There’s nothing like swaddling an already excellent ski in a rich coating of creamy carbon. We skied an Amphibio Black Edition last season that finished tops among Technical skis, and in the past we’ve skied Kästles that were also encapsulated in a carbon sheath. They, too, won their category, so the Elan Ripstick 106 Black Edition came with high expectations.
It did not disappoint. It snaked all around the mountain like a fat, black mamba, coiling around a medium-radius turn as if it were alive. The Ripstick 106 on which it’s modeled is already a fairly soft ski; slathering it in carbon didn’t change it compliant nature but complemented it. The carbon coat calms everything down, muffling shocks before they can cause any trouble. If your mind aches to go off-trail but your body aches if you do, the Ripstick 106 Black Edition is a brilliant buffer between heavy snow and balky joints.
Like every model in the Big Mountain category, Elan’s Ripstick 106 has lighter weight near the top of its design criteria. The Ripstick 106 is also in step with its competition in its use of carbon to replace heavier components, but the Slovenian ski maker deploys it in a unique fashion that takes full advantage of carbon’s capacity for shock damping and elasticity. Two 5mm-diameter tubes reside in CNC-machined grooves that follow the sidewall along the base of its all-wood core. Positioned as they are near the snow and the edge, the carbon cylinders can keep the Ripstick 106 on a calm edge when navigating rough terrain.
If you’re familiar with Elan, you’d be correct to surmise that the Ripstick 106 uses its signature, asymmetric sidecut, dubbed Amphibio. Given the Ripstick 106’s inherently looser tip and built-to-drift girth, the Amphibio effect isn’t enough to keep its tips cool, calm and collected on brittle hardpack.
But crispy corduroy isn’t where the Ripstick 106 longs to roam. It would like nothing better than to find a soft berm to sink into or bank off of. In its happy place in soft snow, it’s “super smooth and buttery,” according to an anonymous tester who tried in wind-affected crud.
Just last season Salomon improved the hard snow performance of the QST 99 by adding basalt to its foundational carbon/flax (C/FX) fibers. For 20/20, Salomon has re-configured its primary elements, mixing the basalt and carbon elements and using the flax in its own layer under the binding zone. The net effect is to augment the sense of support, not just underfoot, where there’s also a slice of Titanal, but all along the baseline.
Two other changes to the ski design contribute mightily to the QST 99’s infusion of power and improved snow contact: 4mm’s of width have been pared away from both the tip and tail, so the new version doesn’t automatically try to steer out of the fall line, and the substitution of cork for Koroyd in the shovel. Salomon asserts that the “Cork Damplifier” is 16 times more proficient at absorbing shock and even lighter weight. With its new, trimmer silhouette, a 181cm QST 99 weighs 65g less this year compared to the 2018/19 version, while improving its Stability at Speed score from 7.80 to 8.43, the best score in the genre for a non-metal ski.
Let the record show that no ski made as giant a leap forward in 2020 as the Salomon QST 92. In its two earlier incarnations it barely met our Recommended minimum standards, barely hanging on the tail end of the Finesse ski standings. Now it resides at the top, and the result is no fluke.
The new QST has more of everything you want – edging power on trail, a better shape for off-trail, a more solid platform – and less of what you don’t want: tip chatter, indifferent grip, overall looseness. Salomon pulled off this coup by reconfiguring how it used its primary components, flax, basalt and, of course, carbon. The basalt and carbon are now woven together in an end-to-end matrix, while the flax gets its own mat directly underfoot. An all-poplar core is reinforced by a patch of Titanal in the mid-section and finished with new cork inserts in the tip and tail.
Last year 3 brands introduced high-end models with vertical laminates made from metal or carbon. Liberty’s version, with two aluminum ribs trisecting the bamboo/poplar core, earned the highest scores from our panelists. This season, Liberty added a third metal strut to the men’s V-series models it introduced last year. Liberty’s Vertical Metal Technology (VMT) is as effective a system for maintaining snow contact as any extant, short of loading the ski up with every dampening agent known to man. Theron Lee of Bobo’s succinctly describes how it feels: “damp but not dead.”
One reason the V82 skis so well is that the metal ribs don’t work alone. Two 1cm-wide swathes of carbon straddle the center strut, poured PU sidewalls have a calming effect on the edges they rest on and a carbon base layer adds bonus buffering. The result is very close to race-ski grip without having each run feel like a workout. If one word could characterize what it feels like to take a spin on the V82 it would be “natural.” There’s nothing to adapt to, nothing to figure out.
