Making lighter weight skis has been a Salomon specialty since it concocted the first commercially successful monocoque skis many moons ago. Now Salomon has made its best women’s powder ski ever, the QST Stella 106, that proudly sports “Full Sandwich Sidewalls 360o” or expressed in generic terms, a square sidewall, the very design feature that the monocoque cap obsoleted for several seasons.
Rossi’s Famous 10 doesn’t fiddle around. It has carving on its mind, and doesn’t care who knows it. Set it up to turn and it’s going to deliver; as fast as you can tip it side to side, it’s ready to etch miniature parentheses in the snow. Unlike All-Mountain skis, whose dreams consist of endless prairies of powder, the Famous 10 maintains a laser focus on its métier, applying high edge angles to hard snow and letting its nervous-twitch-quick reflexes whip it in and out of simulated slalom turns.
For 2018 Rossi gave the Temptation 88 the HD treatment, adding its Carbon Alloy Matrix – a weave of carbon, glass and basalt – to the ski, bringing it up to par with its unisex wingman, the Experience 88 HD. This means the new Temptation 88 HD has more bite on hard snow, more energy off the edge and more stability at speed than its earlier incarnation. As was the case with the Experience 88, the HD upgrade raised the performance range of the Temptation 88 by several notches.
If you take its integrated bindings out of the equation, the XDR 84 Ti would only weigh 1,620g at 170cm, which is not a lot for any ski and really featherweight for a Frontside model. That it still holds a solid edge on hard snow is testament to how well C/FX helps dampen vibration without the added heft of metal. One advantage of lighter weight is the ski automatically feels quicker, able to flip from one edge to the other on a whim.
Rossi’s Super 7 HD is one of those skis with nothing wrong with it that they keep on improving anyway. This time Rossi revamped its Air Tip so its surface is an extension of the same topsheet that covers the rest of the ski. The new Air Tip 2.0 is not only better integrated, it’s also thinner, which seems to help it roll to the edge with the willingness of a svelter ski. On edge at the top of the turn, the attitude of the Super 7 HD is all business, but at the bottom it throws a party, releasing the energy coiled in its fiberglass and carbon core.