With Graphene in its arsenal, Head has embraced lightweight design with the fervor it once brought to the early carving craze. The unapologetic objective of the V-Shape series is to create the lightest on-piste design possible. There are still traditional elements in the V-Shape 10, such as carbon, fiberglass and ash alongside Karuba in its wood core, but it’s Graphene that makes its LYT Tech construction possible.
Through all the disruptive design changes that have roiled the ski world in the past 30 years – shaped skis, fat skis, rockered baselines – you could always count on a ski being thicker in the middle and thinner at the ends. But Graphene’s ability to affect stiffness without affecting mass allows Head to toy with flex distribution in unique ways. The V-Shape 10 is made thinner through the middle so it can be loaded with less exertion, a major differentiator between it and, say, a Supershape e-Titan.
Compared to an alternative carving set-up, with a fat, shock-sucking plate and a metal-laden make-up, the V-Shape 10 feels like nothing at all. Says one of our veteran testers, “I wasn’t even sure they were still on my feet. Impressive performance for its weight. Floats on powder and carves on ice.” Once you get past its crazy weightlessness, you’ll find the V-Shape 10 is a smooth operator with an innate desire to lay down dual tracks on groomers of any pitch.
Kästle’s current MX83, reprised from last season, is both typical of a current trend and atypical in a way all its own. The trend it’s party to is how a series of modest modifications amount to a significant change, especially in Finesse qualities. It’s unique among such upgraded models in that the name it’s re-assuming happens to be the legendary MX83, inarguably one of the greatest Frontside models ever made.
The reason the revival of the MX83 ought to interest experts everywhere is because it responds so intuitively to technical commands. Its fully cambered baseline feels super-glued to the snow, inviting speeds that would cause lesser lights to shake loose. Most skis this torsionally rigid don’t flow over and around moguls too well, but the MX83 has an almost liquid flow bred into its bones.
One of the best indicators of a great ski is how well it performs in conditions for which it wasn’t made. Of course the MX83 is a hoot trenching corduroy at speeds that on another ski would be terrifying, but the MX83 adopts the same attitude towards all terrain. It doesn’t care where you point it because it’s confident in its abilities, a self-assurance that invariably rubs off on its pilot. The MX83’s size range is skewed short so that lighter or less talented skiers can experience perfection without necessarily being able to exemplify it.
The Kore 99 epitomizes what makes Head’s unique Kore construction so well adapted to irregular, off-trail conditions without compromising its capacity for holding on hard snow. The All-Mountain West category resides on the boundary line between hard-snow carvers and Big Mountain drifters. The Kore 99 is definitely from the latter camp of looser skis, but its thoughtful design never forgets that is has to meet a certain hard snow performance standard or Head won’t put its name on it.
Kore’s paramount intention is to make a lightweight construction that can be applied to wide skis without extra weight accompanying with the extra width. In the Kore series, Graphene is moved to the tip and tail where it adds structure but almost no weight, thereby lowering swingweight and making these wide skis easy to swivel.
Three other features contribute to the Kore 99’s shocking ease at negotiating battered crud fields and tight tree lines. One, the shoulders on the new Kore series have been rounded off, so the ski slips sideways almost without resistance, a huge plus when a wide ski has to be tossed around an obstacle. Two, the center section of sidecut is essentially straight, facilitating a swiveled turn finish that is the norm in deep snow. And three, a flex pattern that promotes playfulness and rebound, which reduces the effort required to make turns in tough terrain. Less effort means more fun and a longer ski day.
The reason the market hasn’t been awash in lightweight skis since the dawn of time is because mass is part of what makes a ski damp, or able to absorb vibration. Lighter weight formulae have been tried for decades, always with the lamentable downside that they couldn’t hold an edge any better than Florence Foster Jenkins could hold a note.
Then along came the Kore 93, shattering preconceptions about a lightweight ski’s ability to perform at an elite level. The Kore 93 was universally praised the moment it hit the market. The 21/22 incarnation is better than ever, with a few subtle changes that together give the new Kore 93 superior snow feel.
Along with the new flex pattern and more wood in its guts, all the Kores changed their size run, so length selection can be more targeted. The 21/22 Kore 93 comes in six sizes, from a teensy 156cm to a beastly 191cm. Capping the changes across the Kore collection is a chamfered top edge with two welcome benefits: the ski can be foot-steered laterally with less resistance and the top surface is less likely to be damaged above the edge, where it’s most vulnerable to wear and tear.
At some point, you stop noticing how light the Kore 93 is and just enjoy the ride. There’s nothing to adapt to; you just ski. It’s the epitome of forgiveness and ease, the qualities for which it earned its highest marks.
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.
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. 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 entire Kore line received a suite of upgrades this year, which taken in toto tipped the Kore 105 over the Power/Finesse divide. Head deleted synthetic honeycomb from the core, replacing it a combination of poplar and Karuba. It also softened up the flex, part of an overall strategy to make the wider Kores better adapted to deep snow and the narrower ones more attuned to prepared slopes.
