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.
Over the unusually long arc of its existence, the Mantra has morphed every few seasons, putting on a few mm’s of girth one year, adding a dab of early rise to the tip another. The latest stage in its evolution, which debuted two seasons ago, was also the most dramatic, resulting in a significant change in the Mantra’s personality.
Völkl didn’t change the Mantra’s composition – it’s still a classic combo of wood and Titanal – but they changed everything else, going from a fully cambered ski to a double rocker design that is bone-flat underfoot and rockered at tip and tail. The alterations allow the new Mantra to swivel around in soft snow, making it much more forgiving in the off-piste conditions. The premium previously placed on pilot proficiency and precision no longer pertains.
Völkl’s RTM 84 UVO is a gentleman’s carving tool, a secure ride that can summon acceleration when a dollop of pressure is applied to its camber zone underfoot. Its rockered tip and tail are already partway bent into an arc, so the pilot doesn’t have to exert a lot of oomph to extract a smooth, continuous carve.
While the RTM 84 UVO enjoys rocketing down the hill as much as any other elite Frontside ski, it’s better at slalom turns than our short-radius score suggests. It also deserves more praise for its Finesse qualities for it isn’t hard of steering and its light enough to toss around a turn if need be. (Without its Marker bindings, the RTM 84 UVO weighs in at 1958g.)
The RTM 81 was made for marauding groomers and while its composition has evolved over the years, its preferred pathways and mode of transport haven’t. The RTM 81 is every centimeter a carving ski; well, make that every centimeter minus a sliver of tip and tail rocker to maintain street cred as a do-it-all model.
At one point in its journey, the RTM 81 was flat underfoot, and flat best describes how it skied. While it’s comforting to have some smear-ability on board even in a carving ski, if drift is its dominant trait then the ski is in the wrong genre. Last year the camber genie re-appeared, granting the RTM 81’s wish to be a real carving ski again. It’s been ripping up the Frontside ever since.
