Overview
Salomon was riding a string of ridiculously successful product introductions when the brand introduced its first ski in 1989. The monocoque shell was the big story, creating such a groundswell of demand that all the ski brands that came before had to re-tool to some kind of cap ski design or risk a swift, painful death.
Salomon followed up the ski launch a few years later with an idea that continues to reap rich rewards for all brands to this day. Salomon declared that experts didn’t possess a single, monolithic skill set, but that they could be divided into 3 fields, Equipe, Force and EXP, each with its own rationale for an expert-level – and most importantly, expert-price – product. This was the moment when the market began to invert its product pyramid, to go from a base of a gazillion, low-cost package skis to a foundation built from expert skis in a minimum of 7 iterations from every supplier.
To put things in perspective, Salomon’s initiation of multiple expert ski genres has been as beneficial to the entire ski market over time as the career of Tiger Woods has been to the golf world.
Eventually, Salomon’s magic touch wore off. It looked down its Gallic nose at the arriviste shaped skis, raising eyebrows by being behind the trend for once. Its transition away from rear-entry boots wasn’t smooth, although it’s safe to say that rocky era is well behind it. Although the brand would have star products again – X Scream and Pocket Rocket come to mind – it didn’t always display its formerly flawless feel for the market. Important launches such as the BBR failed to get off the ground.
This led to a period of retrenchment during which Salomon relied on the lower cost of monocoque manufacturing to pursue a price-advantage strategy. Consumers responded well to the easy-skiing style of the Q series, but opinion leaders shied away from skis they perceived as too soft.
This takes us up to the 2016/17 season, when Salomon unveiled the QST series of off-trail-oriented skis. With a weave of carbon and flax (C/FX), Salomon finally found a formula for a lightweight ski that didn’t flop around on hard snow like a carp on a hot dock. With the QST series, the brand bid adieu to monocoque, building these models instead with square sidewalls from tip to tail. The top 3 QST’s, the 118, 106 and 99, also inserted a segment of Titanal underfoot so the edge won’t wash out in ratty terrain.
In 2018/19, Salomon doubled down on C/FX, adding transverse strands to create a carbon and flax grid that makes the many models that rely on it more powerful and responsive. C/FX3 was the defining ingredient across the top of four product families: QST, QST Women’s, XDR and the Aira collection for women. The QST 106 and QST 99 also received a layer of basalt between the base and core to better withstand the battering of harbor chop.
It’s unusual to overhaul a product family’s design two years in a row, yet in 2019/20, Salomon again reconfigured its mix of basalt, carbon and flax fibers, separating out the flax into its own layer and braiding the carbon and basalt into crosshatched strands. Koroyd, a synthetic honeycomb integral to the QST design since its inception, was replaced in the tip and tail with bits of cork that Salomon assessed to be 16 times more shock absorbent than Koroyd.
And the suite of 19/20 changes didn’t stop there. Salomon also altered the shape and sidecut radius of every QST, reducing the width at tip and tail. The prior generations’ deep sidecuts had a tendency to over-steer and didn’t slice as evenly through broken snow as the new editions. The net effect was that the last crop of QST’s were more directionally stable, quieter on edge and gave the pilot more control over trajectory.
While the 2019/20 QST’s were Salomon’s best off-trail collection ever, they still didn’t perform on a par with the Enforcers, Bonafides and Mantras of this world. The QST collection always prioritized light weight, so it minimized the role played by Titanal. To battle the big boys for dominance in the key All-Mountain genres, Salomon had to fight metal with metal. So two years ago, Salomon introduced Stance, a 5-model series that added two full sheets of Titanal to the C/FX equation.
The Stances are all comfortable at speed, which is useful as their flat, narrow tails keep them close to the fall line. Their design is a hybrid of sorts: the rear is built like a Frontside ski, while the forebody has the rocker and slightly softer torsional flex associated with all-mountain models. The front end keeps them calm in crud while the rear gives them the propulsion and precision to tear through any terrain. An unexpected star in the Stance series is the Stance 84, arguably the best value in the ginormous Frontside genre. It sheds a laminate of Titanal to make its $499 retail possible, but the single sheet that remains still packs a wallop. It performs as well on groomers as many skis selling for $100’s more.
The 2023 Season
Salomon’s R&D mavens just can’t keep their mitts off its stellar QST series. Last year, they converted the since-retired QST 99 into an all-mountain park ski (the current QST 98) and added the QST Blank, essentially a Big Mountain park ski. Both skis were the first recipients of a new C/FX figuration that ran tip to tail. For 2023, the QST 92 and QST 106 also got the full-C/FX treatment, along with new ABS rails underfoot that reinforce pressure over the edge. A lowered rocker profile creates better snow contact in all conditions.
These tweaks may not sound consequential, but it bears noting that both 2023 models rose in our rankings compared to last year, and skis they outperformed were already very good. The new QST 106 had the highest Power score among our top 3 Finesse finishers, which is saying a lot, considering the quality of the competition.
The QST 92 continues to amaze. We were obliged to evaluate it in a 176cm, which one would expect to handicap its ability to compete in the very well-served All-Mountain East genre. Yet it held so well in mixed snow conditions, it earned the third-highest aggregate score for Finesse properties. One consequence of all the benefits being bestowed on the QST 92 is an inevitable rise in its MSRP, to $675, but it’s still a bargain relative to the rest of the Recommended models in the crowded AME category.