generally accepted genres are the star performers. What may change is how some ski tests grade their subjects: by emphasizing “soft” criteria like drift, forgiveness, slow-speed skiing and “relaxing,” the skis with the highest scores won’t necessarily be the skis with the highest performance capacity but rather those most accessible to the less talented.
Moving in closer to ground level, it’s a pity to observe so much excellence in the shrinking “carving” category. The aces in this deck, which in this tester’s opinion issue from Blizzard, Nordica, Dynastar, Völkl and Salomon, are sublime rides that spool out impeccable arcs of any dimension at their rider’s whim. Once hailed as skiing’s salvation, carving skis are now the red-headed step-child of the ski family. Now that this genre is producing its finest, most versatile and quietest high-speed rides of all time, it is barely subject to exploration by the skiing public.
What has killed the carving ski is the ever-expanding versatility and ease of operation of the models that populate the 88mm- and 98mm-waist market segments. This thicket of skis meets the “all-mountain” definition, the home of the one-ski quiver being sought by some 80% of ski buyers. This is where the most fruitful discussions along the ski wall occur, i.e., ones that result in a sale. Most brands have already put their best foot forward in these categories – for example, Völkl’s Mantra, Nordica’s Hell & Back, Rossi’s E88 and E98 – so despite a highly competitive market there won’t be many changes in this fleet. One exception to this rule is the Blizzard Brahma, their new Flip Core 88 that adds metal laminates to the recipe, essentially replicating their 98mm Bonafide in a more slender silhouette. I would be suspicious of any ski test that didn’t place it on the podium in its category.
Another revelation, at least to this veteran tester, was the Dynastar High Mountain iterations of its Cham series. I was not one of those who applauded all aspects of the original Cham models, where the torsional rigidity where the rocker met the underfoot camber line kept the ski’s prow out of the snow. In the High Mountain series the metal laminates are removed to lighten the skis for backcountry use, with the attendant benefit of softening the ski overall and making it a more supple, easy-riding ski. Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in the 107 dimension, where the metal Cham is an unadulterated fall-line charger while the HM version is so tractable one doesn’t even notice its girth on soft groomage. The Cham series represents one of those rare instances when a non-metal version isn’t an inherent downgrade from its metal twin, but a genuine performance preference option.
I don’t have enough data to make any more sweeping pronouncements, but I will leave you, dear reader, with this vignette of ski behavior today. One of the fallacies of the current scene is that “handmade” skis are superior, as their low output must be subject to a higher degree of craftsmanship than their mass-produced counterparts. Balderdash. The worst ski I tried over a four-day span was, by a wide margin, a boutique brand’s effort at an all-mountain ski. It would be comical to compare it to real brands with real R&D departments, were it not for the fact that they charge more for these hoax skis than one would pay for a real one. I’m not saying there are no small brands worth their salt – Ski Logik comes to mind as a small brand taking a different tack – but most microbrew brands innovate only in topskin imagery and fiddling with fat dimensions more rather than demonstrating proficiency in the fields of either technology or quality control.
– Jackson Hogen
