by Jackson Hogen | May 31, 2021
A powerful skier 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.
Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the Rustler 10 is a Power ski hiding in a Finesse ski’s body. Considering how well it’s adapted for skiing in cut-up powder, the Rustler 10’s performance on corduroy exceeds expectations. It only needs a bit of give to the snow surface to calm it down and impart a sense of security.
by Jackson Hogen | May 30, 2021
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 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.
What the Reckoner 102 brings to the party that the Shreditor could not is Spectral Braid, a variable-angle braiding technique (Patent Pending). Spectral Braid makes both front and rear rocker zones soft and compliant, helping the Reckoner 102 switch from forward to reverse in a twinkling.
by Jackson Hogen | May 30, 2021
The entire Big Mountain genre owes K2 a debt of gratitude for championing the concept of rocker with such fervor that it was soon adopted as an essential design element for any ski over 100mm underfoot. As an early adopter of double-rockered baselines, K2 has a lot of institutional expertise at making a very wide ski that’s very easy to steer. The Mindbender 108 Ti continues this tradition of simplifying off-trail skiing with just the right balance of baseline, sidecut and flex pattern. One of the Mindbender 108 Ti’s strong suits is its huge ability envelope, which means almost anyone can get on it and have a ball.
It takes only one section of uncut powder to realize that this unsullied canvas is where the Mindbender 108Ti would prefer to display its artistry. Who wouldn’t rather ski unblemished freshies? By afternoon what was once pristine has become a mogul field. Remarkably, its soft, rockered forebody allows the 108Ti to conform to gnarly bumps – I’m looking at you, snowboarders – as if they were only a minor inconvenience. Because it isn’t torsionally rigid throughout, the Mindbender 108Ti doesn’t feel as wide as it measures. In soft snow it feels comfortable enough to be an everyday ski, but that’s asking a lot of a ski that likes powder as much as you do.
by Jackson Hogen | May 30, 2021
The Nordica Enforcer 104 Free and Enforcer 110 Free are both first-class Big Mountain Finesse skis, but they earn their high ratings for ease of use in different ways. The Enforcer 110 Free is inherently better at drifting and flotation, simply by dint of its superior surface area. These are critical properties for a Big Mountain ski, but they aren’t the only admirable attributes. The Enforcer 104 Free out-finesses its bigger bro with easy-steering agility, able to hew to a tighter radius whether on edge or off.
The Enforcer 104 Free even feels quicker than the narrower 185cm Enforcer 100, because you don’t detect its extra 4mm of width as much as you notice its lively response to lighter pressure. It seems to hover like a water bug over wind-battered crud, floating just above the havoc underfoot where it’s still able to move freely side to side. It smooths out the ruffles in the most ravaged terrain, turning a ratty collage of ruts into a dance floor.
Back-to-back runs on the 110 and 104 in 10 inches of partially tracked powder confirmed what one might suspect a priori – that the narrower ski was noticeably easier to steer no matter how you slice it. Whether pivoting your feet to make a short turn shorter or banking off a wind drift, the Enforcer 104 took less force to guide.
by Jackson Hogen | May 30, 2021
Three winters ago, I was able to saddle up an Enforcer 110 Free in the conditions for which it was made: lots of tracked-up pow on-trail and lush powder lines in the trees. It was a storm day with blustery winds, so if you weren’t in the woods you couldn’t see squat. The situation called for a ski that could absolutely care less about what lay ahead. The Enforcer 110 either rolled over or obliterated whatever dared cross its path. Its ability to plane over uneven surfaces allows it to ride high enough that it’s always easy to throw ‘em sideways to scrub speed or foot-swivel a short-radius turn.
If the crud ever turns confrontational and tries to toss you around, it’s a sign you’re not running them at high enough rpm’s. A 110mm-wide ski with two .4mm sheets of Titanal on board needs wind in its sails to become energized. You have to trust that if you aim it downhill it will reward your faith with rebound energy that will make it ten times easier to steer.
While it never hurts to be a strong technical skier, in its shorter lengths the Enforcer 110 is forgiving enough to serve lighter or less powerful skiers as well as the community of hard chargers. For its big-tent accessibility, we again award the Enforcer 110 Free a Silver Skier Selection.
