Making lighter weight skis has been a Salomon specialty since it concocted the first commercially successful monocoque skis many moons ago. Now Salomon has made its best women’s powder ski ever, the QST Stella 106, that proudly sports “Full Sandwich Sidewalls 360o” or expressed in generic terms, a square sidewall, the very design feature that the monocoque cap obsoleted for several seasons.
You won’t find another ski with a 112mm waist and 23.5m sidecut radius that would rather carve on a high edge angle than smear like a putty knife. It’s not that it won’t drift – of course it will – but it feels predisposed to carve on its razor-thin 3D.Ridge of compressed carbon. The V-Werks Katana was the test pilot for the 3D.Ridge design that has since permeated Völkl’s high-end All-Mountain and Frontside models. The V-Werks Katana proved that the concept could apply equally well to deep-sidecut carving skis and broad-beam powder surfers.
Brilliance on a high edge comes at the price of making a short arc, with the ever-accelerating speeds bigger turns engender. You’ll never get a ski with the 100 Eight’s sidecut to carve a tidy arc, but it has the solution on demand: a fully rockered baseline without a whisper of camber to interfere with a smudged slide. If you want to aim the other way RIGHT NOW, just turn your feet. No unpleasant contortions required.
At the heart of every lightweight design is carbon, and the Sheeva 10 has plenty of it, both in stringers in its glass laminates and in unidirectional inserts at tip and tail that help lower swingweight. Its signature feature is a Titanal laminate that runs nearly edge-to-edge underfoot but tapers to a blunt tongue that doesn’t quite reach either tip or tail. The intent is to add stability underfoot but keep the rest of the ski looser, so it can contort to absorb irregular terrain.
If there’s one condition in particular the Cochise would most like to play in, it’s crud, in all its many manifestations. A snowfield that been riven by countless tracks still looks like fresh fodder to the Cochise. You can try to ski the Cochise slowly or push it around at low edge angles, but it isn’t likely to cooperate in these endeavors. This bad boy was built to gallop, not to trot. If you want a more compliant off-trail companion that isn’t geared so high, try the new Rustler 10 instead.