The Head Kore105 is a very clever combination of some Old School principles, a few features that are de facto standards in the Big Mountain genre and technology that is on the cutting edge of ski design. Head is the only ski maker with a license to use Graphene, carbon in a one-atom thick matrix, which allows its engineers to stiffen or soften flex with minimal affect on mass. To maintain this weight advantage, the heaviest component in the core is a slice of poplar next to the sidewall; the rest of it is a synthetic honeycomb called Koroyd and a quotient of Karuba, an ultralight wood commonly found in Alpine Touring skis.
The Kore 105 gets its power and energy from the carbon, fiberglass and Graphene that are laminated around this exotic core. To further trim grams, the topsheet is a cap made from polyester fleece, another dampening agent that’s only downside is it’s difficult to decorate, which is why all the Kores look murdered-out.
This recitation of low-mass components makes it sound as though the Kore’s only selling feature is its lightweight chassis. There’s no question that the Kore design is laser-focused on keeping the ski light, but if that were its only accomplishment it wouldn’t be such a big deal. What makes the Kore construction remarkable is that it’s light but never wimpy. Once you ski it for a few runs you forget about the lightweight and just ski as you would normally, only with less labor and fatigue.
The Mindbender 108 Ti tries to win the war against crud by caressing it instead of crushing it. It has a gift for rolling to the edge that makes it feel quicker than the norm among skis of its 108mm girth. To execute a truly tight radius turn requires overruling its roughly 30m-sidecut radius and foot swiveling a flat ski, a move the Mindbender 108Ti has down pat. Its impressive 9.25 score for drift speaks to its ability to brake according to the current style that uses skidding as the primary form of speed management.
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 is now 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.
For 20/20 Fischer has again re-designed the flagships of it Ranger Ti series, returning to a lay-up with twin Titanal laminates for stability and liberal use of carbon to make it responsive. Carbon inlays in the tip and tail help make the extremities thin and light, so the new Ranger 107 Ti is easier to foot steer when necessary. “It’s user-friendly but still can be skied aggressively,” notes one admiring tester. “You can take your foot off the gas and it’s still responsive.”
Compared to the Ranger 108 Ti that preceded it, the Ranger 107 Ti has a slightly less shapely silhouette and a longer contact zone underfoot, giving it more directional stability and an overall calmer disposition in the sloppy seconds that prevail on so-called powder days. Its new sidecut favors the skier who can maintain momentum through a series of rhythmic, mid-radius turns that neither enter nor exit the turn too suddenly.
The Fischer Ranger 102 FR is an interesting amalgam of Old School principles and New School attitude. At heart it’s a traditional, wood-core, glass laminate construction with square, ABS sidewalls, but on closer examination the wood laminates in the core are carved into a Chinese puzzle of latticework developed for Fischer’s market-dominating cross-country skis. To keep the lightweight Air Tec Ti core from being bounced around by stiff mounds of set-up crud, a thin sheath of Titanal covers the core underfoot.
Keeping the metal component to a minimum allows the Ranger 102 FR’s glass structure the freedom to flex under mild pressure and immediately pop back into its cambered position. Put this action/reaction pulse into motion and you have the makings of a very fun powder run.
There’s nothing like swaddling an already excellent ski in a rich coating of creamy carbon. We skied an Amphibio Black Edition last season that finished tops among Technical skis, and in the past we’ve skied Kästles that were also encapsulated in a carbon sheath. They, too, won their category, so the Elan Ripstick 106 Black Edition came with high expectations.
It did not disappoint. It snaked all around the mountain like a fat, black mamba, coiling around a medium-radius turn as if it were alive. The Ripstick 106 on which it’s modeled is already a fairly soft ski; slathering it in carbon didn’t change it compliant nature but complemented it. The carbon coat calms everything down, muffling shocks before they can cause any trouble. If your mind aches to go off-trail but your body aches if you do, the Ripstick 106 Black Edition is a brilliant buffer between heavy snow and balky joints.
