The Head Kore105 is a very clever combination of some Old School principles, a few features that are de facto standards in the Big Mountain genre and technology that is on the cutting edge of ski design. Head is the only ski maker with a license to use Graphene, carbon in a one-atom thick matrix, which allows its engineers to stiffen or soften flex with minimal affect on mass. To maintain this weight advantage, the heaviest component in the core is a slice of poplar next to the sidewall; the rest of it is a synthetic honeycomb called Koroyd and a quotient of Karuba, an ultralight wood commonly found in Alpine Touring skis.
The Kore 105 gets its power and energy from the carbon, fiberglass and Graphene that are laminated around this exotic core. To further trim grams, the topsheet is a cap made from polyester fleece, another dampening agent that’s only downside is it’s difficult to decorate, which is why all the Kores look murdered-out.
This recitation of low-mass components makes it sound as though the Kore’s only selling feature is its lightweight chassis. There’s no question that the Kore design is laser-focused on keeping the ski light, but if that were its only accomplishment it wouldn’t be such a big deal. What makes the Kore construction remarkable is that it’s light but never wimpy. Once you ski it for a few runs you forget about the lightweight and just ski as you would normally, only with less labor and fatigue.
The Kästle MX99 should not be mistaken for a set of training wheels. If you’ve never owned a ski this wide before, this is probably not the best place to start. The MX99 expects you to be good. Very good, actually. If you’re an imposter, the MX99 can and will detect your fallibilities. This is your final warning. If you continue reading this review, you’ll end wanting a pair, and I’d feel better knowing you were qualified.
The MX99 is unlike every other ski in the All-Mountain West genre. It’s the only ski in the category that evolved from a Frontside template, namely the exquisite MX84. It makes no attempt to dumb down its principles. Far from trying to disassociate the front of the ski from the rest of the chassis, as is the norm among AMW models, the MX99 tries to connect to the turn starting in the shovel.
The Lighter is Better trend, whose influence is evident elsewhere in the AMW category, is just background noise to the MX99 to which it pays no attention. Instead of subtracting material, Kästle added a sheet of braided carbon to its usual all-wood core and two sheets of .5mm Titanal. With all this shock-damping material onboard, the MX99 could collide with a Sequoia and only the tree would feel it.
Fischer doesn’t F-around when it comes to carving skis. The Austrian brand is über focused on winning World Cup races, where its best results in recent years have come in slalom. A SL race ski is essentially a carving ski on steroids, made to the precise specifications mandated by FIS, ski racing’s governing body. If you want to really test your mettle, you can always seek out a Fischer FIS SL, but unless you train over 300 days a year, I wouldn’t advise it. If you belong on a true race ski, most likely it will find you, not the other way around.
The idea behind The Curv GT is to use more or less the same race construction but to jigger its shape to make its immaculate carves more etch-able by the “average” expert. All of the 3 Curv models use a Triple Radius sidecut that begins and ends gradually, connected by a tighter turning section underfoot. As long as the skier maintains a fairly upright stance at a shallow edge angle, The Curv GT behaves like a GS; if he drops his hip until it nearly brushes the snow, the short radius section will dictate a tighter trajectory.
The new RC One 82 GT doesn’t get quite as large a dose of Titanal as its running mate, the All-Mountain East RC One 86 GT, but it’s hardly a delicate flower. A Titanal sheath rolls over the top of its Air Carbon Ti core, and another TI laminate gives it race-caliber grip underfoot. In the shovel and tail, the Ti is replaced with Bafatex®, Fischer’s own shock-absorbing synthetic. The RC One 82 GT uses the same triple-radius (short-long-short) as The Curv, so the softer zones on the ski curl more easily while the middle delivers unshakeable support.
Given its origins and substantial construction, you’d expect the RC One 82 GT to be “a blast at speed as much as mellow cruising,” as Ward Pyles of Peter Glenn discovered. “Super quick edge to edge,” he adds. “Fast, quick, rips everything,” concurs a Jan’s tester, whose boss, Jack Walzer managed to be even more succinct. Walzer’s one-word review: “Money.”
To grok the essence of the new Fischer RC One 86 GT, think of it as a carving ski with wanderlust. As an Austrian brand, Fischer’s collective mind rarely meanders far from the racecourse, so it’s natural that the RC One 86 GT is a carving machine first and an off-trail implement second. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. All a ski this wide really needs to navigate most off-trail conditions is a dash of tip rocker, aka, early rise.
The tip-off that Fischer envisions the RC One 86 GT in Frontside environs is that it’s the head of a mostly Frontside (75mm-84mm underfoot) family. Furthermore, its construction is all about maintaining snow connection, a classic Frontside obsession. The tip and tail are outfitted with Bafatex®, a synthetic compound meant to muffle shock and keep every cm of the 86 GT’s fully cambered baseline plastered on the snow. Not to mention .8mm’s of shaped Titanal to further cow hard snow into silence.
