Big as he is, the Rustler 11 will always be the Bodacious’ little brother, and like many baby bros, the Rustler 11 tries hard to be his elder sibling’s antithesis. The biggest difference in the younger’s personality is how he behaves at the point of attack, where the ski meets the snow. Put simply, the Bodacious is a puncher, and the Rustler 11 is a counter-puncher.
Another way to characterize how the Rustler 11 differs from the Bodacious is the latter expects a little more from its pilot – more speed, more skill, more aggression – while the Rustler will happily accept you as you are, warts and all. That it surrenders some support on hardpack only matters if you want it to. Kept to the pow, it’s as easy as pie and a perennial recipient of a Silver Skier Selection.
The Dynastar Menace Proto F-Team floats so high it doesn’t encounter much resistance no matter how you choose to turn it. The Menace Proto’s ability to levitate despite its heft – an inevitable consequence of so much width – makes it particularly easy to swivel around trees and old tracks. Because it’s so easy to rotate, you can charge the fall line, knowing you can toss them sideways in a heartbeat. Once all the powder has been plundered you can ride the edge almost as if it were a carving ski. It even has a lively kick off the bottom of its preferred long arc, which makes it feel lighter through the turn transition.
The widest ski examined in these pages, Atomic’s Bent Chetler 120 not only doesn’t ski as wide as it measures, it actually behaves “normally,” instead of ultra-adapted for pow, which is what it is. The Bent Chetlers (there are now two, with the debut of a Bent Chetler 100) are adorned with HRZN Tech, extremities that are rockered both longitudinally, which is customary, and laterally, which is unique to them. HRZN Tech creates a 3D surface that behaves like the bow of a ship, forever in contact with the surface it’s shoving aside It also allows the skier to use either end of the ski as a point of rotation, a thought I must admit never occurred to me.
Only available in a 189cm length, the Proto Factory performs like a Technical ski in a fat suit. Despite its bulbous girth, it readily responds to its pilot’s carving intentions, getting into the turn as soon as its rockered and tapered tip permits. The midsection of its 5-point sidecut is powerful, energetic and totally trustworthy. Ready to break into a smear or cut into a carve on a moment’s notice, the Proto Factory is a decathlete of off-trail skiing.
Fischer introduced the Ranger 115 XTi only last year, and already it’s been run through the mild makeover machine. Fischer didn’t tamper with the Ranger’s shape or turn radius, so it retains its affinity for long turns, and it still has the torsional rigidity to latch onto a high edge angle when summoned, but its regular style might be called “authoritative drift;” you may not be riding the edge, but you have everything under control.
