by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Little Liberty first popped up on my radar when they introduced a stellar new technology I hadn’t seen before: instead of using flat sheets of Titanal in the horizontal plane, Liberty inserted a vertical aluminum spine running the length of the ski. The year was 2018, the same year Rossi launched Line Control Technology and Blizzard introduced Carbon Spine, both of which also featured a central, vertical strut. Liberty’s Vertical Metal Technology (VMT) embarrassed the big boys, keeping the 3 V-Series models that used it pinned to the snow. It was a stunning debut.
This year, VMT as we knew it is gone, replaced with Variable Metal Technology in a new, 3-model series, the Radian 92 and 100 for men and a women’s model, the Horizon 92. The new VMT consists of a single, horizontal laminate that is tapered at both ends, so the tip and tail are looser and therefore better suited to irregular, off-trail conditions. (That was one of the problems with Vertical Metal Tech; it was too good at nailing the full length of the ski to the snow surface.)
Liberty calls the niche category to which the Radians and Horizon belong, “Precision-Guided Directional Freeride,” which sounds a bit contrived, but it’s actually a succinct summation of their essential character. These aren’t goofy twin-tips or loosey-goosey barges, but they are meant for Freeride terrain, i.e., anything but groomers. It’s what skiers with refined Frontside skills would prefer to take off-trail. They’re able to translate technical skills into effortless off-road skiing by constructing an off-trail shape and baseline and filling it with on-trail innards.
Jim Schaffner, whose knowledge of the state of the art in ski technology borders on the encyclopedic, calls the Radian 100, “An impressive entry in the 100mm-waist width category. This ski has a very stuck to the snow feel that is confidence-inducing in terms of speed control and resisting the earth’s gravitational pull while turning. Very predictable and at the same time versatile in turn shape and speeds.”
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Just two years ago, Head invigorated its Kore series by making a handful of product changes that palpably improved every Kore model’s performance. You’d think the Austrian brand would have rested on its considerable laurels, but the following year it elected to add a urethane topcoat – like frosting on the proverbial cake – to help protect the top and sides from nicks and scratches. Lo, and behold, the addition of an end-to-end dampening layer gave the new Kores a little extra cush to their ski/snow connection, smoothing out the ride whether smashing through crud or cutting up corduroy.
The Kore 99 epitomizes what makes Head’s unique Kore construction so well adapted to irregular, off-trail conditions without compromising its capacity for holding on hard snow. The All-Mountain West category resides on the boundary line between hard-snow carvers and Big Mountain drifters. The Kore 99 is definitely from the latter camp of looser skis, but its thoughtful design never forgets that is has to meet a certain hard snow performance standard or Head won’t put its name on it.
Kore’s paramount intention is to make a lightweight construction that can be applied to wide skis without extra weight accompanying the extra width. The champion of this coup is Graphene™, carbon in a one-atom thick matrix that has the highest strength-to-weight ratio ever discovered, much less industrialized. Graphene allows the ski designer to increase flex resistance while decreasing overall weight, so it can be moved around the ski to achieve just the sort of snow feedback being sought. In the Kore series, Graphene is moved to the tip and tail where it adds structure but almost no weight, thereby lowering swingweight and making these wide skis easy to swivel.
One of the measures of a great ski is how it handles conditions for which it was not designed. The Kore 99 is built through-and-through to be an off-trail, loose-snow ski, yet it acquits itself on hardpack as if it were home sweet home.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
The current Rustler 9 from Blizzard isn’t a little bit better than its predecessor; it’s much, much better than its namesake. Among its myriad changes is a slight boost in its overall width, which tipped the new Rustler 9 into the hotly competitive All-Mountain West genre. Instead of slipping in the standings, it rose from a middle-of-the-pack position among All-Mountain East models to near the top of the All-Mountain West category. No other new ski in the 2023/24 season made as great a leap up the performance ladder as the Rustler 9.
