Bent Chetler 100
Even though its HRZN Tech tip and tail are built to drift first and think about carving, well, never, the BC 100 nevertheless doesn’t feel squirrelly or hard to manage. Au contraire, it seems up for anything that doesn’t entail being bored to death on groomers. “This was a nice surprise, a perfect balance between stability and playfulness,” says Kelli Gleason of Telluride’s Boot Doctors. Her Dad, the ever-ebullient Bob, also pegs playfulness as a cornerstone quality: “In the blending of playfulness mixed with precision, these are the top of the heap. Easy to ski in variable conditions,” he adds.
Redster G9
That a race-bred GS ski from Atomic can charge the fall line with the unleashed fury of a feral cat on the tail of its prey won’t come as news to anyone who’s ever stepped into an Atomic race ski, but would you believe an Atomic GS that will also dice short turns like a Veg-O-Matic? The ski isn’t naturally intrigued by short turns, but it’s so narrow and quick the pilot can snap off a flush of unfinished slalom turns at will.
Redster S9
How many turns can you make in a run, in a day, in a season? It doesn’t matter what the answers are, for the Atomic Redster S9 has a bottomless well of SL arcs packed into its short and shapely frame. To the S9, every run must look like a racecourse. Its instinct for high-speed turning is so engrained it practically issues instructions to its pilot rather than takes them. If the S9’s desires were audible, the first prod to its pilot would be, “Go faster.” The types of whiplash turns it relishes need energy, so poking down the hill isn’t an option.
Redster X9
How is it possible to make a better Technical ski than Atomic’s Redster X9? It has the stability of a sumo wrestler and the reflexes of a fencer. If there’s a speed at which the edge breaks loose, chances are you’ll never touch it. Its imperturbable hold is amplified by a feature called Servotec, a long, thin rod embedded in an elastomer under the binding at one end and attached on the other end at a point just behind the shovel. The interaction of the rod and the elastomer during flexion both absorbs shock and actively restores ski/snow contact.