Why do I bother to round up every Non-FIS Race model I can rustle, along with the talent required to rate them? Practically no one in America could give a damn about the category, much less what I have to say about it. In the modern world, there are myriad definitions of what constitutes an all-purpose ski, and not one of them fits the profile of a NFR model. Quite the opposite, in fact: race skis are used as the prime example of what an all-terrain ski isn’t.
The world has indeed gone mad. In the halcyon days of my youth, the best all-terrain skis were race skis because all the best skis were race skis. A lot has happened to race skis since I was wearing long thongs, but one thing hasn’t changed: the best of them are still miraculous all-terrain tools. The best of them, exemplified by the Völkl Racetiger SL, feel limitless.
Corty Lawrence, whose normal turn radius is on the long side, called the Racetiger SL “the most versatile of the genre, with a broad range of uses. It has a traditional Teutonic feel and demeanor, and alters turn shape/radius without a problem. Good at low speed and great at high speed,” said the son of skiing legend Andrea Mead Lawrence.
GS race skis rule the open slopes, and they do so mercilessly, running as hot as they can. They oblige the skier to see things their way, rather than submit to some half-ass effort at arcing. They don’t show much interest in deviating from the fall line until they reach Mach One, and even then they don’t bow into fat, round arcs but barely deflect off their beeline course.
Like many gross generalities, the statements above don’t pertain to every member of the GS family. True, several non-FIS GS skis behave like über-specialists that only respond to well-trained technique, but Völkl got the memo that GS skis ought to be generalists, not specialists. The Racetiger GS can tuck into almost any shape of turn, grab it by the throat and ping off the edge with the energy normally associated with a slalom ski. Far from being finicky, it earned the best aggregate Finesse score among all the GS entries in the genre.
How fleeting is stardom, how swiftly the limelight fades. It was only two years ago that the Völkl 90EIGHT was injected with new life by 3D.Glass, which this pundit declaimed as the most clever product upgrade of the year. Then along came the M5 Mantra and the 90EIGHT lost popularity like a close talker with bad breath.
The problem with this fall from grace is that the two skis are quite different, despite having similar sidecuts and baselines, which would normally suggest some overlap in their behavioral profile. But their signature construction features are from two different worlds that have circled each other in the ski universe for decades: a metal laminate, traditionally the province of GS and speed event skis, versus a fiberglass torsion box, once upon a time the paradigm of race slalom design.
When it comes to demolishing crud, the M5 is more of a bulldozer and the 90EIGHT more like a crate of grenades. The lighter and peppier 90EIGHT is more inclined to glide over broken terrain, while the carving power of the M5 wants to dive into it. Jack Walzer of Jan’s has the 90EIGHT pegged as “fun, playful, great in soft snow ski and very lively.” If you plan on using your new All-Mountain West skis primarily off-trail, the 90EIGHT is probably the superior tool.
Not since the first Cochise rolled off the production line some eight years ago has there been a Big Mountain ski like the new Völkl Mantra 102. You can feel the power percolating under the hood before you have it out of first gear. Even though it’s “only” 102mm underfoot, it feels more substantial. At slow speeds, its triple-radius sidecut (long-short-long) encourages the Mantra 102 to stay close to the fall line so it can pick up enough inertia to show its other moves.
Once you’ve shown it you care by injecting speed into its veins, the Mantra 102 becomes more compliant. Even though it’s double rockered, its Titanal Frame design, which puts more mass around the tip and tail, keeps nearly the full length of the ski engaged. While not exactly nimble – its lowest score is for short turns – it doesn’t have to be, for whatever lies in its path better get out of its way or face extinction.
As I noted on my test card, “The ends are a bit loose but otherwise its phenomenal security makes you feel as powerful as King Kong, like you can drive through anything. I would hate to be a pile of frozen snow between me and the bottom; the last thing it will ever see is the Völkl logo bearing down on it.”