When all criteria are considered, the Rustler 9 remains a Finesse ski, but only by the slimmest of margins. It’s still a forgiving, easily steered ski, but it now has a reserve power supply accessible to any skier who can lay it on edge. A great all-terrain ski has to be able to smear or carve on command, a trick the Rustler 9 has down cold. The tip is strong and connected enough to engage at the top of the turn, but the ski can also find the edge by smearing sideways, then tipping the ski so the edge latches onto a carve midway through the turn. This facility at finding an edge anywhere along a mid-radius arc is one of the qualities that distinguish the best all-terrain skis from the also-rans.
If a single sobriquet could capture the essence of the Rustler 9, it would be “balanced.” Balanced between its facility at short turns or long. Balanced in its flex pattern. Balanced in its aptitude for handling adverse snow conditions. Balanced in its appetite for speed: it’s not trying to break the sound barrier, but it won’t wobble at any speed that’s safe in the resort environment. While it remains essentially a Finesse ski, the new Rustler 9 excels at all aspects of high performance, all-terrain skiing.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Prior to the 22/23 season, Fischer had subdivided its Ranger family of off-trail models into two distinct clans, indicated by their suffixes: Ti, for those with metal in the mix, and FR, for those without. Among Fischer aficionados, the softer and surfier Ranger FR models had a more distinct, looser character that distinguished them from the large cadre of all-mountain skis with metal in them. In the Realskiers scoring system, which favors snow connection over smearing, the Old School Ti models would consistently out-perform the New School FR’s, but it was clear from the tester comments that the Ranger FR’s had a bigger fan club.
Two seasons ago, Fischer unveiled an entirely new Ranger series, ushered from the drawing board to the ski shop wall by none other than Mike Hattrup, who recently earned a well-merited induction into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. As one might expect from a mash-up of the old FR and Ti branches of the family, some of each genome is entwined in models like the Ranger 96.
Like the Ti’s of yesteryear, there’s metal in the latest hybrid Rangers, just not as much as before. The metal is confined to the area underfoot, and while there are some changes in how the metal part is configured across the line, none possess enough Titanal to suppress the loose extremities that appealed to FR fans. Because the metal is mostly underfoot, the tip and tail feel lighter, easier to pivot sideways and generally more genial than a ski with tip-to-tail Ti laminates. 258
As is often the case, the metal plate in the middle extends its influence beyond its boundaries, so the Ranger 96 feels secure all along the tail. On balance, the 2025 hybrid Ranger behaves more like the FR side of its pedigree, albeit with a stouter tail that holds up under the sustained pressure of a long-radius turn.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Kästle’s MSRP’s hover near the peak of the retail pricing mountain, where the air is so thin only a few brands can survive in it. Kästle’s relatively new Czech ownership wants to expand the line by dropping a few experimental models down to a lower altitude, where the people, particularly less affluent younger people, can afford to acquire them.
Hence the ‘Z” in its name, a reference to Gen Z, otherwise known as young adults. The first foray in this direction was the ZX108, a non-metal, robustly rockered Big Mountain model with surprising moxie, introduced just two seasons ago. The ZX100 is its first offspring, with a retail tag of $649, a pittance for a Kästle and right in line with the rest of the market.
The low price wouldn’t be worth much if the ski couldn’t cut it, but the ZX100 is a knockout, particularly in the softer snow it’s made for. This became evident on a spring day at Mt. Rose, where the snow surface evolved from boilerplate to mush in the span of three hours. As soon as the top surface became loose enough to dislodge, the ZX100 was in its element. Its classic wood-and-fiberglass sandwich is strong on the edge and peppy coming off it. It’s sidecut is also right out of the time-honored playbook, with just a little more shape and tip-to-tail taper angle than the norm. Without metal to dampen its response to pressure, the ZX100 feels quick and lively even though its natural sidecut radius is 18m in a 180cm and short turns aren’t really its wheelhouse.
Its balanced flex feels easy to stay centered on, where the skier can instantly switch between smooth smears and sharp edge sets as the ZX100 hews closely to the fall line. If you want to make a tighter turn that’s more carve than swivel, be prepared to work for it, but that’s the case for just about every ski in this genre.
