Rest assured, Dear Readers, that this Revelation is not a discourse on Nietzsche’s sermon about the end of religion; the idols to which I refer aren’t gods, but a coterie of iconic ski models that have consistently exhibited “best in class” qualities over the course of the last decade and are finally approaching their sell-by date.
I’m not privy to any hard facts about which of the retiring models actually sold the most, so I can’t say with any degree of certainty which of the flagships now sailing into their final sunset can boast about having been the most popular. And it should be noted that I’m not referencing world-side sales, but only those logged In the U.S., where the most popular models are generally broader in the beam than their European counterparts.
The retirement of this all-star cast is occurring against a backdrop of a geyser of new models bearing familiar names, with three or four times the number of “new and improved” models as there were this season, spread across the four core categories: Frontside (75-84mm), All-Mountain East (85-94mm), All-Mountain West (95mm-100mm) and Big Mountain (101mm-113mm). It’s been years since we’ve seen this degree of impending model turnover.
Bear in mind, all it takes to qualify as “new” is some change in shape and/or substitution of materials that differs from the previous incarnation. As I’ve noted many times in these pages, we’re living in an age of incremental innovations. No brand is interested in re-tooling an entire factory. Brands tend to stick to their wheelhouse capabilities, no matter how they configure a ski’s shape, baseline or flex behavior.
The Big Three Take a Bow
One of the pillars on which a brand’s reputation rests is its popularity with the best skiers on the mountain, which makes the All-Mountain West genre the linchpin category for any brand striving for top-of-mind presence among influential experts. For most, if not all, of the last decade, the kings of the AMW mountain were the Blizzard Bonafide, the Nordica Enforcer 100 and the Völkl Mantra. There were many pretenders to this 3-seater throne with elite resumes – after all, these are all expensive skis that showcase a brand’s best all-terrain technology – so everyone puts their best foot forward. Just about every model in the genre can make a case for why it should share the crown, a task AI could perform in less time than it takes to finish this sentence.
In case of any of my Dear Readers would like to experience the amoral elasticity of AI, pick any 3 skis you fancy and ask your preferred chatbot to make the case that they are the best all-mountain skis available. Prepare to be both amazed and appalled by its speed and the confidence and conviction displayed in its judgments. But I digress…
By next season, all three of the aforementioned legendary models will be retired. The Blizzard Anomaly series won’t even have an All-Mountain West entry, as the new series brackets the AMW genre with 94mm and 102mm models. Which way the market wind will blow is impossible to say as I write this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if both these Anomalys proved equally popular. All four of the new Anomaly series use a variant of the Fluxform construction introduced this season in the Rustler and Sheeva collections.
Nordica is keeping the Enforcer name, but very little about the new Enforcer 99 is the same as the pater familias of the Enforcer clan it replaces. Its rockered tail is higher and longer, so it allows the edge to release and smear. What’s inside has also been re-modeled, sandwiching wood and two sheets of Titanal around a flexy elastomer center, for a ride that is at once powerful and satin-smooth. All of the new, four-model Enforcer field share the same design alterations. (The four-model Santa Ana series has also been revamped.)
At Völkl, the M7 continues a transformation that began with the M5 several years ago, tweaking the sidecut of this venerable model to further facilitate switching between long-radius turns and short. (The women’s Secret 96 has undergone the same enhancements.) If the improvements to the M7 aren’t as extensive as what is transpiring this year with the Enforcers and Analogs, it’s perhaps because Völkl has staggered the timeline for its various enhancements to the basic Mantra design over the past several seasons. And the M7/Secret 96 aren’t the only newbies in the 2025 Völkl collection; the Deacon line-up is getting a complete shake-up and the Blaze 104 and 94 are getting wall-to-wall Titanal underfoot, a real game-changer.
While we’re on the subject of transforming iconic models, we must mention that Blizzard has adapted the Fluxform design it introduced this year to its sales-record-setting Black Pearl 88 (and two siblings, the Black Pearl 84 and 94). No other ski, men’s or women’s, has had such a streak of dominance in this millennium. Now the most popular ski of its era is about to get better.
While there’s no other trio of AMW models that have enjoyed the same level of sustained success as the Bonafide, Enforcer and Mantra, they’re but three examples of a nearly industry-wide wave of product renewal transforming the market landscape.
- Kästle has re-designed its fabulous MX series and euthanized its FX family in favor of the 3-model Paragon posse, all possessing a similar construction to the departed FX’s, but with more taper at the tip and tail.
- Head has rejuvenated its carving-category-crushing Supershape series, featuring a new plate that neutralizes the ramp angle bias built into system skis. They remain the carving collection against which all others are measured.
- Rossi upped the performance ante at the top of its EXP series, adding Line Control Technology to two new models that have carved out a new niche called Arcade.
