Lest there be any confusion, the new Atomic Maverick 86 C didn’t crack our Recommended ranks because it’s a great ski. It earned our appreciation because it’s a remarkably good deal at its target retail of $499, a price plateau mostly populated by dreck.
I learned more about the Maverick 86 C’s capabilities than I intended to when I stepped into a pair during a Peter Glenn demo event at Squaw Valley last March. I was just in time to join a group taking an end-to-end mountain tour led by Jonny Moseley. So, off I went on an excursion that included more than the usual dose of moguls, for obvious reasons. I was gob smacked by how well the doughty little (176cm) Maverick could snake through bumps, its loosely connected tips smoothly sliding over the tops and soft flex helping it slither through troughs. When it was time to gallop back to the lift, the tail was supportive enough to be stable within the normal recreational speed range.
The Maverick 86 C is a lot of ski for $499. However Atomic pulls it off, the beneficiary is the typical skier who only ekes out a few days a year and hopes to make the most of them. For its exceptional cost/value relationship in a ski that accentuates ease, we award the Maverick 86 C a Silver Skier Selection.
Depending on where and how you ski, the Maverick 88 Ti may be the best of the top 3 models in the new all-mountain series from Atomic, despite residing on the lowest rung of the pricing ladder. It arcs the best short-radius turns of the bunch despite a mid-radius sidecut that’s equally comfortable when allowed to run for the barn. Its tail is supportive without being flashy, gradually releasing its grip as it crosses the turn transition.
As the narrowest of the Maverick Ti trio, the 88 Ti is the best fit for today’s arrhythmic bumps, and its ability to access a short arc in a jiffy is a huge asset in the trees. When I let it run on a long, gradual ballroom on the sunny side of Mt. Rose, it remained predictable and trustworthy as I raked up the edge angle, banking off a receptive layer of solar-softened cream. Its baseline is more cambered than its siblings (15/75/10), so there’s a longer platform under the pilot in all conditions, without sacrificing its ability to swivel a turn in a pinch. Its tips would prefer that the snow find it, rather than the other way around. This makes it a hero in spring snow, where its rockered forebody can buffer the blows delivered by ever-softening conditions.
A powerful skier 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.
Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the Rustler 10 is a Power ski hiding in a Finesse ski’s body. Considering how well it’s adapted for skiing in cut-up powder, the Rustler 10’s performance on corduroy exceeds expectations. It only needs a bit of give to the snow surface to calm it down and impart a sense of security.
I gained a fresh perspective on the Rustler 9 when I had occasion to ski it at Jackson Hole two years ago. It was a lovely day; however, I was anything but: sick, bone-tired, with a tweaked L4/L5 and a gas tank running on fumes. After an undistinguished descent of Rendezvous Bowl, I straggled my way into the serpentine bumps of Bivouac Woods. If not for the Rustler 9’s mercifully soft tip and tail that seemed to match the contours of every cross-hill trough without much guidance from its beleaguered pilot, I might still be there.
Ski buyers always ask at some point in their give-and-take with the salesperson, “How is it in the bumps?” While the flip reply is always, “As good as you are,” in the case of the Rustler 9, the ski actually is well suited to today’s hacked-up mogul formations.
Put in Realskiers’ terms, the pliable Rustler 9 is a Finesse ski while the stouter Brahma 88 is a Power ski. The Brahma 88’s best scores are for performance criteria like carving accuracy and stability at speed; the Rustler 9’s marks reveal a model with a high aptitude for off-trail conditions with a peppy personality that’s easy to manage. It prefers life off-trail where it has the freedom to add a bit of schmear to every turn.
One of my favorite bump skis that wasn’t intended to be a bump ski was the K2 Shreditor 102 (circa 2015). Of course, it couldn’t be as quick a real mogul ski edge to edge, so it did most of its navigation by slarving through the troughs and slinking around the lumpy bits. The new Reckoner 102 is in several respects the same ski, albeit embellished in ways its ancestor was not.
The similarities are hard to miss. The shape of the 184cm is identical save for a tip that’s 3mm wider on the Reckoner, giving it a marginally (.7m) snugger sidecut radius. Both Shreditor and Reckoner rely on braided fibers to control flex and torsion, with the Shreditor using a Triaxial braid of fiberglass and the Reckoner using Spectral Braid spun from carbon. Both vintages use Aspen in the core, although the Shreditor complemented it with featherweight Paulownia while the Reckoner uses Aspen in concert with denser fir. Both have relatively low camber underfoot, use a reinforced sidewall for added resistance to ski-on-ski damage and both, of course, are twin-tips.
What the Reckoner 102 brings to the party that the Shreditor could not is Spectral Braid, a variable-angle braiding technique (Patent Pending). Spectral Braid makes both front and rear rocker zones soft and compliant, helping the Reckoner 102 switch from forward to reverse in a twinkling.
