Fischer has been tinkering with its off-trail Ranger collection over the span of several seasons, searching for the fine line between lightweight, with its attendant ease of operation, and elite carving capability that can handle the transition to hard snow. For 20/20, the Ranger 99 Ti tilts the scales in favor of stability, amping up the carving power by reverting to square, ABS sidewalls straddling a classic, wood-and-Titanal sandwich. A carbon inlay in the tip lowers swingweight and overall mass, which is substantial enough (+150g vs. 18/19 Ranger 98 Ti) to keep it calm on corduroy, yet feels comparatively light when tearing through crud.
A veteran tester from Joe’s Ski Shop [MN] summarizes his impressions of some of the Ranger 99 Ti’s more subtle changes: “The 19/20 model has a slight construction change from the 18/19 model – a change in the core materials and a bit less tip and tail rocker. Makes the ski a bit better at tip engagement with a bit more all-mountain feel to it over last year’s ski. Overall, I’d say it makes what was a very good ski even better, especially for in-bounds skiing out West where you can go from powder to groomed to crud all in one run.”
For 20/20 Fischer has again re-designed the flagships of it Ranger Ti series, returning to a lay-up with twin Titanal laminates for stability and liberal use of carbon to make it responsive. Carbon inlays in the tip and tail help make the extremities thin and light, so the new Ranger 107 Ti is easier to foot steer when necessary. “It’s user-friendly but still can be skied aggressively,” notes one admiring tester. “You can take your foot off the gas and it’s still responsive.”
Compared to the Ranger 108 Ti that preceded it, the Ranger 107 Ti has a slightly less shapely silhouette and a longer contact zone underfoot, giving it more directional stability and an overall calmer disposition in the sloppy seconds that prevail on so-called powder days. Its new sidecut favors the skier who can maintain momentum through a series of rhythmic, mid-radius turns that neither enter nor exit the turn too suddenly.
The Fischer Ranger 102 FR is an interesting amalgam of Old School principles and New School attitude. At heart it’s a traditional, wood-core, glass laminate construction with square, ABS sidewalls, but on closer examination the wood laminates in the core are carved into a Chinese puzzle of latticework developed for Fischer’s market-dominating cross-country skis. To keep the lightweight Air Tec Ti core from being bounced around by stiff mounds of set-up crud, a thin sheath of Titanal covers the core underfoot.
Keeping the metal component to a minimum allows the Ranger 102 FR’s glass structure the freedom to flex under mild pressure and immediately pop back into its cambered position. Put this action/reaction pulse into motion and you have the makings of a very fun powder run.
As is universally the case among high-end skis with a low-mass objective, carbon plays a key role in keeping the My Pro MT 86 light, agile and responsive. To reinforce edging power without resorting to Titanal, the My Pro MT 86 uses square sidewalls for crisp energy transfer. Its most obvious effort at trimming mass is also so subtle it may pass notice: the top corners of what would normally be a rectangular ski have been lopped off, so there’s simply less there there, as Gertrude Stein might have said. (Ten points to whomever gets this oblique reference.) The thinner edge this creates slices more easily into the clumpy snow it’s likely to encounter off-trail.
Head wasn’t the first ski manufacturer to market a carving ski, but it was the first major brand to not only embrace the Carving concept but to adopt it as the cohering principle behind every ski it made. This primordial dedication to the art of creating a continuous track has reached its purest expression in Head’s Supershape series, where the i.Titan is the widest (80mm waist) among peers.
Despite its relatively broad beam, the i.Titan feels as quick to the edge as any 75mm stick on the slopes. It feels more agile than it measures for three main reasons. First, there’s its shape, with a 57mm drop between the tip and the waist, so as soon as it’s tipped, it’s carving on a multi-radius, continuous edge. Second, its front rocker is so shallow it does nothing to inhibit early turn entry. And third, the piezos in its tail stiffen up the rearbody when subjected to vibrations that racing across hard snow engenders.
