There are three balancing acts that a Big Mountain ski needs to pull off in order to rise to the top of the ranks. One, it has to make the transition from firm snow to soft and back again feel so smooth it’s barely perceptible. Two, it has to execute short turns and long turns without an obvious bias for one or the other. And three, the ski itself needs to feel balanced, with a round, even flex that allows the skier to always feel on center. I’m sharing this nugget of wisdom here because if the essence of the new Rustler 10 could be distilled to a single word, it would be “balanced.”
The testimony of a couple of our elite testers allude to this attribute in their rave reviews. Level 3 instructor Lara Hughes-Allen found the 180cm Rustler 10 to be “light and playful, especially off-piste. A well-balanced ski that makes for fun short turns and bump skiing. For a 102cm underfoot ski, it’s fairly quick edge to edge. Overall, this is a very comfortable ski that performs well in a variety of conditions.”
The erstwhile owner of Start Haus in Truckee, California, a longtime Realskiers Test Center, Jim Schaffner is also a world-class bootfitter and race coach. His thumbnail portrait of the Rustler 10 dovetails nicely with Lara’s assessment: “Balanced and very comfortable to ski in all conditions. It felt seamless to move from firmer to softer to broken pow. Predictable and smooth, with surprising power and rebound when you stomp on it. If I owned this ski, I would ski it on most days in Tahoe.” Mark Zila of Footloose Sports agreed, calling the Rustler 10, “A great all-around ski that would make a great single-ski quiver for the Sierras.”
Bear in mind, Schaffner is both big and strong, so the idea of a Big Mountain ski as an everyday driver makes perfect sense in his case. Also note that the considerably lighter Hughes-Allen could easily bow the Rustler 10 into a short-radius arc, despite its girth, thanks to the high edge angles she can create with her long legs at full extension. Point being, the more skilled the skier, the more he or she can appreciate the full performance range of this ski. Skiers with a less polished skill set can adopt the Rustler 10 as their designated powder/crud ski, but for everyday skiing, the Rustler 9 is a better tool for the skier who is less talented or less aggressive.
Compared to its earlier incarnation, the new Rustler 10 exhibits a lot more connection with the snow, plus more power and rebound when loaded. It still can smear sideways, but it’s much more accurate when it has to carve. It’s now a strong enough ski to be direct competition for its stablemate, the Cochise 106, for the more powerful skier’s affections. The Cochise has been among the burliest Big Mountain skis over the course of its long tenure, a distinction it still enjoys. The Rustler 10 is about to nudge it one step closer to obsolescence.
There’s a reason the new Rustler 10 is noticeably better than its forebear; two reasons, actually. Its core has been given the Trueblend treatment, blending lightweight poplar laminates with sturdy beech underfoot, for max support and power transmission, and adding Paulownia at the tip and tail to reduce overall heft and swingweight. Trueblend alone probably would have made the Rustler 10 a better ski by itself, but swapping a single, truncated sheet of Titanal in the old Rustler 10 for the new FluxForm chassis made the Rustler 10 re-do a much bigger deal.
Superficially, Blizzard’s Fluxform echoes what Völkl did with Tailored Titanal Frame, breaking up the top layer of Titanal into different sections, to improve specific performance traits. The Fluxform solution runs end-to-end strips of Titanal above the edges, with a separate, Ti platform filling the central channel underfoot. The result is better connection to the snow and a more even flex pattern, without the strength-sapping weight of solid sheets of Titanal. Weight is also kept under control by paring away some of the metal used in the narrower Rustler 9, that presumably will spend more time on hard snow than the off-trail centric Rustler 10.
In the context of Blizzard’s complete ski line up, the Rustler/Sheeva series represents an alternative to All-Mountain series headlined by the Bonafide and Black Pearl families. From the perspective of the Alpine ski market as a whole, no other “alternative” collection hits the sweet spot between Finesse and Power properties as consistently as Blizzard’s. Compared to the Cochise 106 , the Rustler 10 embodies a clearly differentiated snow connection that responds to a lighter touch yet doesn’t feel watered down. The new Rustler 10 has been tailored for skilled, fall-line skiers who want elite support and response in a lighter ski that takes less oomph to toss around in crud. It’s sure to become a reference ski in the Big Mountain genre and an all-star performer in Blizzard’s already excellent line.