There are three balancing acts that a Big Mountain ski needs to pull off in order to rise to the top of the ranks. One, it has to make the transition from firm snow to soft and back again feel so smooth it’s barely perceptible. Two, it has to execute short turns and long turns without an obvious bias for one or the other. And three, the ski itself needs to feel balanced, with a round, even flex that allows the skier to always feel on center. I’m sharing this nugget of wisdom here because if the essence of the new Rustler 10 could be distilled to a single word, it would be “balanced.”
The erstwhile owner of Start Haus in Truckee, California, a longtime Realskiers Test Center, Jim Schaffner is also a world-class bootfitter and race coach. His thumbnail portrait of the Rustler 10: “Balanced and very comfortable to ski in all conditions. It felt seamless to move from firmer to softer to broken pow. Predictable and smooth, with surprising power and rebound when you stomp on it. If I owned this ski, I would ski it on most days in Tahoe.”
Bear in mind, Schaffner is both big and strong, so the idea of a Big Mountain ski as an everyday driver makes perfect sense in his case. The more skilled the skier, the more he or she can appreciate the full performance range of this ski. Skiers with a less polished skill set can adopt the Rustler 10 as their designated powder/crud ski, but for everyday skiing, the Rustler 9 is a better tool for the skier who is less talented or less aggressive.
There’s a reason the latest Rustler 10 is noticeably better than its forebear; two reasons, actually. Its core was given the Trueblend treatment, blending lightweight poplar laminates with sturdy beech underfoot, and adding Paulownia at the tip and tail to reduce overall heft and swingweight. Trueblend alone probably would have made the Rustler 10 a better ski by itself, but swapping a single, truncated sheet of Titanal in the old Rustler 10 for the new FluxForm chassis made the Rustler 10 makeover pack a bigger punch.
When Salomon launched the first edition of the Stance series in the 20/21 season, they were well aware that they were entering all-mountain categories already brimming with options. Most of the established image leaders in the pivotal All-Mountain West genre were Power models loaded stem to stern with dual Titanal laminates. To create some space for Stance in this crowd, Salomon had to both match what the category leaders were doing yet somehow be different from them. The solution was to replace swatches of Ti in the top sheet with its proprietary C/FX fibers, so the Stances would feel a bit less ponderous than the competition.
The changes instituted in the latest Stance series took this effort at differentiation a step further, slightly disengaging the Ti top layer from the core, creating the sensation of a softer-flexing ski that’s still torsionally rigid enough to bite into boilerplate. Sally also lightened up the core by adding Karuba to what had been an all-poplar affair. The net effect is a high-octane ski that is simplicity itself to steer. As incarnated in the Stance 102, the new changes transformed what had been a back-of-the-pack wannabe into one of the very best Finesse skis in the over-served Big Mountain market. Its nickname should be Crud Lite, for it excels in soft snow, where it maintains a mellow, fall-line orientation through thick and thin.
One of the Stance 102’s most striking attributes is how it feels narrower than it measures. At least part of this sensation is due to a tail that is, in fact, narrower than the norm in the Big Mountain genre, so the ski has a tendency to gently release the turn after it crosses the fall line. The perception of being on a more tapered platform is accentuated by smooth, even flex that bows under modest pressure.
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. In 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 earned 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.
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.
Don’t let the model name fool you: Völkl still calls this ski the Mantra 102, but the addition two years ago of Tailored Titanal Frame, Tailored Carbon Tips and a tweaked sidecut has totally transformed its personality. The Mantra 102 circa 2022 was a barely tamed beast, subduing all in its path; the latest incarnation is a pussycat that readily bends to its pilot’s will. It behaves like a different ski.
One measure of a ski’s steering facility is the skier’s perception of width. In its first incarnation, the Mantra 102 was notable for feeling wider than it measured; the 2024/25 version “skis narrower than indicated, making it very easy to turn,” according to veteran tester Theron Lee.
The combined effect of a triad of new features is what made the Mantra 102 suddenly so tractable. Like every Big Mountain ski in Christendom, the Mantra 102 is double rockered, but it imparts the sensation of full, tip-to-tail contact, in part because Tailored Carbon Tips keep the entire rocker zone quiet. Tailored Titanal Frame keeps the mass in the forebody proportional to the ski’s length, facilitating earlier turn entry. The slightly wider tip encourages more pull into the turn, opening up the short-radius spectrum, while the skinny tail helps the skier stay close to the fall line, making crud and powder a hell of a lot easier to plunder.
A big contributor to the Mantra 102’s outstanding performance on any snow surface is its first-in-class rebound coming out of the turn. Part of the magic of the Titanal Frame design is the freedom its three-piece top sheet has to flex and compress a full-length glass layer that reacts to this pressure like a coiled spring. Now that the Titanal Frame is tailored by size, the whole ski is more responsive. The Mantra 102 naturally rises as it uncoils during the turn transition, so it’s unweighted while crossing the fall line.
Regardless of how relatively narrow it feels underfoot, the Mantra 102 is still a wide and torsionally stiff ski, so it’s not ultra-quick edge to edge, but that’s its only performance limitation. In mid- to long-radius turns, it’s as secure as a Swiss bank account.
Every other model in the new Anomaly series expects to become the all-day, everyday ski for whomever is wise enough to acquire it, and justifiably so. The 84, 88 and 94 are differentiated by their terrain biases, but not by skier size or ability. Any reasonably proficient skier would be thrilled by their quietly assertive power and sensitive steering.
But if your plan is to ride the Anomaly 102 every day, it would be very helpful if you were very good and didn’t mind skiing very fast. It also wouldn’t hurt if you were fairly stout lad, say in the 200-pound+ club. The bigger, the better and the faster you are, the more you’ll prefer the 102 over its slimmer siblings.
The widest Anomaly isn’t built any differently than the other Anomalies, there’s just more ski under you in a 102. The main benefit of added girth is higher flotation, so Blizzard’s design team bumped up the 102’s float-ability by skewing the size run long. With a wider silhouette stretched out over an elongated chassis, the Anomaly 102’s natural turn shape is on the long side. Even when coaxed into a tighter-than-normal turn, the 102 doesn’t veer far from the fall line. One reason the 102 is best left to experts is that it all but obliges the pilot to maintain a fall-line orientation, for with speed comes power, and with it the fortitude to blast through day-old chop.
The net effect is the Anomaly 102 delivers a cushioned ride that is more supple and terrain-absorbing rather than terrain-smashing. Its narrower body allows it to initiate turns more easily regardless of the snow conditions. Like the Cochise, it still favors the skilled skier who likes to motor, but it’s easier to drive, like switching from a one-ton pick-up to a luxury sedan.
The Anomaly 102 is a fantastic ski, as fast and as smooth as a bullet train, one that doesn’t make local stops for middle-of-the-pack intermediates. It’s not made to nurse the uninitiated into competence, but as a reward for those who have put in the time learning how to play with gravity on big mountains.
