The Stormrider 100 Motion doesn’t like to wait. It’s as eager as every other Stöckli to show its owner what happens when a nation of watchmakers applies its fetish for precision to building a performance ski. It aims its prow into powder with the enthusiasm of a kid rope-swinging into a pond. It exudes an all-in attitude that inspires aerial entries.
Crud skiing requires courage. The herky-jerky gait of slow-speed struggles through the slop doesn’t auger well for ramping up the aggression. Yet stomping on the accelerator is the only way to make manky crud manageable. Some skis fold like a lawn chair under this stress. The Stormrider 100 Motion lives for it.
Average test scores don’t always align in lock-step with the on-snow behavior they’re intended to reflect, but if you look at the highs and lows of the Stöckli Stormrider 107’s scores, a clear – and accurate – image appears.
Looking at the lows, slow-speed turning has never been a Stöckli priority; you only have to ski a pair once and you’ll discover why. Short-radius turns are tough for any 107mm ski and the multi-level metal structure doesn’t make the Stormrider feel any quicker. It would be earlier to the edge if Stöckli hadn’t rockered the 107’s tip in a rare kowtow to conventional wisdom for the Swiss.
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.
