OVERVIEW
Atomic can’t help being obsessed with speed. They’re Austrian down to their toes, thereby making it a patriotic obligation to assist Austrian natives in winning World Cup titles. They’ve been very good at meeting expectations, delivering a horde of gold to Austrian athletes. An interesting side development occurred on the way to the podium: non-racers discovered the amazing tranquility at speed that Atomic’s race-room skis exude. At one ski area we frequent, hardly a racing hotbed, there is a knot of very fast, talented skiers who crush the groomers on Atomic GS sticks, and every one of them said “aloha” to their 50th birthday several seasons ago.
Point being, if you understand when and how to tip a ski, if you realize skiing is an active verb, you may decide when conditions are firm to pass over the entire flotilla of Atomic all-mountain skis and attach yourself to their nearest race model. We don’t review true (FIS) race skis here because we have too much respect for the coach-racer relationship to pretend we ought in any way to intervene, but if we did delude ourselves into declaiming on the subject, we’d tell you to try an Atomic.
On the race course, precision is paramount and compromise is unthinkable. In the freeride world of buttered turns, imprecision is part of the program, and some compromises better be made or the skier is in for a very rough ride. So when Atomic creates what we would call an All-Mountain West ski (or fatter shape), they tune the entire ski to be more amenable to broken snow. Atomic also has made a conscious commercial choice to offer competitive product for less, pricing some of their off-piste skis several schillings below the competition. If you’re looking for good value in a very well made ski, Atomic is a sensible place to start your search.
The 2017 Season
For several seasons, the centerpiece of the Atomic collection was its Nomad series of All-Mountain East and Frontside skis, headlined by the Crimson Ti. As the curtain rises on the 2017 season, the last of the Nomads has wandered off, replaced with a new, Frontside-focused Vantage X Series.
The close tie-in to the successfully relaunched Vantage family of All-Mountain skis is both technical and promotional. Two performance additives first combined in the Vantage series, Carbon Tank Mesh and Ti Backbone 2.0, are repurposed in the Vantage X collection to improve grip on hard snow. Both series also share the beefy Firewall sidewall construction and an all-wood (ash and poplar) core.
The biggest differentiator between Vantage and Vantage X, aside from waist width, is in baseline, or how the ski meets the snow. The All-Mountain Vantage models have a longer front rocker and a dab of tail rocker; the Frontside Vantage X models tighten up the turn connection up front and dispense with any elevation at the tail.
Like many Frontside families, the Vantage X series is large, with five men’s and four women’s models covering price points from entry-level ($399 with binding) to throat-clearing ($1,100).
At the other end of the waist-width spectrum, Atomic is adapting and extending its Backland series of Big Mountain and backcountry skis. Realskiers ignores the models made primarily for hiking, but Atomic still makes 6 wide-bodies bearing the Backland name in its Freeski collection. The Bent Chetler is back with a different form of carbon reinforcement but the same super-surfy feel.
For 2017, the Chetler’s HRZN Tech forebody that’s rockered every which way has been applied to the men’s Backland FR 117 and Backland FR 109 and the women’s Backland W FR 109. We wish we’d received enough test cards on these models to cover them all as we suspect they’re a gas to push around in the pow. What little time we spent on HRZN Tech models, we spent grinning.