What do orcas, Grizzly bears and the Kästle MX99 have in common? They’re at the top of the food chain in their respective environments and therefore completely in control and utterly at ease. The MX99 instinctively masters all terrain because it never met any member of the snow family that didn’t cower in its presence. It does not find hard snow to be hard and soft snow, even in its densest, most saturated form, is no match for its Titanal-fueled will power. Like all the Kästle MX models, the new MX99 has no attainable speed limit. You can fire the afterburners until your lips flap, but the MX99 will never lose its sangfroid.
The Kästle BMX105 HP can carve if it must, but carving usually means hard snow, and hard snow isn’t its preferred milieu. The BMX105 HP is nearly the opposite of a carving tool despite being built from the same ingredients, contorting Kästle’s customary wood/glass/Titanal sandwich into a double-rockered baseline with only a hint of sidecut. Tapered tips and tails connected by a straighter sidecut create a platform that planes evenly though deep, uneven snow, but be prepared to exert more effort if you want to initiate a tight line on hard snow. It can get away with liking its turns long and fast because its classic construction ensures that no powder on earth can withstand it.
Considering the reputation of Kästle’s formidable MX84, one might expect the LX85 to be likewise endowed with near-nuclear power. Yet this beauty is no beast, but a gracious cruiser that orders groomers for its main course with off-trail conditions on the side. Its slalomesque turn radius suggests a quick stick, but the slight tip taper and early rise on the LX85 don’t naturally dip into a short turn, allowing the skier to find a languid, GS arc that holds with minimal edge angle. “Stable at speed,” confirms one of the Footloose crew. “It does well with longer radius turns vs. short.”
When I refer to a Power Powder ski’s ability to carve like a much narrower ski, I’m not kidding, but neither am I telling the whole story. A wide ski with camber in the belly of its baseline, like the Kästle BMX115, provides a solid platform that won’t swim under pressure. On groomers, the skier notices the slender edge that’s dug in the snow more than the behemoth slab of ski that isn’t. As long as the ski is on edge, awareness of its ballooned dimensions is suppressed.
Kästle wasn’t even trying to make a knockout women’s ski. It applied a square sidewall to what was previously a cap ski to give it a performance kick, in the process raising the performance bar to the elite level. It doesn’t hurt that the stock lay-up for a Kästle is a vertically laminated beech/silver fir core encased in twin laminates of glass and Titanal. There’s a reason it’s the foundation of all the best hard-snow skis being made today. The strongest women might overpower it, but the LX73 isn’t meant for them. It’s a confidence builder for those who aren’t as skilled or athletic as they’d like to be.
