The qualities that made the 102 FR the star product of the old Rangers were its smeary, playful baseline, its metal-free construction – making it lighter and torsionally softer – and the fact that it had the most distinctive snow feel compared to its competition in the Big Mountain genre. As Fischer made the transition to its new Ranger series that adds a dab of Titanal to every model, preserving the on-snow properties of its flagship Ranger was likely to be a high priority.
Devotees of the retired Ranger FR 102 can relax. If you loved the FR for its surfy attitude, you’ll be at least as enamored of the 2023 Ranger 102. This is still a decidedly soft snow ski, as several testers lamented given that there was precious little natural snow last season. “In fresh snow, you’ll love this ski,” reassured Mark Rafferty from Peter Glenn. “Plenty wide and playful for first tracks. If no new fresh for a few weeks, the Ranger 102 will rip fast turns on the groomers. Strong for blasting through crud. A true marvel,” he raved.
Not everyone was smitten by the Ranger 102’s soft extremities, particularly when the powder it definitely prefers is in short supply. The race-bred Jim Schaffner over-powered the Ranger 102’s forebody, undermining its edging accuracy on hard snow. “The snow was perfect for testing this type of ski,” the Start Haus owner noted, “however I found that it was too loose for my style of skiing . I can see the benefit for a skier that only seeks out the softer untracked snow and who enjoys the art of drifting and skidding.”
As Schaffner’s remarks suggest, whether the Ranger 102 is your cup of tea depends on style, not ability, although the Ranger 102’s soft flex is especially well suited to those making their first forays into sidecountry. The .5mm-thick Titanal plate in its midsection sits astride a substantial beech and poplar core, so security underfoot shouldn’t be an issue for skiers who aren’t as big and aggressive as erstwhile race coach Schaffner. All things considered, the 2023 Ranger 102 amplified its forebear’s best assets without changing its fundamental character.
Head doesn’t tout its 2022/23 Kore collection as new, because they didn’t change its 2021/22 models, they just swaddled them all in a top layer of urethane, to make them more scratch-resistant. For the narrower Kores, which will be exposed to harsher shocks on the hard snow where they’ll spend much of their lives, the new coating definitely quieted the skis down a tad. So, we’re treating the 2023 Kores, including the 105, as new, even though Head does not.
While its speculation on my part, it’s possible the new urethane sheath made the 2023 Kore 105 ski better in shorter lengths. That was Jim Schaffner’s experience, as he skied the Kore 105 in both a 184cm and a 177cm. His report: “In the shorter size, I felt the 105 to have even greater range and playfulness than the 184. I must credit Head for delivering a ton of performance in the Kore line. With the exception of the 105, I skied all of the Kore models in the 177, and they all had amazing horsepower for a svelte 230 pounder like me.”
The Head Kore 105 is the perfect ski for our times. No, it doesn’t promote universal love and understanding among all people, but it does what it can, considering that it’s a ski. It’s not just that it’s the lightest ski in the genre, it’s how that light weight contributes to a quickness off the edge that makes the Kore 105 feel narrower than its actual dimensions.
Another reason that the Kore 105 behaves like a skinnier ski is it adheres to a metal-free diet; the absence of Ti laminates softens its torsional rigidity, enabling it to conform to terrain rather than attempting to subdue it. This business about feeling narrower matters because it makes it reasonable to consider the Kore 105 as an everyday ski for western resort skiing.
Its ultra-light weight also makes the Kore 105 an ideal in-resort/backcountry hybrid. The biggest concern any backcountry skier has about a super-light ski is that it will be great going uphill and suck on the way down, which sort of defeats the whole purpose. There’s zero chance the Kore 105 will flame out on the descent, as it’s far more substantial than any AT model of which I am aware.
The Blizzard Rustler 10 wants you to look good, so it makes everything about off-trail skiing easier. There’s a long, central band of Titanal on the top to stabilize the ski underfoot while allowing the tip and tail to twist. The idea is to keep the tapered tip from getting involved with every obstruction it meets; instead of trying to hook up at the top of turn like a hard-snow-oriented ski is meant to do, it politely deflects all rough treatment by bending with the blow. The same basic idea at the tail keeps it from insisting on finishing every arc on a hairline trajectory, as if skiing were trying to emulate figure skating.
