The key to the Samba’s go-anywhere attitude lies in its Flip Core baseline that predisposes the forebody to ride over anything in front of it without disconnecting it from the rest of the ski. As soon as the Samba is laid over, the skier can depend on every centimeter of the ski supporting her. Secure enough on edge to carve all day, the Samba saves its best moves for soft snow, where it helps the uninitiated learn to mix smearing and steering into a lively downhill dance.
Most of the skis in this genre lean more to the off-trail side of the terrain ledger, but the Stöckli Stormrider 85 Motion is partial to hard packed powder. Skiers familiar with Stöckli’s history know that its roots are in racing, so much so that for several seasons some of their Stormriders skied more like obese Super G skis than freeride models.
But the Stormrider 85 Motion has trimmed down since that era and the current incarnation is, if anything, too flexy in the forebody for some of our crew who’ve essayed the Motion for years. But comparing the 2017 Motion to previous editions isn’t as useful to the current ski buyer as comparing it to the rest of today’s market and in that context, the Stormrider du jour comes across as a powerful carving machine.