There are two opposing archetypes for a wide, all-terrain ski: light and smeary or beefy and more connected. Salomon had the surfy side covered with the OST 99; its new Stance 96 is meant to wrestle with wood-and-metal powerhouses like the Blizzard Bonafide and Nordica Enforcer 100.
Salomon wasn’t going to win this battle with a cap construction, so the Stance 96 uses square sidewalls. To match up with metal you have to use Titanal, so the Stances are equipped with “Twin Frame” Ti laminates. You can’t get a wood core feel without a wood core, so all the unisex Stance models have an all-poplar center.
All that said, the Stance 96 doesn’t strictly imitate the benchmark skis that it presumes to supersede. Its rockered tip works better when buffering blows against loose snow; it feels a little loose on groomers and consequently a bit late into the top of the turn. But when it’s fully laid over it grips confidently regardless of the snow surface.
The Stance 96 handles speed well, which is a good thing, as it likes to hew closely to the fall line. Its long turn shape is the product of an narrow tail that helps keep the skier oriented downhill. A rectangular cutout in the Titanal topsheet pares off a few ounces so the Stance 96 feels more agile than its girth measures.
Fischer has been tinkering with its off-trail Ranger collection over the span of several seasons, searching for the fine line between lightweight, with its attendant ease of operation, and elite carving capability that can handle the transition to hard snow. The Ranger 99 Ti tilts the scales in favor of stability, amping up the carving power by reverting to square, ABS sidewalls straddling a classic, wood-and-Titanal sandwich. A carbon inlay in the tip lowers swingweight and overall mass, which is substantial enough to keep it calm on corduroy, yet feels comparatively light when tearing through crud.
By tweaking everything – core, baseline, sidewalls – Fischer transformed this commercially important model from a lightweight who got beat up by mean conditions like hard snow or chunky crud into a lean machine that doesn’t take any crap from any kind of snow, no matter what the Eskimos call it.
Realskiers testers lauded the Ranger 99 Ti’s agility for a ski of its girth, calling it “nimble and quick to turn,” “light and playful,” and “best short turns of the big mountain, soft snow skis.” Its relatively zippy reflexes belie a sublime stability at speed that eluded the previous generation of Rangers but is inbred in the new 99 Ti. “It’s a solid edition to the Fischer family,” vows Jack Walzer of Jan’s, who has been an aficionado of Fischers for a generation.
Two years ago, Salomon improved the hard snow performance of the QST99 by adding basalt to its foundational carbon/flax (C/FX) fibers. Last year, Salomon re-configured its primary elements, mixing the basalt and carbon parts and using the flax in its own layer under the binding zone. The net effect was to augment the sense of support, not just underfoot, where there’s also a slice of Titanal, but all along the baseline.
Two other changes to the ski design contributed mightily to the QST 99’s infusion of power and improved snow contact: 4mm’s of width was pared away from both the tip and tail, so the latest version doesn’t automatically try to steer out of the fall line, and the substitution of cork for Koroyd in the shovel. Salomon asserts that the “Cork Damplifier” is 16 times more proficient at absorbing shock and even lighter weight. With its new, trimmer silhouette, a 181cm QST 99 weighs 65g less this year compared to the 2018/19 version, while improving its Stability at Speed score from 7.80 to 8.43, the best score in the genre for a non-metal ski.
It’s hard to classify K2’s Mindbender 99 Ti as either a Finesse or a Power ski as it migrates freely across the border between these two behavioral territories. It Power properties derive from a yoke of Titanal that runs along the perimeter of the forebody, segues to an edge-to-edge binding platform and continues down the center of the tail. This design puts a premium on engaging the edge early and releasing it gently. Its double-rockered baseline uses only enough elevation at tip and tail to maintain flow in uneven terrain, so the skier feels end-to-end snow contact whether on groomers or off-trail.
While the Mindbender Ti models were introduced just last year, they are part of a K2 tradition that stretches back several product generations. If K2’s essence could be distilled to a single trait or two, it would be made of equal parts forgiveness and ease of use. The Mindbender 99 Ti doesn’t try to dictate turn shape nor does it require breakneck speed to get it to bend. It doesn’t have a terrain preference – it’s surprisingly snaky in the bumps – but its torsionally soft tail is more attuned to pushing against soft snow than biting into ice. As long as the surface has some give to it, the Mindbender 99 Ti is a competent carver and a confidence builder for someone still polishing their off-trail talents.
Tester: McKenna Peterson
The first time I skied on what is now the Mindbender 98Ti Alliance was during our second round of testing at Crystal Mountain, Washington. It had snowed a bit up high but had rained down low on the mountain so conditions were variable. I’m a big mountain skier and have always preferred fatter skis for float and stability at speed, but there was something about this 98mm underfoot ski that made my jaw drop. Up high, the 98Ti floated through the powder, perfectly balanced between riding on top and diving too deep. The ski carved through the nasty re-frozen wet snow of the lower mountain as if it were butter. The ski was both confident and playful. We had a winner.
So much so that the engineers ended up adapting the new Torsion Control Design as finalized for the 98Ti for the entire men’s and women’s Mindbender collection. Torsion Control Design allows the ski to be stable and confident throughout the turn while also giving the option to release on a dime and playfully maneuver. This quality makes the 98Ti my ‘go to’ resort ski for any and all conditions. Fun fact: this ski graces the cover of the 2019 December issue of SKI magazine and the photo was taken after an unusual 40” dump at Sun Valley. Yeah, she’s skinny but she rips in the powder.
