What do orcas, Grizzly bears and the Kästle MX99 have in common? They’re at the top of the food chain in their respective environments and therefore completely in control and utterly at ease. The MX99 instinctively masters all terrain because it never met any member of the snow family that didn’t cower in its presence. It does not find hard snow to be hard and soft snow, even in its densest, most saturated form, is no match for its Titanal-fueled will power.

Like all the Kästle MX models, the new MX99 has no attainable speed limit. You can fire the afterburners until your lips flap, but the MX99 will never lose its sangfroid. If it has a character flaw, it’s that it doesn’t care to linger in short turns and sudden edge switches aren’t its forte. It’s not that the MX99 is hard to turn, it’s that it rolls smoothly from edge to edge without rushing, confident that whatever speed develops will bring out the best in it.

Considering its eye-of-the-hurricane composure at speed, it’s a wonder the MX99 will make any kind of short turn, but it does a passable job at a slalom turn thanks to a camber line that runs right into the shovel. It’s up to the pilot to add the requisite amount of edge angle with a dash of drift if a clean turn entry is to be followed by a tight turn.

“No speed limit here,” confirms the Boot Doctors’ Bob Gleason. “ It finesses the turns with grace. Roars down the groom and purrs through the bumps. I would love to own a pair of these!” he adds, perhaps hoping that Kästle is listening. Another tester capitalized his keywords, so we wouldn’t miss the point:

“STABLE, all-day stable with this badass 99mm. Kästle put carbon in so you can go even faster. [Kästle did indeed add a top layer of carbon to the MX99.] Maybe the best, certainly the smoothest in its category. SMOOTH!! like a ’72 Cadillac convertible.