The reason the Stormrider 83 can hold its own against a field of skis designed expressly for the Frontside milieu is because it’s a typically rich, metal-laden, Stöckli construction that wasn’t built to caress the snow but to subjugate it. It doesn’t have to change its normal behavior just because the snow under its bases switches from fluffy to firm.
Skiing the Stöckli Laser AX is an experience unlike any other. A lot of skis in this genre, particularly among our Power Picks, borrow from race room technology; the Laser AX skis like it is a race ski, only wider. It seems to beg the skier to go a little faster, find a little more speed at the top of the turn, hold a little cleaner arc at the bottom, be fearless. It wants you to go faster if only to prove that it will remain utterly composed, cutting deep into hard snow as if were trying to make it bleed.
Making lighter weight skis has been a Salomon specialty since it concocted the first commercially successful monocoque skis many moons ago. Now Salomon has made its best women’s powder ski ever, the QST Stella 106, that proudly sports “Full Sandwich Sidewalls 360o” or expressed in generic terms, a square sidewall, the very design feature that the monocoque cap obsoleted for several seasons.
“Powerful GS turns,” purrs Pete from California Ski Company. “No speed limit. Felt stable at Mach ∞,” he notes admiringly. It’s not the raw speed per se, that’s so enthralling, but the ease at which the Stormrider 105 attains it and the uses it to fashion turns short enough to tuck into couloirs and long enough to ravage open bowls. “Killing it!!!,” exults the even more exuberant than usual Bob Gleason of Boot Doctors. “Surprisingly nimble ski for its waist size. The cross breeding of quickness, agility, and stability is in a class of its own.”
Although the new Soul 7 HD looks dramatically different from earlier editions, its basic shape and character haven’t changed. While the sexy-looking tip gets all the attention in the store, the Soul 7 HD’s most distinctive feature on the snow is its springy camber pocket that unloads with an elevating pop off the bottom of every arc. This gives the ski its energetic personality that persists in all forms of powder, from Sierra sludge to Wasatch Champagne.