The position of the Black Pearl 78 in our test over the last two seasons has to be the most anomalous in the entire test. The Frontside category is supposed to the province of dedicated carvers, skis with extravagant sidecuts, shock-sucking interfaces and elevated binding systems. How did this flat, plain Jane with a shallow, off-trail shape and double rockered baseline not only end up in this den of carvers, but leading it in Power points?
One possible answer is the Black Pearl 78 actually is the best carving tool in the Frontside drawer. Its test scores, which admittedly can be misleading, lead the large field in early turn entry, continuous, accurate carving and short-radius turns. That’s a tough trifecta to simply dismiss as anecdotal. Hell, all scores are anecdotal, but we wouldn’t use them if they didn’t tend to accurately reflect behavior.
One stat we don’t capture – because it doesn’t exist – is holding power per ounce, or grip per gram. The 1350g Black Pearl 78 would lap the field. Its relatively tiny, 78mm waist helps it move nimbly edge to edge whether it’s decorating groomers with twin rail tracks or threading through tortuous troughs, the skinniest Pearl in Blizzard’s oyster bed stands out for its ease and accessibility.
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.
The new Wingman 82 Cti from Elan demonstrates the proposition that the best way to imbue a Frontside ski with greater terrain versatility is to begin with an off-trail template. The Wingman series borrows its structure from Elan’s Ripstick collection, which uses twin 3mm carbon rods near the base to lend strength, dampening and rebound to its poplar and Paulownia core. To give the ski more poise on piste, Elan squared up and flattened out the tail and added a band of Titanal to the ski’s mid-section for good measure.
That the Wingman 82 Cti would excel at twin-track carving was foreordained by its TruLine Amphibio design, an Elan staple. Amphibio is the umbrella term for an asymmetric sidecut that puts a longer effective edge on the inside of the ski and a shorter camber zone along the outside edge. In other words, the ski is rockered along the longitudinal axis. This allows the skis to always remain in sync as they roll from one inside edge to the other. TruLine amplifies the Amphibio offset by concentrating more glass over the inside edge so the skier’s force is directed where it’s needed most.
Atomic’s entries in the Frontside genre come from the two different categories that abut it: the new Vantage 79 Ti and 82 Ti import their Prolite chassis from the wider world of All-Mountain models, while the latest Redster, the X9 WB, is a direct descendant of the Redster X9, a tight-radius Technical ski. Like brothers that don’t get along, they’re both from the same family but they could not be more different.
The “WB” in this Redster’s name stands for Wide Body, but by today’s standards its 75mm waist looks painfully corseted. Its sidecut radius is only 13.5m in a 168cm, roughly the dimensions of a World Cup slalom. If the pilot tilts it to a high edge angle, it will tuck into a short-radius turn with the eagerness of a cutting horse cornering a calf. (Note that it earns a 9.0 for short-radius turns, one of the best scores in the category for this bellwether feature.) As long as it isn’t subjected to FIS-level speeds, its fully cambered baseline stays plastered to the snow. If the pilot gives it a little poke in the tail just for grins, it responds with a jolt of energy that carries you weightlessly into the next turn.
