by Jackson Hogen | Aug 29, 2022
The qualities that made the 102 FR the star product of the old Rangers were its smeary, playful baseline, its metal-free construction – making it lighter and torsionally softer – and the fact that it had the most distinctive snow feel compared to its competition in the Big Mountain genre. As Fischer made the transition to its new Ranger series that adds a dab of Titanal to every model, preserving the on-snow properties of its flagship Ranger was likely to be a high priority.
Devotees of the retired Ranger FR 102 can relax. If you loved the FR for its surfy attitude, you’ll be at least as enamored of the 2023 Ranger 102. This is still a decidedly soft snow ski, as several testers lamented given that there was precious little natural snow last season. “In fresh snow, you’ll love this ski,” reassured Mark Rafferty from Peter Glenn. “Plenty wide and playful for first tracks. If no new fresh for a few weeks, the Ranger 102 will rip fast turns on the groomers. Strong for blasting through crud. A true marvel,” he raved.
Not everyone was smitten by the Ranger 102’s soft extremities, particularly when the powder it definitely prefers is in short supply. The race-bred Jim Schaffner over-powered the Ranger 102’s forebody, undermining its edging accuracy on hard snow. “The snow was perfect for testing this type of ski,” the Start Haus owner noted, “however I found that it was too loose for my style of skiing . I can see the benefit for a skier that only seeks out the softer untracked snow and who enjoys the art of drifting and skidding.”
As Schaffner’s remarks suggest, whether the Ranger 102 is your cup of tea depends on style, not ability, although the Ranger 102’s soft flex is especially well suited to those making their first forays into sidecountry. The .5mm-thick Titanal plate in its midsection sits astride a substantial beech and poplar core, so security underfoot shouldn’t be an issue for skiers who aren’t as big and aggressive as erstwhile race coach Schaffner. All things considered, the 2023 Ranger 102 amplified its forebear’s best assets without changing its fundamental character.
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 29, 2022
One of my favorite bump skis that wasn’t intended to be a bump ski was the K2 Shreditor 102 (circa 2015). Of course, it couldn’t be as quick as a real mogul ski edge to edge, so it did most of its navigation by slarving through the troughs and slinking around the lumpy bits. The new Reckoner 102 is in several respects the same ski, albeit embellished in ways its ancestor was not.
The similarities are hard to miss. The shape of the 184cm is identical save for a tip that’s 3mm wider on the Reckoner, giving it a marginally (.7m) snugger sidecut radius. Both Shreditor and Reckoner rely on braided fibers to control flex and torsion, with the Shreditor using a Triaxial braid of fiberglass and the Reckoner using Spectral Braid spun from carbon. Both vintages use Aspen in the core, although the Shreditor complemented it with featherweight Paulownia while the Reckoner uses Aspen in concert with denser fir. Both have relatively low camber underfoot, use a reinforced sidewall for added resistance to ski-on-ski damage and both, of course, are twin-tips.
Mercifully, the Reckoner 102, like the Shreditor before it, doesn’t need to be skied upside down and backwards to be enjoyed. If you like a ski that’s playful, poppy and super simple to drift, it can serve as an all-mountain ski for someone who is aerially inclined. If you want to take your Pipe & Park skills to the sidecountry, the Reckoner 102 wants to come with you.
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 29, 2022
The Blizzard Rustler 10 wants you to look good, so it makes everything about off-trail skiing easier. There’s a long, central band of Titanal on the top to stabilize the ski underfoot while allowing the tip and tail to twist. The idea is to keep the tapered tip from getting involved with every obstruction it meets; instead of trying to hook up at the top of turn like a hard-snow-oriented ski is meant to do, it politely deflects all rough treatment by bending with the blow. The same basic idea at the tail keeps it from insisting on finishing every arc on a hairline trajectory, as if skiing were trying to emulate figure skating.
A more powerful skier who takes his hard-snow technique with him when he travels off-trail might prefer the more connected feel of the Blizzard Cochise 106. But for the majority of off-piste skiers, the Rustler 10 is a better fit. When the nearly expert skier really needs help, the Rustler is a godsend. Imagine being in flat light – a common condition when the goods are there to be gotten – and not being able to tell what your tips are going to encounter next. That’s where the Rustler 10’s innate surf-ability takes over, smearing over the unseen obstacles as if they weren’t there.
