2024 Blizzard Brahma 82

Two years ago, we opined in this space that this descendant of an off-trail brood looks out of place among carvers with an on-trail pedigree. Skis with a patently off-piste baseline have no business infiltrating the ranks of Frontside models, by definition the domain of deep sidecuts and highly arched camber lines. How does a ski whose Flipcore baseline is practically already bowing manage to mingle with the second cousins of true race skis?  It still seems like the Brahma 82 is trying to crash a party hosted by club to which it doesn’t belong. You see, Frontside skis are supposed to share a mutual obsession with maintaining a continuous carve, whereas the double-rockered Brahma 82 seems ill suited to the task. Where is the performance-enhancing binding interface, the elevated standheight, the wasp-waisted sidecut, the squared-off tail? It’s unadorned by rods or plates. How can it hold its own against a genre full of pumped-up trench diggers? In its quest to prove it belongs, in 21/22 the Brahma 82 added another line to its resume, upgrading its core construction to TrueBlend, Blizzard’s way of micro-managing its poplar and beech laminates to produce the optimal flex pattern for every length. It bears mention that the rest of the Brahma 82’s lay-up is mostly made up of carbon and 2 ½ layers of Titanal, as rich a construction as you’ll find in the genre.  Last year, Blizzard shaved the Brahma 82’s TrueBlend core profile down a skosh, so it’s even easier to bow into a clean, round turn, a trait that’s particularly beneficial in today’s hacked-up bumps. With its off-trail, Flipcore baseline, the Brahma 82 is one of the few Frontside skis that actually feels made for moguls. It double-rockered baseline slithers around in torturous troughs that many carvers can’t conform to. Even though it’s more than capable of holding its own on hardpack, it’s actually bred for the backcountry. It doesn’t look at moguls and crud as trouble city, but like a hometown playground. Not many other skis in the Frontside genre have this ability to perform at a high level in any terrain.