Kästle’s MSRP’s hover near the peak of the retail pricing mountain, where the air is so thin only a few brands can survive in it. Kästle’s relatively new Czech ownership wants to expand the line by dropping a few experimental models down to a lower altitude, where the people, particularly less affluent younger people, can afford to acquire them.
Hence the ‘Z” in its name, a reference to Gen Z, otherwise known as young adults. The first foray in this direction was the ZX108, a non-metal, robustly rockered Big Mountain model with surprising moxie, introduced just last year. The ZX100 is its first offspring, with a retail tag of $799, a pittance for a Kästle and right in line with the rest of the market.
The low price wouldn’t be worth much if the ski couldn’t cut it, but the ZX100 is a knockout, particularly in the softer snow it’s made for. This became evident on a spring day at Mt. Rose, where the snow surface evolved from boilerplate to mush in the span of three hours. As soon as the top surface became loose enough to dislodge, the ZX100 was in its element. Although it has no Titanal in its guts, its classic wood-and-fiberglass sandwich is strong on the edge and peppy coming off it. It’s sidecut is also right out of the time-honored playbook, with just a little more shape and tip-to-tail taper angle than the norm. Without the metal to dampen its response to pressure, the ZX100 feels quick and lively even though its natural sidecut radius is 18m in a 180cm and short turns aren’t really its wheelhouse.
Any ski with a Power/Finesse Balance score above 90 is doing a lot of things right. The flex is balanced and even, and the ZX100 resides comfortably on the borderline between drifting and edging as it dances close to the fall line. If you want to make a tighter turn that’s more carve than swivel, be prepared to work for it, but that’s the case for just about every ski in this genre. It somehow manages to feel lightweight and more maneuverable than most AMW models, yet it’s not particularly light; the Kastle FX 96 Ti is actually lighter, despite sporting two sheets of Titanal.
To give you an idea of what a steal the Bent Chetler 100 was when it was introduced five years ago, Atomic understandably raised its retail price by $100 a year later, and it was still the best value in the category. But the Bent 100 is more than just a good deal; it’s a wonderfully versatile ski that’s as easy to ski in off-trail conditions as any AMW model at any price.
The key to the Bent 100’s charms is its Horizon Tech tip and tail which are rockered on both axes. By crowning its extremities, the littler Chetler feels like it can drift in any direction on a whim without losing control of trajectory. When in its element, it’s the epitome of ease, rolling over terrain like a spatula over icing.
The Bent 100 is all about freedom of expression rather than the tyranny of technical turns. So what if its liberty-loving tip doesn’t want to show up early in the turn? That’s not its shtick. It has talents Technical skis never imagined, like throwing it in reverse off a precipice. It’s light, it’s easy to pivot and it’s wide enough to float in two feet of fresh. If you evaluate the Bent 100 for what it does rather than what it isn’t meant to do, it’s an all-star in a league of its own.
“These are the top of the heap when it comes to blending playfulness with precision,” observes Boot Doctors’ Bob Gleason, who has been assessing skis for almost as long as your esteemed Editor. “Easy to ski in variable conditions, it arcs and scrubs with dexterity.”
Although the Bent 100 is a directional ski, its unique design lends itself to omni-directional skiing. This pegs its probable skier profile as a young male with aerial antics on his bucket list. But it would be underselling the Bent 100 to lump it with Pipe & Park twin-tips. Its preference for soft snow is hardly a character flaw in an All-Mountain West model. Anyone looking for a great value in an all-terrain ski can’t do any better than a Bent 100.
The simplest way to characterize the M-Free 99 from Dynastar is it’s a narrow Powder ski, a genre that’s otherwise populated by models over 113mm underfoot, compared to this M-Free’s 99mm. In groomed conditions, its tip and tail have nothing to do except dangle above the snow surface, waiting to be called into action. Considering how loose its extremities are, it’s cool, calm and collected underfoot, moving edge to edge in medium-radius turns without drawing attention to the fact that the tip and tail are on sabbatical.
Size selection is always important; with the M-Free 99, it’s critical. The 178cm length isn’t just a scaled-down 186cm, as each length goes through its own development process. To support the strong, fall-line crud skier who is the M-Free 99’s most probable partner, the 186cm length is a must, as it provides a longer, more stable mid-section to distribute a big boy’s pressure and liberate his aggressive instincts. Listen to the testimony of two strong, attacking testers from Bobo’s, Sawyer and the aptly nicknamed Big John Hume.
Sawyer, who devours terrain in 50-meter swaths, says, “The amount of tip and tail rocker make this a forgiving ski that still holds an edge through king-size turns yet it’s easy to shut it down and stay controlled.” Big John also liked the M-Free 99’s supple flex pattern, admiring its “soft, round flex tip-to-tail, making this a perfect one-ski quiver for the park rider wannabe.” The Realskiers scoring system doesn’t grade fitness for Pipe & Park shenanigans, so we’ll take Big John’s word for it. His perspective brings to light an aptitude for air that may come to define its core audience.
But even aerialists have to come back to earth, which the M-Free 99 would prefer to be soft, as one would expect, given its Powder-ski lineage. A smear-stick at a plodding pace, it’s capacity for edging seems to pick up the more it’s aimed downhill.
The M-Pro line that Dynastar introduced three years ago is hierarchical, with the M-Pro 99 and 99 W sitting on top of a 3-model range. This means the M-Pro 99 W isn’t just the widest ski in the range, it’s the also the best. Women who’ve attained advanced ability should probably be on the M-Pro 99 W even if they’re likely to spend half their time on groomed terrain.
I make this suggestion despite the fact that the M-Pro 99 W’s baseline and build are clearly intended for off-piste terrain. It’s topsheet of Titanal peters out about half way up the forebody so the front of the ski stays loose and free to conform to uneven conditions. It’s the Ti in the mid-section and tail that calm the M-Pro 99 W down on groomers, earning the admiration of Lara Hughes Allen, who filed this dispatch: “I really liked this ski. I don’t usually ski anything much over 90 underfoot, but I was really impressed with this ski on groomers and off piste. I skied it on a day where we had gotten about a foot of new snow over crud/ice and it had a lot of float through the soft snow, but also charged through the crud. Surprisingly grippy on the groomers as well.”
Völkl takes product development very, very seriously, testing nearly 1,000 different skis a year, in every length it will manufacture. It uses a team of both in-house product designers and a dozen or so “externals” – top instructors and racers – to evaluate every design aspect. Their task is made trickier in that key design elements like Tailored Titanal Frame, 3D Sidecut, Tailored Carbon Tips and the Secret 96’s double-rockered baseline, all need to blend together for the magic to happen.
I mention this because the Secret 96 is essentially the same ski as the M6 Mantra, which sounds like a short-cut way to gin up a women’s ski. Far from it. One of the essential design goals of both new skis was to precisely tailor all aspects for all sizes, a process particularly beneficial for the largest and smallest sizes. Every decision was challenged in service to the main goals: more liveliness when pressured; accessible, tighter turn shapes; and smoother behavior in the turn transition, the “drift-to-carve” moment. The intent was to open up both the M6 Mantra and the Secret 96 to more skiers, especially in the shorter lengths, i.e., those made for women.
Völkl has a long history of developing strong women’s skis, like the Kenja, Aura and Kiku. With the Secret 96, Völkl has created another fabulous, benchmark model able to provide extraordinary performance that’s accessible to larger swath of the women’s market.
