In keeping with the inverted world of women’s Frontside skis, where true carvers are nearly extinct and off-trail baselines are increasingly the norm, the Line Pandora 84 has its scores backward. It’s no more a Power ski than Taylor Swift is a power lifter; it’s a soft, buttery, compliant little cupcake of a ski that holds a nice edge all along the camber zone in its modestly rockered baseline.
When one considers Line’s dewy-cheeked demographic and the Pandora 84’s below-market price, it becomes clear just who this ultralight all-terrain ski is for: Miss Teen America, that’s who. It’s not for the ex-racer or the off-piste adventurer, but the girl next door who just wants to have fun. Line will turn 25 this year, yet it’s never lost touch with the youth market from which it draws its inspiration and its energy.
The American skier’s ongoing infatuation with fat skis has so distorted our collective notion of what an all-terrain ski should look like that we no longer remember the days when the best skiers’ everyday ride was a race ski or something similar. As recently as the late 1990’s, a ski as wide as Dynastar’s Speed Zone 4×4 82 Pro would have been regarded as a powder-only behemoth.
Dynastar remembers that epoch because it helped re-define the all-terrain ski when it launched the original 4×4 in 1998. With a less exaggerated sidecut than the shaped skis of the era along with a wider waist, the first 4×4 was immediately recognized as a breakthrough ski in an all-mountain category that had previously been stocked with race ski spin-offs. I remember taking my first runs on them at a Solitude trade fair where I took them out first thing and never brought ‘em back. My belated apologies.
The all-new 4×4 is attached to the Speed Zone family, but it’s actually a separate breed. In keeping with the overall trend to lighter skis, the 4×4 82 Pro uses a multi-material core with laminated beech providing the primary structure and a band of polyurethane (PU) between the wood and the outer sidewall. The PU adds a dampening element as well as being lighter than the wood it replaces.
The Dynastar Legend W 84’s position at the top of our panel’s favorite Frontside Finesse skis of 2020 illustrates an interesting phenomenon that sometimes occurs when a brand uses the same ski for both men and women, particularly when said ski doesn’t use Titanal in its stock recipe. The women’s skis garner higher points than the men’s, as has been the case the last couple of years with Dynastar.
If you’re familiar with Dynastar’s recent history, then you know the Cham series was conceived as a freeride, off-trail family. Given its bloodlines, the Legend W 84 has no trepidation about traveling off-trail, where it’s better at drift across broken snow than most in the genre. When it’s confined to corduroy quarters, its user-friendly baseline allows it to pivot or carve on command, and its tidy turn radius (12m @ 156cm) creates a lovely short arc. As one tester noted last spring, it’s “easy to carve medium radius turns yet also easy (and fun) to make short turns.”
At a scant 4mm wider in the waist than the Black Pearl 78, the new 82 shares a lot of its attributes, including a somewhat surprising preference for the consistency of groomed runs over the anything-goes conditions encountered off-trail. Perry Schaffner, like her dad Jim an archetype of racing power and efficiency, filed this report after a couple of turns on the dance floor with the Black Pearl 82:
“The Blizzard Black Pearl in a 173cm length was really great on freshly groomed snow. I can make both large- and short-radius turns very easily and carve while carrying good speed if I want it, but I also have the ability to slow myself down. When I skied off the groomed run into some of the skied-out powder from yesterday it felt like it didn’t perform quite as well as I got bucked around a bit, so I would definitely say you could go in all conditions but it’s probably better to stick towards groom surfaces, especially with the longer length I skied.”
Bear in mind that Perry can load the Black Pearl 82 just looking at it, and the pace at which she felt “bucked around a bit” would win a skiercross. For skiers who don’t have Perry’s power, the Black Pearl 82 feels just right.
