It requires all of twenty feet of travel to realize the Enforcer Pro takes its name seriously. You may be out on the slopes for pleasure, but the Enforcer Pro is all business. It arrives ready to roll and attend to the first agenda item, getting up to speed. Once it hits about 30mph it spreads its wings and puts its momentum to work, leaning into medium to long arcs as if it owned them.
The Kästle BMX115 must be a Gemini, for it seems to be inhabited by two polar opposite personalities. If you’re railing it on a surface like corn snow, it handles like a Frontside ski, albeit one without short turns on its resume. When it has a chance to settle into soft stuff, it acts like it invented slarving, a controlled drift that uses banked bases to direct trajectory. This two-in-one character is really helpful in the trees, when it may be necessary to aim precisely and brake suddenly in the same instant.
Any ski called Sick Day sounds like a slacker, but the Sick Day 114 shows up for every turn. It may not execute each turn the way The Man would prefer, but whether by smearing the turn or sticking it, the Sick Day 114 gets it done. To keep its well-rockered tips and tails from flapping like pajamas on a clothesline, Line has stiffened them up and increased security attributable to a new core made of alternating stringers of maple and Paulownia.
The Salomon QST 118 is like the A student who doesn’t want to go to class; it knows how to carve, but it would rather skip all that carving pedantry and smudge its way through life. If challenged to etch a series of clean, long-radius figures it can rise to the occasion, but why carve when you can smear? The QST 118 is so crazy-simple to foot-steer, drifting from turn to turn feels like being carried down the hill.
Rossi’s Super 7 HD is one of those skis with nothing wrong with it that they keep on improving anyway. This time Rossi revamped its Air Tip so its surface is an extension of the same topsheet that covers the rest of the ski. The new Air Tip 2.0 is not only better integrated, it’s also thinner, which seems to help it roll to the edge with the willingness of a svelter ski. On edge at the top of the turn, the attitude of the Super 7 HD is all business, but at the bottom it throws a party, releasing the energy coiled in its fiberglass and carbon core.