100 Eight
Brilliance on a high edge comes at the price of making a short arc, with the ever-accelerating speeds bigger turns engender. You’ll never get a ski with the 100 Eight’s sidecut to carve a tidy arc, but it has the solution on demand: a fully rockered baseline without a whisper of camber to interfere with a smudged slide. If you want to aim the other way RIGHT NOW, just turn your feet. No unpleasant contortions required.
RTM 81
Völkl has found the ideal upgrade for its 3D.Ridge construction, itself a relatively recent innovation that trimmed away significant swaths of ski core material to make several key models, like the RTM 81, lighter and more flexible. Called 3D.Glass, it’s essentially the bottom half of a torsion box. Just adding a glass laminate to a ski would probably have helped, but Völkl went a step further and therein lies the trick that makes the addition of 3D.Glass instantly evident: in the center, the glass layer runs up and over the top of the sidewall, essentially demi-capping the core from the bottom up.
RTM 84
3D.Glass is like a blend of ski Botox and blow: it makes everything about the RTM 84 smoother, with no visible sign of surgery, and the ski is preternaturally more energetic, ever ready to respond to athletic input. 3D.Glass is all the more effective because the RTM 84 baseline includes a cambered patch underfoot. Applying pressure on this glass arch is what has injected a few cc’s of pure energy into the RTM 84’s routine.
Yumi
While the changes to the Kanjo-type construction have palpably improved the Yumi’s performance, it remains an excellent choice for skiers of modest skills. “A little stiffer, but skill forgiving enough for a moderate skier,” confirms Mary Geddes of Sturtevant’s of Sun Valley. Now that it’s been modified to improve its off-trail aptitude, the Yumi provides a better introduction than ever to off-piste skiing.