A more powerful skier who takes his hard-snow technique with him when he travels off-trail might prefer the more connected feel of the Blizzard Cochise 106. But for the majority of off-piste skiers, the Rustler 10 is a better fit. When the nearly expert skier really needs help, the Rustler is a godsend. Imagine being in flat light – a common condition when the goods are there to be gotten – and not being able to tell what your tips are going to encounter next. That’s where the Rustler 10’s innate surf-ability takes over, smearing over the unseen obstacles as if they weren’t there.
Another milieu in which the Rustler 10’s looseness contributes to its maneuverability is powder-laden trees. Of course, you can’t carve through a forest on a 17.5m sidecut, but you can swivel through it without ever engaging an edge and you won’t have to worry about the ski’s shape specs. So, don’t let the Rustler’s 10’s low score for short turns steer you away from the woods. It’s inability to carve a tight turn on diamond-hard snow has nothing to do with the way it can sashay through the trees.
Now that the Fischer Ranger series share a common construction, they also share a similar behavioral profile. Nothing affects a modern ski quite as much as the addition or subtraction of Titanal, so when Rangers were made both with and without Ti laminates, their performance profile would change radically from one model to the next. For 2023, Fischer homogenized the Ranger line by doling out a measure of metal in every model. By dint of its extra width, the Ranger 108 earns a mite more in its midsection, making it the smoothest Ranger in the new family.
The Ranger series has always been aimed squarely at off-trail skiing, where surface area dictates the degree of flotation which in turn has a direct bearing on how easy a ski is to swivel. News bulletin: skiing deep snow isn’t like skiing hardpack. Not just in the obvious way that snow you sink into and snow you can barely dent require different tactics, but in the subtle ways that deep snow affects stance and turn finish, which can’t be carved and therefore has to be swiveled to come across the fall line.
The point of the previous paragraph is that the wider the off-trail ski, the closer it inherently comes to optimizing its design, at least for the purposes of skiing powder, which is the only reason to own a Big Mountain model in the first place. If test conditions last winter had only cooperated, scores for the Ranger 108 would have shot up, elevating both its Power and Finesse rankings. Of all the new Rangers, the 108 was most compromised by inappropriate test conditions, yet its superior skill set was evident despite this considerable handicap.
Blessed with more flotation and power than its stablemate, the Ranger 102, the Ranger 108 delivers the sort of elite performance experts expect. When allowed to run across a field of syrupy corn snow, it’s a gas to lay over like its waist was 20mm thinner. Of course, connection at the top of the turn is inhibited by the usual steep front rocker and pulled-back contact point found in virtually every Big Mountain ski, but most of the Ranger 108 is in the snow and unperturbed by the jolts delivered by irregular terrain.
Any clear-eyed assessment of what transpires on a powder day at any popular resort would conclude that the “powder” part of the day begins around 9:00 and ends around 10:00. For the rest of the day, all accessible terrain devolves into something considerably less idyllic. The Kästle FX106 Ti is built to cope with this reality, for it wields its smear-ability like a weapon when deep snow switches from a fluffy texture to something closer to tapioca.
During the “powder hour,” any ski with approximately the FX106 Ti’s dimensions will spool out mid-radius turns with unconscious ease; once perfect conditions are in the past, the real work begins. It’s in the slop that the FX106 Ti’s stout, wood-and-Titanal construction proves its mettle, planing over afternoon porridge that would kick a lesser ski off course. With two full sheets of Titanal in its guts, the FX106 Ti isn’t one of those fat skis where the width isn’t noticeable; rather, its heft imparts confidence that in the battle against crud, its pilot is well armed.
Left to its own devices on firmer snow, the FX106 Ti likes its turns long and laid over. Not that its probable owner is likely to be a big fan of groomers, but they’re an unavoidable aspect of resort skiing, so you might as well make them fast and fun. Of course, the FX106 Ti won’t hook up at the top of the turn like a carving ski, but it’s more than solid enough so you can open up the throttle on the dash back to the lift.
