If the Confession feels guilty, it might be because it knows where all the bodies are buried. With two sheets of Titanal in its guts it doesn’t so much float as burrow, blasting its way through wind crust, spring porridge or ragged crud. After a run on the Confession, you’re looking for other worlds to conquer. It’s like have an army of earthmovers on each foot, rolling over once powdery pastures and turning them into pavement.
The Flair 78 combines several stalwart Völkl features into a new package made largely from recycled materials. If ecological awareness is high on your priority list, 100% recycled sidewalls and edges ought to earn at least your admiration, if not your ducats.
To win your heart as a skier, the Flair 78 devotes itself to a life of abstinence: no sloppy turning habits, no flinching in the face of hard snow and no whining about doing all the work. As the Flair 78’s pilot, all you have to do is tip it and smile.
Some day, there will be a museum for everything; in the History of Ski Design Museum, the display devoted to today’s All-Mountain East genre will showcase the Völkl Kendo. The ski beneath the name has subtly mutated every few seasons, most recently last year; the consensus among Realskiers’ testers is that the current incarnation is the best suited to, well, everything.
What makes the Kendo so well admired by so many skiers is that it’s truly ready for anything. Powered by two sheets of Titanal around a multi-layered wood core, the Kendo retains enough camber underfoot to generate energy at the end of the arc, propelling the skier from turn to turn. This is the key to the Kendo’s confidence-building behavior on hard snow.