The newest edition to the Stormrider family is also its narrowest, but don’t get the idea in your head that the 83 is Stormrider Lite: it still built with 2 ½ layers of Titanal and is heavy enough to knock down castle walls.
In Stöckli-World, the frontside of the mountain is Laser country; Stormriders belong off-trail or somewhere out in the backcountry. That the Stormrider 83 performs so admirably on groomed runs is testament to Super G genes; Stöcklis always seem to ski like every run is being timed.
Most of the skis in this genre lean more to the off-trail side of the terrain ledger, but the Stöckli Stormrider 85 Motion is partial to hard packed powder. Skiers familiar with Stöckli’s history know that its roots are in racing, so much so that for several seasons some of their Stormriders skied more like obese Super G skis than freeride models.
But the Stormrider 85 Motion has trimmed down since that era and the current incarnation is, if anything, too flexy in the forebody for some of our crew who’ve essayed the Motion for years. But comparing the 2017 Motion to previous editions isn’t as useful to the current ski buyer as comparing it to the rest of today’s market and in that context, the Stormrider du jour comes across as a powerful carving machine.
The new and improved Stormrider 88 would win top honors in “Switzerland’s Biggest Loser,” as it shed 570g from its 2016 frame. They say fat equates with happy, but getting lighter seems to have made the Stormrider 88 mellower and easier to handle at low speeds.
The Stormrider 88’s crash diet raised its scores for Finesse properties across the board, and its global Finesse grade from B+ to A+. That the 2017 model became so much easier to ski cautiously without paring away the high-octane performance with which Stöckli is synonymous, is a remarkable feat of ski engineering.
The Stormrider 95 holds so well, in fact, the pilot may not feel incentivized to slow down. On test card after test card, still-awed evaluators noted, often in all caps, “NO SPEED LIMIT.”
They might have added, “No terrain limits, either.” Like most Stöcklis, this Stormrider doesn’t lack for confidence. It knows it’s better than whatever sort of frozen water you plan to plunge into, and it has a tendency to transfer this preternatural calm to its pilot. If the true measure of a ski is how well it performs in god-awful conditions it wasn’t meant to endure, the Stormrider 95 is an all-star.
