Every year, Stöckli publishes what is easily the most lavish product brochure in the ski world. As is the case with its skis, no expense is spared. It’s a bound volume, more like a coffee-table book than a brochure, on heavy, glossy paper you’d normally find in a book of swanky art reproductions. Product features are broken down and explained in minute detail. It’s an exquisite presentation.
But their thumbnail product descriptions are as hilarious as the catalog is beautiful. Bear in mind as you read Stockli’s positioning piffle that the Swiss have a full line of models, covering all sorts of specialized uses, and even have graphs that make it clear that the Montero AX isn’t, in fact, made for everything. But you’d never know it from its catalog description:
The new Montero AX promises total versatility. Groomed pistes? Fresh powder? Heavy spring slush? Everything is no problem for this playful do-it-all. Wave-shaped slits in the Titanal plus a rocker at the tip and tail make this ski easy handling ski and nimble, ideal for short to mid-radius turns. With its waist of 80mm, it also gets stability and performs perfectly in all conditions.
Mercifully for the reader looking for something that actually distinguishes the AX from the rest of the Stöckli line (not to mention its stablemate, the Montero AR), one clause in the thumbnail portrait is both relevant and accurate: “ideal for short to mid-radius turns.” While this revelation is most true for the shorter lengths and attendant tighter sidecut radii, every Montero AX has a short-radius turn bias baked in. Because the Montero AX also has the delightful tendency to fire the skier into the next turn, its capacity to set and maintain a staccato turn pace is unparalleled in a genre dedicated to short-turn accuracy.
While Stockli’s brochure blather overstates the case, the Montero AX maintains its cool, calm and collected edge even after the groomed terrain it prefers evolves into a morass of moguls and slush piles. But it doesn’t miraculously transform into a Stormrider 95 just because it’s aimed off-piste. It’s not going to ride on top of any layer of new snow, period. An 80mm waist is a sinker in soft snow, even if its tip is 124mm wide, as the Montero AX’s is. And the double rocker on the Montero AR is modest to say the least. Don’t forget, until this year the AX lived in the Laser family, which in Stockli’s lexicon means “race.” The Montero AX apple did not fall far from this tree.
Because of its race-room genealogy, the Montero AX has a lust for speed that begs to be indulged. “The AX loves speed,” observes Peter Glenn’s Mark Rafferty. “Seems to settle in the more speed you bring it. Although it is helpful and manageable at 15 mph, it’s odd to think of an intermediate skier on this ski, and yet that skier would have no issues with it being too much. Not an exaggeration to say that this is on-piste perfection in a ski. An absolute carving machine.”
Of the two new Monteros, the AR has the slightly larger performance envelope due to its greater facility in off-road conditions. The Montero AX has the advantage when it comes to responsiveness in short-radius turns and quickness edge-to-edge, and is therefore probably a mite more proficient in moguls than the wider AR. In an era when two-track carvers are bred to retain snow contact at all times, the exuberance of the AX off the edge is a breath of fresh air. As the name of his store, Start Haus, suggests, Jim Schaffner has racing blood in his veins, so he can easily detect – and revel in – its race-caliber performance. “This is hands-down the best 80mm-waisted ski on the market. Worth every penny or shekel.”
Lest the point be lost in the dither of details, the Montero AX’s mastery of short turns on hard snow elevates it into the elite company of the best non-race skis in the history of the sport. Yet it is so simple to ski, it nonetheless merits a Silver Skier Selection.
