by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
American skiers have been conditioned to think that a true all-terrain ski has to be at least 90mm underfoot, with an amply rockered baseline. Skinnier skis are fine for manicured groomers, but as soon as the surface devolves into a disheveled mess, it’s time to climb on a broader board.
As I’ve made a living divining the differences between one ski genre and another, it would be disingenuous at best to now claim that we don’t need as many categories as the market has chosen to populate. The new Völkl Peregrine 82 makes a strong case that the best Frontside skis shouldn’t be confined to the tireless tedium of carving up corduroy; they can handle whatever the backside of the mountain has to dish out.
There are reasons why this ski is so good. A ski can only do what its design allows. As is often the case with people, a good deal of the Peregrine 82’s brilliance is due to its genetic make-up; the Deacon 84 that preceded it in the Völkl line already used 3D Radius, Titanal Frame and its secret sauce, 3D Glass. All the hoopla about Titanal Frame is well deserved, but the 3D Glass design is every bit as clever. The bottom glass laminate runs up and over the sidewall, creating a lip that connects with a glass top sheet to create a torsion box. The 3-piece Titanal Frame allows the ski to bend more readily under a centered load, but it’s the 3D Glass torsion box that stores all this energy like a giant spring that instantly pops back into position.
There are two on-snow traits that elevate the Peregrine 82 from the rest of the field: one is the rebound energy I just described, and the other is the turn shape versatility inherent in its 3D Radius Sidecut, which essentially harbors a short-radius capability inside a long-radius chassis.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Völkl has always cultivated a high-end clientele, both in terms of skill set and what they’re willing to pay for skis. The German brand has been so successful at cultivating an affluent, expert customer base that it has the enviable problem of being pigeonholed as a high-end ski for talented skiers. But even the expert-ski market has a price ceiling above which it’s risky to rise, which puts a damper on commercial adventurism.
But what if money were no object? To answer this envelope-pressing question Völkl created V.Werks, a special production unit that focused on the Holy Grail of ski design, superlight construction wedded to elite performance. The star product of the V.Werks lab was the Katana V.Werks, which remains in the line in 24/25. Its 3D.Ridge chassis worked so well, it became the backbone of Völkl’s non-race collections. Within a few years of the Katana’s introduction, its DNA had spread to nearly every corner of Völkl’s recreational collection. From a construction standpoint, the Katana became the conceptual grandfather of almost the entire line.
Five years ago, I speculated that the freshly minted Deacon V.Werks wouldn’t have the same downstream impact as the Katana V.Werks, but I may have spoken too soon. One of the most esoteric features of the Deacon V.Werks was a lattice-work of carbon fibers crisscrossing the tip, which inspired the Tailored Carbon Tips of the M7 Mantra and Mantra 88. Working in concert with Tailored Titanal Frame, Tailored Carbon Tips give the latest Mantras the same clear connection to the front of the ski found in the Peregrine V.Werks.
All carving skis are judged by how well they maintain edge connection throughout the turn on hard snow. Classically, the key to keeping a ski quiet all along its edge was to ladle on the Titanal, a proven method that achieves its damping objective in part by its mass. As an innovator in lightweight design, V.Werks instead turned to its wheelhouse material, carbon, to make a damp, non-metal ski that would be light and responsive.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
The Völkl Kendo 88 has changed its name to Mantra 88, but it hasn’t stopped owning the top spot among our Power potentates. It’s accuracy on edge remains immaculate and its overall performance envelope is as ginormous as ever.
The Mantra 88’s kudos can be directly attributed to two upgrades instituted two seasons ago: Tailored Titanal Frame and Tailored Carbon Tips. Tailored Titanal Frame optimizes this keystone technology by making separate parts for each size, so smaller lengths aren’t saddled with out-sized components at the tip and tail. Tailored Carbon Tips liberate carbon fiber from the limited menu of options offered by prepreg laminates by stitching it into a fabric layer that can composed into any pattern the designer desires. In this instance, the carbon helps the tip to buffer shock so it stays in snow contact despite being modestly rockered. Together, the twin “Tailored” technologies make the Mantra 88 feel smoother, more balanced and more compliant overall.
Here’s how veteran ski tester and renowned boot expert Jim Schaffner summed up his experience on the Kendo 88 from a couple of seasons ago that remains germane today: “This ski has an amazing range of performance. Today the snow was a combination of old, compacted snow, new wind-blown snow, and solid ice where the fresh snow was blown off. The Kendo did it all with ease. Very good grip on the hard stuff, with a silky feel on the duff.”
Every ski in this genre has to be proficient off -trail, and the Mantra 88’s double-rockered baseline has no trouble heading into trees or moguls if that’s where the best skiing is. Of course, it can’t ride high on freshies like a Big Mountain behemoth, but it makes up for it with agility, zipping through potential choke points with confidence. The single most important quality an all-mountain ski can possess is total indifference to terrain selection. On this score, the Mantra 88 has no equal. It transitions from wind-affected crud to crisp corduroy as if those two conditions were the same. On hard snow, it’s so quick to the edge the skier can’t even tell it’s rockered and it’s so stable in crud you can relax, drop the reins and let the boys run.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
This season, everything about the retiring Kenja 88 remains the same in the Secret 88 – except the name, and of course, the graphics. The reason Völkl changed the model name and nothing else was nothing else needed fixing. A fistful of evolutionary changes has been applied to the Kenja 88 in the recent past that collectively has elevated the Secret 88 – and its unisex counterpart, the Mantra 88 – into the first rank of the most competitive category in the ski market.
Three inter-related design features give the Secret 88 its amazing performance range. First among equals is Tailored Titanal Frame, that breaks up the top Titanal laminate into three separate pieces. Breaking the Ti topsheet into three disconnected parts allows the center of the ski to be more readily compressed, so the skier can load up a fat fiberglass layer just below the metal bits. When the stored energy in the distorted fiberglass layer is released at the bottom of the turn, the skier is fired across the fall line and into the next turn.
The second game-changing feature that elevated the Secret 88 above the ordinary is 3D Radius Sidecut, that works in conjunction with the ski’s double-rockered baseline to create a long-radius sidecut that harbors a tighter turning ski inside it. The cherry on top of this high-performance sundae is called Tailored Carbon Tips, a clever way of using carbon to neutralize shock in the shovel, where the ski takes the brunt of impact with the snow surface.
The unisex All-Mountain East category is as chockful of options as the women’s field, and in this hotly competitive domain the Mantra 88 still rules the roost. It so happens that the Secret 88 and the Mantra 88 are essentially the same ski, which suggests that even the strongest female skiers, physically and technically, won’t over-tax the Secret 88’s assets.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
The evolution of the Mantra since the launch of the M5 (in the fall of 2017) presents a master class in how to stagger the flow of new design elements across an entire collection. The total line make-over began with two cornerstone design elements, Titanal Frame and...