Flair 78
The Flair 78 combines several stalwart Völkl features into a new package made largely from recycled materials. If ecological awareness is high on your priority list, 100% recycled sidewalls and edges ought to earn at least your admiration, if not your ducats.
To win your heart as a skier, the Flair 78 devotes itself to a life of abstinence: no sloppy turning habits, no flinching in the face of hard snow and no whining about doing all the work. As the Flair 78’s pilot, all you have to do is tip it and smile.
Cochise
If you drop the reins and put the Cochise in charge, “no terrain can stand in its way,” as Eric from Footloose confirms. This is one ski that won’t back down in the face of adversity, no matter what form it takes, be it wind crust, corn that’s turned to porridge or simply whatever’s still left to plunder after 11:00 AM on a powder day.
If this sounds like the Cochise hasn’t changed much after a couple of make-overs to thin the core and add carbon to the ends of its Flip Core, well, it has changed and it hasn’t. There’s no question it’s become more user-friendly as far as its pilot is concerned, but it continues to want to dominate whatever off-road condition it confronts.
Cham 2.0 117
To cut it as a Power Powder model, a ski has to be stable at speed, not in the static society of homogenous groomers, but in the wild, ever-changing world that is crud. (If Heraclitus had been a freeskier, he might have said, “You can’t traverse the same crud field twice, bro.”) The Cham 2.0 117 is a certified crud stomper, with settings from “Smear” to “Slice.”