Kendo 88

Unless you were on the moon last year, you know the M5 Mantra and its Titanal Frame design had a wildly successful debut. What’s all this Mantra mention got to do with the new Kendo 88? The new kid has finally stepped out of its sibling’s shadow. In the most hotly contested category, All-Mountain East, that’s loaded with star products, the Kendo 88 earned the highest score for every Power attribute as well as for Finesse/Power balance, the catchall criterion for overall excellence.

The single most important quality an all-mountain ski can possess is total indifference to terrain selection. On this score, the Kendo 88 has no peer. It transitions from wind-affected crud to crisp corduroy as if those two conditions were the same. On hard snow, it’s so quick to the edge the skier can’t even tell it’s rockered and it’s so stable in crud you can relax, drop the reins and let the boys run.

Jim Schaffner of Start Haus knew the new Kendo 88 was a winner from the first turn. “Let me begin by saying, this ski is going to end up being a category killer. A very well-balanced ski, easy to stay centered on and get pressure to the tip. A quick, lively ski that really held in the turn.”

M5 Mantra

When the Völkl M5 Mantra appeared last season, it was received like an answered prayer by thousands of Mantra fans who didn’t much care for the iteration that preceded it. The attributes that had been erased over time – and that the M5 Mantra restored – were a tighter waist for more accurate hard-snow steering and conventional camber underfoot, for greater grip and control over trajectory.

Völkl didn’t just resurrect an old Mantra concept; it created an entirely new recipe using the same classic components – wood, fiberglass and Titanal – that had helped put the original Mantra on the map. The new configuration is called Titanal Frame, for the difference maker is in how the top sheet of Titanal has been re-imagined.

Instead of a solid, end –to-end laminate, Völkl broke the topsheet into three pieces: a .6mm thick section in the forebody that runs around the perimeter and over the tip; a similar .6mm U-shaped part in the tail; and an independent .4 mm plate in the middle. By making it easier to bow underfoot, the skier can more readily compress the fat sheet of fiberglass right below the metal bits, loading the ski with energy and delivering another element Mantra fans had been missing: rebound.

90EIGHT

How fleeting is stardom, how swiftly the limelight fades. It was only two years ago that the Völkl 90EIGHT was injected with new life by 3D.Glass, which this pundit declaimed as the most clever product upgrade of the year. Then along came the M5 Mantra and the 90EIGHT lost popularity like a close talker with bad breath.

The problem with this fall from grace is that the two skis are quite different, despite having similar sidecuts and baselines, which would normally suggest some overlap in their behavioral profile. But their signature construction features are from two different worlds that have circled each other in the ski universe for decades: a metal laminate, traditionally the province of GS and speed event skis, versus a fiberglass torsion box, once upon a time the paradigm of race slalom design.

When it comes to demolishing crud, the M5 is more of a bulldozer and the 90EIGHT more like a crate of grenades. The lighter and peppier 90EIGHT is more inclined to glide over broken terrain, while the carving power of the M5 wants to dive into it. Jack Walzer of Jan’s has the 90EIGHT pegged as “fun, playful, great in soft snow ski and very lively.” If you plan on using your new All-Mountain West skis primarily off-trail, the 90EIGHT is probably the superior tool.