Another milieu in which the Rustler 10’s looseness contributes to its maneuverability is powder-laden trees. Of course, you can’t carve through a forest on a 17.5m sidecut, but you can swivel through it without ever engaging an edge and you won’t have to worry about the ski’s shape specs. So, don’t let the Rustler’s 10’s low score for short turns steer you away from the woods. It’s inability to carve a tight turn on diamond-hard snow has nothing to do with the way it can sashay through the trees.
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 29, 2022
Now that the Fischer Ranger series share a common construction, they also share a similar behavioral profile. Nothing affects a modern ski quite as much as the addition or subtraction of Titanal, so when Rangers were made both with and without Ti laminates, their performance profile would change radically from one model to the next. For 2023, Fischer homogenized the Ranger line by doling out a measure of metal in every model. By dint of its extra width, the Ranger 108 earns a mite more in its midsection, making it the smoothest Ranger in the new family.
The Ranger series has always been aimed squarely at off-trail skiing, where surface area dictates the degree of flotation which in turn has a direct bearing on how easy a ski is to swivel. News bulletin: skiing deep snow isn’t like skiing hardpack. Not just in the obvious way that snow you sink into and snow you can barely dent require different tactics, but in the subtle ways that deep snow affects stance and turn finish, which can’t be carved and therefore has to be swiveled to come across the fall line.
The point of the previous paragraph is that the wider the off-trail ski, the closer it inherently comes to optimizing its design, at least for the purposes of skiing powder, which is the only reason to own a Big Mountain model in the first place. If test conditions last winter had only cooperated, scores for the Ranger 108 would have shot up, elevating both its Power and Finesse rankings. Of all the new Rangers, the 108 was most compromised by inappropriate test conditions, yet its superior skill set was evident despite this considerable handicap.
Blessed with more flotation and power than its stablemate, the Ranger 102, the Ranger 108 delivers the sort of elite performance experts expect. When allowed to run across a field of syrupy corn snow, it’s a gas to lay over like its waist was 20mm thinner. Of course, connection at the top of the turn is inhibited by the usual steep front rocker and pulled-back contact point found in virtually every Big Mountain ski, but most of the Ranger 108 is in the snow and unperturbed by the jolts delivered by irregular terrain.
by Jackson Hogen | Aug 29, 2022
There are several clear signals that the Rossignol Sender 104 Ti isn’t meant for the same skier as its big brother, the Sender 106 Ti+. While the only difference in their sidecut is the 104’s narrower waist, that’s about where the similarities end. The first hint that they aren’t equals is the plus symbol attached to the fatter ski. It’s meant to imply that there’s an extra dose of Titanal in the slightly more expensive ($100) 106, as indeed there is. But the 106 Ti+ also sports other embellishments that make it preferable for an expert who knows how to charge the fall line.
As important as Titanal is to ski behavior, it only covers so much territory, as neither model runs its Ti laminates from tip to tail. The end-to-end element that governs both skis is a weave of carbon and basalt fibers; on the Sender 106 Ti+ the combination dubbed Carbon Alloy Matrix is richer in carbon, so the ride feels more cushioned throughout and remains calm at higher velocity. The basalt-biased blend in the Sender 104 Ti, called Diago fiber, serves the same purpose but with less pronounced shock damping for the skier who isn’t pouring on the gas.
To adapt the top Titanal laminate to the less aggressive target skier, Rossi trims the Ti down 2mm on the sides, so it doesn’t reach the edge, and limits its longitudinal reach to just past the binding. Two millimeters may not sound like much, but keeping the Titanal away from the sidewall allows the latter to flex, mellowing the connection to the snow. Concentrating the Titanal underfoot keeps the swingweight down, for easier swiveling, and lowers the overall mass so the ski feels more nimble and easier to foot-steer. While the Sender 104 Ti’s extremities are fairly loose, the grip underfoot is confident and secure. For the Finesse skier for whom it is intended, the Sender 104 Ti is a better ski than its beefier bro.