- Dynastar has switched the core of the new M-Pro 100ti and 94ti to the Hybrid Core 2.0 intro’d in the M-Cross this season. The new M-Pros are also a bit more shapely, with a longer front rocker and more kick to the tail rocker profile, with an eye to making the new models more playful.
- Atomic didn’t just improve the performance of its two new Maverick models, the Maverick 115 CTi and 105 CTi, it also ditched enough glass and resin from the old design to significantly reduce the environmental impact of their production.
Sustainability is also the driving force behind a new Curv model at Fischer, the Curv GT 85 Redefine. While it’s only one model in a 6-model series, it serves as a demonstration of what can be done with more sustainable sourcing and processes. For the moment, skis like Rossi’s The Essential (introduced last year), Atomic’s new Mavericks and the Fischer Curv Redefine are important first steps towards environmentally friendly constructions that take into account the entire lifecycle of the ski. It is a journey that will most likely require collaboration among brands, and will surely be attracting more investment in the near future.
If I’ve incited an itch to obtain a 2025 model ASAP, keep your long undies on. While a handful of launch models inevitably seep into the marketplace, most brands realize their dealer network is already sufficiently supplied to carry them through this season. Now is an ideal time in the season to demo a handful of 2024 models while the supply line is relatively well stocked with options.
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The Making of a Skier, Part IX: The ASTM, Carl Ettlinger and I
One of the many hats I wore as North American binding product manager for Salomon in the early 1980’s was that of delegate to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). I believe the first meeting of F8.14 – the sub-committee on ski safety – that I attended was in Pennsylvania. I was flying under the wings of Salomon’s seer of all standards and patents, Gilbert Delouche, and the binding product manager for the North American zone at that time (and my mentor), Joe Campisi.
I was a babe in the woods, but I soon caught on to the game under Delouche’s patience guidance. I recall a debate on the binding specification then being batted around in the technical committee chaired by Carl Ettlinger. Ettlinger wanted language that would require any release/retention setting of 10 or above to be “visually distinctive” from the rest of the scale.
In Memorium, Carl Ettlinger
Carl was a giant of a man whose outsized voice roiled every conversation like a burst dam and whose expansive vision reached across the mixed milieus of research, journalism, risk management and education. I knew him when he was at the peak of his powers, as he explained to me when I interviewed him for a “where are they now?” profile in Skiing History. He was able to conduct long-term research on injury patterns as well as analyze the particulars of the current binding market, turn around and package this knowledge into articles for Skiing and Skiing Trade News, followed up by a workshop tour that would bring enlightenment to the grassroots level. No one but Carl could have pulled this off, and Lord knows no one has had the requisite talent, energy and will power since.
But time and tide wait for no man, and Carl’s finely spun web of influence was eventually plucked apart. The loss of his pivotal positions in the press allowed him to slip from public view before we, the skiers of the world, realized we hadn’t taken the time to thank him.
We have the time to thank him now.
So thanks, Carl, for being first and foremost a teacher, for teaching is at the heart of the evangel’s mission.
Thanks for being so damn stubborn. Your insistence on improving skier safety wore through a wall of resistance as tough as Vermont marble.
Thanks for having a heart as big as that melon-sized head of yours. The fuel to your tireless mind was a caring heart that tried to embrace the world.
Thanks for all the stories once the Mount Gay flowed. Who knew we would have won the Vietnam War if only his superiors had listened? I can’t remember exactly how – he wasn’t the only one drinking Mount Gay – but I recall the light in his eyes as he relayed his twisted tales, taking us down successive rabbit-holes of digression that I lost track of at the seventh level.
That’s what I remember most vividly about my many interactions with Carl: his brain so teemed with thoughts he rushed to get them out in a verbal jailbreak that would travel around the cosmos until returning, many lost minutes later, to the subject that had inspired them. That was Carl: too many words for one sentence, too many tasks to tend to and all of it, every erg of his endless energy, devoted to a cause he never ceased to serve.
Fare thee well, Carl Ettlinger. The world misses you already for it will never see another quite like you, whose every moment seemed larger than life itself.
I raise my glass to you, old friend. Mount Gay, of course.
Jackson Hogen
June 23, 2020
Why This Buyer’s Guide?
Don’t read the 2021 Masterfit Buyer’s Guide in Partnership with Realskiers.com for its 62 ski reviews. I should know. I wrote or edited all of them.
Not that the ski reviews aren’t worth the read. But ski reviews on the web are as common as rice, while the Buyer’s Guide contains something no other publication, whether in digital, print or video format, can claim: the most respected, thorough and dependable boot reviews in the world.
This isn’t mere puffery. The Masterfit Boot Test is so well regarded by the supplier community that nearly every brand not only sends its following year’s line-up in four men’s sizes plus three for women, it also dispatches its top designers and/or product managers to a distant North American site for most of the test’s five-day duration.
