It was only a couple of product generations ago that a Rossignol model dominated the Big Mountain genre like no other ski before or since. The Soul 7 was an almost perfect powder ski, its behavior dictated by its high and long camber line that ended, as all Big Mountain skis do, in a tapered and rockered tip and tail. Its high arch was primarily fiberglass, making it a coiled spring just begging to be compressed. The tip and tail had so little to do, they originally were separate parts.
Old School powder technique, developed when all skis were skinny submarines, depended on a loaded ski’s rebound to help lift the skier up closer to the surface where it was easy to transition across the fall line. The Soul 7, in all of its several incarnations, owned this move. No other ski was so natural at this porpoise-like resurfacing, which made it popular among experts who skied the way it did.
The Soul 7’s only sin was to be too popular. Rossi refreshed their star regularly, most notably with Carbon Alloy Matrix when it earned its “HD” suffix, and Rossi kept refreshing its rack appeal, which attracted skier interest even among intermediates. Nothing kills a ski’s cachet among experts quite like universal adoption by the masses, and gradually the Soul 7 lost its luster.
As the Soul 7 began to fade, Rossi recruited it replacement by developing an athlete-driven model that would trickle into retail racks without fanfare under the Blackops mantle. All technical information was literally blacked-out, as if to say, if you’re a real skier, you don’t care about that crap; you just want it to rip. After a couple of seasons of enforced anonymity, the Sender Ti emerged as the heir to the Soul 7 throne.
The Sender Ti was clearly made to win back experts disenchanted with its predecessor’s over-the-top popularity. Titanal was added to the construction formula, and the baseline was flattened out to improve snow connection. The Sender Ti was a Soul 7 with teeth, giving it a higher performance ceiling and much improved hard snow grip.
But the Sender Ti had a small problem of its own: its star quality wasn’t so easy to spot in a Blackops collection that lacked coherence, so for 2023 Rossi completely overhauled its off-trail collection, re-building its mainstream, in-resort models around the Sender (and women’s Rallybird) name. To ensure that the new head of the family wouldn’t get lost in the mix, Rossi designated the top model as the Sender 106 Ti+, enhancing its allure with extra Titanal and bringing back Carbon Alloy Matrix as a keystone structural element.
The primary character traits that derive from the “plus” features are smooth shock absorption all along the ski, largely attributable to Carbon Alloy Matrix, and firmer edge grip, a function of extending the Titanal underfoot sideways, all the way to the edge. These additions are what make the Sender 106 Ti+ a premium Power ski, while the rest of the Sender Ti clan are Finesse models more suited to slower or less skilled skiers. “This is the best of the Sender group!” raved Start Haus owner and consummate Power skier Jim Schaffner. “Well balanced and very good power and rebound. This ski would please any hard charger on any terrain,” he concludes.
If you’re a strong skier wondering whether the Sender 106 Ti+ is worth the extra $100 investment compared to the Sender 104 Ti, wonder no more: it is.
