Völkl takes product development very, very seriously, testing nearly 1,000 different skis a year, in every length it will manufacture. It uses a team of both in-house product designers and a dozen or so “externals” – top instructors and racers – to evaluate every design aspect. Their task is made trickier in that key design elements like Tailored Titanal Frame, 3D Sidecut, Tailored Carbon Tips and the Secret 96’s double-rockered baseline, all need to blend together for the magic to happen.
I mention this because the Secret 96 is essentially the same ski as the M6 Mantra, which sounds like a short-cut way to gin up a women’s ski. Far from it. One of the essential design goals of both new skis was to precisely tailor all aspects for all sizes, a process particularly beneficial for the largest and smallest sizes. Every decision was challenged in service to the main goals: more liveliness when pressured; accessible, tighter turn shapes; and smoother behavior in the turn transition, the “drift-to-carve” moment. The intent was to open up both the M6 Mantra the Secret 96 to more skiers, especially in the shorter lengths, i.e., those made for women.
The Völkl Secret 102 does not condescend. If you want to tear through crud as if it were rice paper, this is your ride. The Secret 102 has all the goodies: Titanal Frame coupled with 3D Radius Sidecut creates a ride that secretes power. Listen to the testimony of former US speed-event racer Edie Thys Morgan, a lady who has spent a lot of her skiing life in the upper end of the speedometer.
“The Secret102 may look like a fatty—and it’s definitely got the girth to plow through the powder of your dreams and its skied-out aftermath—but it’s no one trick pony. The ski gets happier as you dial up the intensity, which is also to say, it performs best when you’re the boss.
“For best results, you need to stay centered and be prepared to move forward and drive. This ski loves momentum. If you want to be able to maneuver through the woods and chutes with frolicky ease and then run it out and hit the groomers with some heat, this is your ski.
Given that its double-rockered baseline is biased towards soft snow that gives the tip and tail something to push against, the Ranger 96 is more at home off-trail than on. Skiers who possess a more upright, centered stance may share the reaction of Peter Glenn’s Mark Rafferty, who pondered the question, “How can a ski be both playful and hard charging? Magic, I guess. But the Ranger 96 has all the carve that the Ranger series has been great at for years with an easy-going feel.”
While the Ranger 96 has a forebody built for off-trail travel, there’s no faulting its edge grip and stability from the mid-body to the tail, that even a skier as talented and strong as Jim Schaffner appreciates. “A big improvement over the Ranger 102,” opines the Start Haus owner. “More predictable and higher stability. Still easy to drift and slarve, but with a much more consistent behavior on snow. This ski belongs in the group of versatile 90+ mm underfoot, as a one-ski quiver, Tahoe model.”
While there’s no mistaking the prodigiously sized Schaffner for a lithe, little lady, if he feels sufficiently supported on a 180cm Ranger 96, it suggests that the same ski in a yellow cosmetic should be no less supportive for the advanced female skier.
The last few years have seen several off-trail series that have adopted a less-is-more approach to metal in their female model families. Rossignol’s carefully allocated measure of metal in its new Rallybird 104 Ti fits neatly in this popular trend.
When selecting the right metal dosage for the new Rallybird 104 Ti, Rossi elected to use the relatively shorter Ti plate of the new Sender 104 Ti, along with a bottom laminate of Carbon Alloy Matrix to even out the flex balance and smooth out the ride in rough conditions. The truncated Ti plate shared by the Sender 104 Ti and Rallybird 104 Ti deliberately doesn’t quite reach the edge, which loosens its grip, the better to glide sideways in slop.
By keeping most of the plate confined beneath the bindings, the extremities are lighter and looser so the skis swivel with less resistance, an essential trait off-trail. As we noticed on the Sender 104 Ti, concentrating the Titanal under the bindings keeps the swingweight down, for easier swiveling, and lowers the overall mass so the ski feels more nimble and easier to foot-steer, all desirable traits for off-trail skiing.
Salomon’s R&D department must be constantly fiddling with fibers, for every few years they re-arrange carbon, flax and basalt into different combinations. For 2023, Salomon applied the same, end-to-end layer of C/FX’s latest incarnation that debuted last year in the QST 98 to the QST Stella 106. The 2022 Stella already had a Titanal mounting plate, a critical component whose stabilizing influence extends beyond its borders. The fact that the skier has trouble defining the metal/non-metal border is a testament to just how substantial a weave of fabric can be, for the absence of Titanal is usually instantly detectable. In the Stella, the full-length C/FX factor is more dominant than the metal element, delivering a balanced flex stem to stern with a bite underfoot that won’t wilt in the face of boilerplate.
Any Big Mountain ski is going to offer plenty of flotation for lighter weight women; the differentiator is how well it handles its business when the freshies are shot. Not to worry, the Stella has you covered. The same imperturbability it displays in tracked-up crud fields carries over to just about any condition you can encounter.
