If the Line Pandora 95 had a theme song, it would be “Surfer Girl.” When she isn’t surfing she’s swimming sideways, setting up for the next wave. Asking it to carve a clean arc on hard snow is like compelling an adolescent to stay after school and clean the erasers. It will do it, but only at her own pace and she will resent you forever for it.
Any ski called Sick Day sounds like a slacker, but the Sick Day 114 shows up for every turn. It may not execute each turn the way The Man would prefer, but whether by smearing the turn or sticking it, the Sick Day 114 gets it done. To keep its well-rockered tips and tails from flapping like pajamas on a clothesline, Line has stiffened them up and increased security attributable to a new core made of alternating stringers of maple and Paulownia.
When Kästle chose Head to be its partner in production, it was a wise investment that continues to reap dividends. Just imagine all the experience in Head’s Race Department, all the different iterations of a wood/fiberglass/Titanal construction it has concocted, just in the last few seasons, in order to service its international stable of stars. When Kästle elected to revitalize its RX12 series this year with new SL and GS models, the team with which it collaborated not only could build anything it wanted, it probably already had.
While the QST 92 isn’t daunted by firm snow, flat terrain isn’t its native habitat. It’s most at home in about of foot of new, or at least recent, snow, where its tapered tip and double rockered baseline do their best work. As I mentioned in last year’s review, that it’s as light as a salad for lunch makes the QST 92 all the easier to toss around in tight quarters like trees and chutes.
“Stable in all conditions,” coos a member of The Sport Loft coterie. “Carves well for a big ski; holds edge very well.” After a season on the QST 106, I not only concur with this assessment, I can expand upon it. I was so confident in the QST 106’s capabilities that I took them to the MasterFit Boot Test, where they skied all manner of chopped-up powder, from the wind-hammered moonscape of the upper mountain at Bachelor, to the stash-filled glades that were on our regular route, they delivered the sort of even-tempered support that made them such a solid reference ski.