The Dynastar Legend W 84’s position at the top of our panel’s favorite Frontside Finesse skis of 2020 illustrates an interesting phenomenon that sometimes occurs when a brand uses the same ski for both men and women, particularly when said ski doesn’t use Titanal in its stock recipe. The women’s skis garner higher points than the men’s, as has been the case the last couple of years with Dynastar.
If you’re familiar with Dynastar’s recent history, then you know the Cham series was conceived as a freeride, off-trail family. Given its bloodlines, the Legend W 84 has no trepidation about traveling off-trail, where it’s better at drift across broken snow than most in the genre. When it’s confined to corduroy quarters, its user-friendly baseline allows it to pivot or carve on command, and its tidy turn radius (12m @ 156cm) creates a lovely short arc. As one tester noted last spring, it’s “easy to carve medium radius turns yet also easy (and fun) to make short turns.”
Ever since Dynastar introduced the Cham series what seems like several centuries ago, the brand has moved metal in and out its model matrix, trying to find the right fit for its 5-point sidecut design. It first offered a metal-laden option for the flagship Cham 97 and its bigger bros, the Cham 107 and even the Champ 117. It soon became apparent that all that massive material in a 117 was overkill, and gradually metal also disappeared from the 107mm-width and, in due course, the 97 as well.
When Dynastar resurrected a modified Cham baseline and sidecut in the form of the Legend X and Legend W series, to keep the wider skis’ weight down it cut the metal out of the 106 and reduced it to an insert in the 96. The 88 had the perfect dimensions to handle the weight of two sheets of Titanal without feeling like an oil tanker to turn. The added heft and unique damping qualities of this aluminum alloy keep the Legend W88 calm on both boilerplate groomers and bothersome crud.
The Legend W88 is a Power ski that accessible to Finesse skiers. It relatively short contact area makes it easy to foot-steer, it has sufficient width to float and drift in powder and it a technical skier should tip it on edge, she’ll have the support of Titanal to keep her carving on a clean trajectory.
I readily admit to an engrained bias in favor of the Blizzard Bonafide, as a pair has lived in the first row of my ski locker since its inception. I take them everywhere I go because I’m confident there’s no condition on earth they cannot ski, and ski well.
The Bonafide has remained a perennial all-star for skiers because it’s built on sound fundamentals: a wood core made from poplar and beech sandwiched between laminates of multi-directional glass and Titanal. Its Flipcore design connects to the edge early, with no disruption in the snow connection from the modestly rockered forebody through the midsection to its flat, supportive tail.
If one wished to pick a nit, it could be argued that the Bonafide is geared for the more skilled skier. But this is true of virtually all the more torsionally rigid models in the All-Mountain West genre. If you want to tone it down a bit, get it in a shorter length and you, too, can experience one of the greatest skis ever made.
The new Wingman 82 Cti from Elan demonstrates the proposition that the best way to imbue a Frontside ski with greater terrain versatility is to begin with an off-trail template. The Wingman series borrows its structure from Elan’s Ripstick collection, which uses twin 3mm carbon rods near the base to lend strength, dampening and rebound to its poplar and Paulownia core. To give the ski more poise on piste, Elan squared up and flattened out the tail and added a band of Titanal to the ski’s mid-section for good measure.
That the Wingman 82 Cti would excel at twin-track carving was foreordained by its TruLine Amphibio design, an Elan staple. Amphibio is the umbrella term for an asymmetric sidecut that puts a longer effective edge on the inside of the ski and a shorter camber zone along the outside edge. In other words, the ski is rockered along the longitudinal axis. This allows the skis to always remain in sync as they roll from one inside edge to the other. TruLine amplifies the Amphibio offset by concentrating more glass over the inside edge so the skier’s force is directed where it’s needed most.
The Blizzard Cochise has been around long enough that it’s become the longest tenured member of the Big Mountain academy. But don’t mistake its age for weakness. Until the Völkl Mantra 102 came along this year, the Cochise had no peer as a balls-to-the-wall crud-buster. It has the turn radius of a blue whale and the construction of a GS race ski. If you’re in its way, I would suggest moving.
The reason the Cochise hasn’t lost its relevance has less to do with how it’s changed than how it hasn’t. No other ski beats it for stability at speed, and we mean in any condition. The dirty little secret that experts know about how to ski chopped-up powder is to step on the gas. The Cochise already knows not to pick a dainty path through the crud but to barrel through it, skimming over what’s still clean and pummeling the rubble. With this kind of power, of course it can ski hard snow, where the Cochise exhibits its prowess as a trench digger. If you have the skills, you can take the Cochise pretty much anywhere and it will dominate.
