The Cochise skier needs a full skill set to rein in its appetite for hellbent descents. The Cochise’s 27m-sidecut radius won’t cut across the fall line unless its pilot knows how to drive it from a high edge angle, and it practically prohibits turning at a plodding pace. The Cochise regards slow skiing as a sign of weakness and finds short turns as palatable as spinach ice cream. Experts who understand that the first rule of skiing crud is to charge it need a tool as stout as their style, one that will stand up to a full-on, fall-line assault. “A strong ski for strong skiers,” as Greg from Footloose sums up the crud-killing Cochise.
The Gottaluvit 105 Ti is the embodiment of K2’s core competence in three arenas that fall in the brand’s wheelhouse: fat skis, double doses of rocker and skis tailored for women, each directed to the same goal: make all-condition skiing easier. K2 was the first major brand to shift its focus to recreational off-trail skiing and earliest adopter of rocker to improve ease in every snow condition. The extra stability provided by the ribbon of Titanal around its perimeter gives the Gottaluvit the juice to plunder chunder and the edge grip needed to keep a wide ski calm on hardpack.
Like the Kore 93 and Enforcer 93, the new Rustler 9 from Blizzard is the narrowest incarnation from a family of fat, emphatically off-trail skis. Its signature feature, Dynamic Release Technology (D.R.T.), consists of a Titanal plate that’s edge-to-edge in the mid-section and quickly tapers to blunt tongues, freeing the extremities to twist as needed in choppy terrain. The relatively loose tip and tail conform readily to the abrupt contours of today’s moguls and generally facilitate direction change using less than textbook turns. Scott from Aspen Ski and Board sketched the Rustler 9 profile as “light, with perfect playfulness/stability ratio. Also, rocker is not over done, good loft with minimal tip vibrations.”
Blizzard’s Black Pearl 88 is the super-model of the women’s market, a mega-star that for the first time in the annals of ski sales sold more units in the U.S. than every other ski, men’s or women’s. The Black Pearl had been the anchor of Blizzard’s women’s line for several years when the brand rolled the dice and re-designed it 3 years ago. The switch to a Women’s Specific Design (WSD) was part of an umbrella initiative called Women to Women to create a community of women whose shared experiences could contribute to design directions. Anyone from a first-time ski buyer to a seasoned vet can hop on a Pearl 88 and have the time of her life. Noticeably light and silly-easy to turn, it’s easy to balance on for intermediates and a gas to cut loose on if for skiers that have the skills.
