Blizzard’s Flipcore baseline, the heart and soul of the Black Pearl 98, has probably been the most commercially successful execution of a double-rockered baseline since rocker first reared its ugly head (and tail) over a decade ago. Flipcore certainly has left a mark on the women’s market, where the Black Pearl franchise is a well-oiled sales machine.
The Black Pearl 98 isn’t the sales phenom that it’s little sister is, but then nothing can match the records being set by the Black Pearl 88. The reason for the sales imbalance is simple: the BP 88 is an everyday ski, the proverbial one-ski quiver if ever there was one. While the BP 98 could be the regular ride if the pilot is a strong skier, both physically and technically, but more often than not it’s going to a second pair reserved for powder and powder-ish days.
Whether or not the Black Pearl 98 is right for you is answered by a simple equation. If you spend half your ski day (or more) as far from groomers as you can get, the Black Pearl 98 is your ideal mate. If you’re spending more than half your time on prepared slopes, hook up with its little sister.
To give you an idea of what a steal the Bent Chetler 100 was last year, Atomic understandably raised its likely retail price by $100 and it’s still the best value in the category. But the Bent Chetler 100 is more than just a good deal; it’s a wonderfully versatile ski that is as easy to ski in off-trail conditions as any AMW model at any price.
The key to the Bent Chetler 100’s charms is it Horizon Tech tip and tail which are rockered on both axes. By crowning its extremities, the littler Chetler feels like it can drift in any direction on a whim without losing control of trajectory. When in its element, it’s the epitome of ease, rolling over terrain like a spatula over icing.
The Bent Chetler 100 is all about freedom of expression rather than the tyranny of technical turns. So what if it’s liberty-loving tip doesn’t want to show up early in the turn? That’s not its shtick. It has talents Technical skis never imagined, like throwing it in reverse off a precipice. It’s light, it’s easy to pivot and it’s wide enough to float in two feet of fresh. If you evaluate the Bent Chetler 100 for what it does rather than what it isn’t meant to do, it’s an all-star in a league of its own.
[Neither the Vantage 97 C W nor its scores have changed since this review was posted last season.]
For its 2019 Vantage collection of all-mountain skis, Atomic took a different approach to executing the ideals of the Lighter Is Better movement in product design. Instead of looking for ways to remove material from existing archetypes, Atomic began with the most elemental design imaginable and added only what’s required to turn a shape into a ski.
As you’d expect from a ski built to be as minimalist as possible, in the hand the Vantage 97 C W feels light enough to fly away, but it’s so stable on snow one tester even found it “stiff-ish.” It’s certainly a lot more ski than is normally available at a street price of $499. Kelli Gleason of Boot Doctors in Telluride, pegs the 2019 Vantage 97 C W as “more powerful than its predecessor, this ski is a charger and can be sized down to accommodate a more timid skier.” An extraordinary value for the accomplished skier, it’s also the perfect escort for the off-trail debutante who needs a forgiving partner to show her the ropes.
When the Völkl M5 Mantra appeared last season, it was received like an answered prayer by thousands of Mantra fans who didn’t much care for the iteration that preceded it. The attributes that had been erased over time – and that the M5 Mantra restored – were a tighter waist for more accurate hard-snow steering and conventional camber underfoot, for greater grip and control over trajectory.
Völkl didn’t just resurrect an old Mantra concept; it created an entirely new recipe using the same classic components – wood, fiberglass and Titanal – that had helped put the original Mantra on the map. The new configuration is called Titanal Frame, for the difference maker is in how the top sheet of Titanal has been re-imagined.
Instead of a solid, end –to-end laminate, Völkl broke the topsheet into three pieces: a .6mm thick section in the forebody that runs around the perimeter and over the tip; a similar .6mm U-shaped part in the tail; and an independent .4 mm plate in the middle. By making it easier to bow underfoot, the skier can more readily compress the fat sheet of fiberglass right below the metal bits, loading the ski with energy and delivering another element Mantra fans had been missing: rebound.
