You can’t fake it on an Atomic Redster G9. Posers will know they’re in trouble in about 50 feet. Your boots will suddenly feel eerily loose. As if sensing your weakness, the G9 will hit the afterburners and if you don’t catch up with it pronto and press into the front of your 130-flex boots, you could be in for a wild ride, as if riding in the back of a cartoon cab on the set of Who Shot Roger Rabbit?
But if you show it proper respect in the first place and stand on it with controlled aggression, its acceleration will feel as smooth as the finest German sedan. You’re not just in control; you’re in charge of a speed-generating machine that feels capable of carving up the Hahnenkamm.
There’s no doubt that part of the G9’s inspiring tranquility at speed is due to Servotec, a slender carbon rod running down the center of the ski that actively pushes the shovel back on the snow. The change that validated the G9’s claim to being “Ultra Titanium Powered” is the addition of third .3mm-thick Titanal laminate in its guts. With all this metal on board, you might expect the G9 to steer like a battleship, but its slender profile and firecracker response to pressure makes it feel as nimble as Nureyev.
Not since Alexander the Great has world conquest seemed so simple. All Michaela Shiffrin has to do is step into her magic Redster S9’s and a couple of minutes later she’s standing on top of a podium, wearing another gold medal.
It’s clear at this juncture in Shiffrin’s journey that she is likely to shatter every record for World Cup victories, leaving legendary talents like Stenmark and Hirscher and Vonn in her wake. The possibility that she’s dominating her sport solely because she uses the best skis is as remote as Tiger Woods’ supremacy is due primarily to his choice of golf ball.
Yet it’s precisely because of her incandescent talent that her choice of gear must be as meticulously managed as every other part of her skiing life. I’m not trying to suggest that you should cop a pair of S9’s just like Michaela’s, because for one thing, you can’t. Her skis are sui generis, their specs a more closely guarded secret than any dossier in Austria’s foreign ministry. But you can get the closest thing a civilian can find to Ms. Shiffrin’s S9’s, and they won’t disappoint.
By the look of it, the Atomic Bent Chetler 120 will ski like a flat-bottomed boat. Both bow and stern are rockered front-to-back and side-to-side, forming convex contact points that can serve as a prow when going forwards or a pivot point to rotate into rearward. Given how greasy this platform looks, it’s a surprise when it behaves… normally. Of course the Horizon Tech shovel, as the multi-axis rocker is called, wants to drift a bit before connecting to a turn, but when tilted on edge it knows what to do. After a few turns you become less conscious of its width and more aware of what a smooth, balanced ride it delivers.
Any ski of the Bent Chetler 120’s substantial dimensions will deliver the goods in pristine powder; the real test comes when the fresh stuff runs out. This is when all that surface area and relatively straight sidecut lets the skier use the Chetlers like giant putty knives. It doesn’t matter if the snow is clumpy or broken into choppy fragments, once you’ve poured over it on your Chetlers it will be smooth again. If all that drifting sounds lame, you can always resort to charging the fall line where you’ll find the Bent Chetler 120’s rise to the occasion.
The key to the Bent Chetler 100’s charms is it Horizon Tech tip and tail which are rockered on both axes. Its crowned extremities allow the littler Chetler to drift in any direction on a whim without losing control of trajectory. When in its element, it’s the epitome of ease, rolling over terrain like a spatula over icing.
The Bent Chetler 100 is all about freedom of expression rather than the tyranny of technical turns. Showing up early in the turn isn’t its shtick, but it has talents Technical skis never imagined, like throwing it in reverse off a precipice. It’s light, it’s easy to pivot and it’s wide enough to float in two feet of fresh. If you evaluate the Bent Chetler 100 for what it does rather than what it isn’t meant to do, it’s an all-star in a league of its own.
Although the Bent Chetler 100 is a directional ski, its unique design lends itself to omni-directional skiing. This pegs its probable skier profile as a young male with aerial antics on his bucket list. But it would be underselling the Bent Chetler 100 to lump it with Pipe & Park twin-tips. Its preference for soft snow is hardly a character flaw in an All-Mountain West model. Anyone looking for a great value in an all-terrain ski can’t do any better than a Bent Chetler 100.
