2021 Salomon Boot Brand Profile
2021 Salomon Boot Brand Profile I was one of the many midwives who attended at the birth of the Salomon boot in 1979. I translated Salomon’s encyclopedic Boot Bible into English and later condensed parts of it into one of the first boot fitting manuals. I...Stance 90
If you digest all the brochure copy expended on All-Mountain East models, you’ll find somewhere in every model description that it’s a “50/50” model, meaning it’s equally suited to skiing on-trail or off. What this seemingly innocuous shorthand term for a versatile ski masks is that no ski can ever truly be half-and-half, for every model is part of a design family that ‘s inherently biased to one side of the mountain or the other.
This prelude explains why Salomon felt compelled to create a second off-trail line, named Stance, when they already had a successful freeride series in the QST’s. The latter are unmistakably meant for the off-piste, while the Stance 90 tilts the 50/50 equation in favor of Frontside features, beginning with two sheets of Titanal and a shallower sidecut with a more slender silhouette that’s quicker edge to edge. Its square tail in particular is appreciably narrower than the norm in the AME genre, which keeps its orientation down the fall line. The impression of quickness off the edge is enhanced by its lightweight design that in fact weighs less than the QST 92 and far less than Salomon’s Frontside flagship, the S/Force Bold. Its lightweight structure certainly contributed to our testers giving it higher aggregate scores for Finesse properties versus Power attributes, the only one of our top eight Recommended models to do so.
Stance 96
There are two opposing archetypes for a wide, all-terrain ski: light and smeary or beefy and more connected. Salomon had the surfy side covered with the OST 99; its new Stance 96 is meant to wrestle with wood-and-metal powerhouses like the Blizzard Bonafide and Nordica Enforcer 100.
Salomon wasn’t going to win this battle with a cap construction, so the Stance 96 uses square sidewalls. To match up with metal you have to use Titanal, so the Stances are equipped with “Twin Frame” Ti laminates. You can’t get a wood core feel without a wood core, so all the unisex Stance models have an all-poplar center.
All that said, the Stance 96 doesn’t strictly imitate the benchmark skis that it presumes to supersede. Its rockered tip works better when buffering blows against loose snow; it feels a little loose on groomers and consequently a bit late into the top of the turn. But when it’s fully laid over it grips confidently regardless of the snow surface.
The Stance 96 handles speed well, which is a good thing, as it likes to hew closely to the fall line. Its long turn shape is the product of an narrow tail that helps keep the skier oriented downhill. A rectangular cutout in the Titanal topsheet pares off a few ounces so the Stance 96 feels more agile than its girth measures.
Stance 102
The new Salomon Stance 102 is a Frontside ski in a fat suit. Were it not for its width, which by Realskiers’ rules lands it in the Big Mountain genre, and a dash of tip rocker, it would be a Frontside ski, and a strong one.
To understand a ski’s purpose, one needs to know what void it’s filling in its brand’s big picture, as well as where it fits in the category in which it’s competing. Perhaps the best way to define the role of the Stance 102 in Salomon’s 20/21 collection is identify what it is not, namely a QST.
The niche the Stance 102 aims to occupy is that of a wood (poplar) and metal (Titanal) laminate that’s just a bit less than the market leaders in the genre: a bit less heavy, a bit less torsionally rigid in the forebody and a bit less work to bow.
Mission accomplished. While the rockered tip isn’t over-eager to get into the next turn, it hooks up as early as any in this all-rockered-all-the-time genre. Because Salomon has tampered with its torsional stiffness, the Stance 102 doesn’t feel as wide as it measures, so it never feels ponderous. The Stance 102 feels quick off the edge in part because it doesn’t cling to a cross-hill arc, its tail’s unusually narrow width dictating a more direct route downhill.