QST 99
With a forebody that’s both amply rockered and tapered, the QST 99 is screaming, “I wanna go off-trail!” as loudly as a sugar-addled urchin ululating from his parent’s shopping cart. What it’s craving is a large dose of cut-up crud or wind-crusted berms it can chop into mincemeat. Taking it off trail is the best way to get the QST 99’s tips to settle down.
While hefty lads and hard chargers might crave more metal than the dollop Salomon places underfoot, skiers with a slightly more mellow attitude will appreciate how maneuverable the QST 99 is for a ski in this category.
FulLUVit 95
Its focus on ease and maneuverability in the rough and tumble of off-trail conditions disguises the power the FulLUVit holds in reserve. Kelli Gleason, who tears up Telluride when not taking care of business at Boot Doctors, assures us, “it still holds at Mach 9.” For its kindness to women who aren’t looking to crack the Mach scale ceiling, we award the FulLUVit 95 a Silver Skier Selection.
Enforcer 100
The Enforcer’s on edge authority derives from a no nonsense construction – all wood core filling in a metal sandwich – applied to a cambered baseline. It’s the shape of this baseline that’s the Enforcer’s special sauce: the forward contact point is pulled back 25% from the tip and the rear contact retreats 5% along the tail. While the rockered areas are pronounced, they are relatively low-angle so that any act of tipping and pressuring is sufficient to put the extremities back in snow contact. A blunt, low-profile “Hammerhead” shovel design keeps the tip closer to the surface, thereby reducing tip flap on hard snow.