The resurgence led by the Soul 7 is still in full swing. Far from being a one-season wonder, the Soul 7, along with its siblings the Super 7 and Sin 7, has proven to radiate sustained star power. Like archrival K2, Rossi figured out long ago that the people who buy skis (as opposed to those who have them provided under contract) want skiing to be easier, not harder.
Several years ago Rossi made a floppy yet forgiving powder ski with the innocuous name of S7. Hard-charging experts weren’t all that impressed, but the S7 found a cult following among less skilled off-piste skiers who liked the way it responded at low speeds. Sales were strong enough to encourage Rossi to innovate, and did they ever.
The design they landed on preserved the easy attitude of the S7, but the central platform of the Soul 7 is a springy fiberglass arch that gives the ski an energetic nature absent in its ancestor. Most models in the Soul 7’s extended freeride family, for men and women, are all among our top Recommended skis for 2016.
At the other end of the conditions spectrum, our panelists also couldn’t compose enough compliments about the hard-snow Hero skis. Match the model to your preferred turn shape—small, medium or large—and get ready to grin so hard your cheeks will hurt.
Any brand with ambitions to serve the entire ski market needs a core collection that extends down to whatever price points the market requires. For Rossi, those series of skis are named Experience for men and Temptation for women. In this vertical hierarchy, the top model has the richest technology, the next model down trims some of the tech, and so on down the line.
Thus the flagship Experience 100 Ti is a beefy, experts-only warrior, the Experience 88 a mellow fellow and the Experience 84 geared down another notch for a less accomplished pilot. With realskiers’ emphasis on performance properties, the lesser EXP’s were perceived as below par, while the 100 Ti overshot the mark, so stout its Finesse scores went south. We dwell on this point to underscore that skis that don’t meet our Recommended standard aren’t flawed skis; their strengths simply don’t mesh with our evaluated criteria.