Small-batch producers like Liberty have a tough row to hoe. Aside from zero name recognition, they have to either work with an established factory or try to start their own facility, both of which have their disadvantages. Their other two biggest problems are how to differentiate themselves from the pack and thereby generate a sense of mission when it’s highly unlikely they’ll have unique materials or processes, and how to make a consistent product when limited demand dictates they work in short production runs.
Liberty broke from the boutique brand pack with Vertical Metal Technology (VMT). As is often the case with new technologies, Liberty spent a few years trying to find the best formula for VMT’s deployment, settling last season on a three-struct configuration in its all-mountain evolv series. The vertical strips of alu are encased in bamboo stringers within a bamboo and poplar core that’s reinforced with carbon and glass. It’s a very rich and sophisticated construction that rises well above the norm among indie brands.
As executed in the evolv 100, VMT accentuates its carving traits, tipping its on-tail/off-trail ratio towards rocking groomers over ripping up crud. In a category in which most models can’t wait to smear, the evolv 100 prefers to carve, slicing long arcs (19m@179cm) that don’t deviate far from the fall line. To tighten your turns, apply a higher edge angle.
Over the past four seasons, our experiences with Liberty have illuminated a point we tend to brush over, namely the vital importance of base prep. All brands, big and small, struggle with ex-factory finish. To loosen up the evolv 100’s tight grip, consider using a grind like a thumbprint or chevron that will improve its willingness to drift and move laterally, a must in tight quarters off-trail.
Just last season, Head invigorated its Kore series by making a handful of product changes that palpably improved every Kore model’s performance. You’d think the Austrian brand would rest on its considerable laurels, but it elected to add a urethane topcoat – like frosting on the proverbial cake – to help protect the top and sides from nicks and scratches. Lo, and behold, the addition of an end-to-end dampening layer gave the new Kores a little extra cush to their ski/snow connection, which showed up in the guise of slightly improved scores for both Finesse and Power properties.
Underneath the new urethane topsheet the 2023 Kore 99 is the same ski, with the same behavior profile, that knocked our collective socks last year. The Kore 99, then and now, epitomizes what makes Head’s unique Kore construction so well adapted to irregular, off-trail conditions without compromising its capacity for holding on hard snow. The All-Mountain West category resides on the boundary line between hard-snow carvers and Big Mountain drifters. The Kore 99 is definitely from the latter camp of looser skis, but its thoughtful design never forgets that is has to meet a certain hard snow performance standard or Head won’t put its name on it.
One of the measures of a great ski is how it handles conditions for which it was not designed. The Kore 99 is built through-and-through to be an off-trail, loose-snow ski, yet it acquits itself on hardpack as if it were home sweet home. Loosen up the surface even a little bit and the Kore 99 comes alive.
Unlike some of its burlier bros in the All-Mountain West genre, the Kore 99 feels quick to the edge and reactive off it. “It didn’t ski like a short (180cm), fat ski,” writes Bobo’s Theron Lee. “It was very nimble yet very stable at speed and able to follow terrain quite well. The biggest surprise was the width: it did not feel like a 99mm width, it felt much narrower.”
For making high performance, all-terrain skiing accessible with less exertion, we again award the Kore 99 a Silver Skier Selection.
For the past several seasons, Fischer has subdivided its Ranger family of off-trail models into two distinct clans, indicated by their suffixes: Ti, for those with metal in the mix, and FR, for those without. Like the Ti’s of yesteryear, there’s metal in the new Rangers, just not as much as before. The metal is confined to the area underfoot, and while there are some changes in how the metal part is configured across the line, none possess enough Titanal to suppress the loose extremities that appealed to FR fans. Because the metal is mostly underfoot, the tip and tail feel lighter, easier to pivot sideways and generally more genial than a ski with tip-to-tail Ti laminates.
Given that its double-rockered baseline is biased towards soft snow that gives the tip and tail something to push against, the Ranger 96 is more at home off-trail than on. Skiers who possess a more upright, centered stance may share the reaction of Peter Glenn’s Mark Rafferty, who pondered the question, “How can a ski be both playful and hard charging? Magic, I guess. But the Ranger 96 has all the carve that the Ranger series has been great at for years with an easy-going feel.”
Experts who are accustomed to driving into the tip of a race-bred ski may not adopt such a sanguine attitude. Bobo’s top technician, Theron Lee, whose low stance has been lifted from the slalom course, found that “The tip didn’t have a whole lotta reaction to it. I couldn’t drive it into the turn, which began from the mid-body. Made more for off-piste skiing, it had plenty of tip rocker, so it floated pretty well in this kind of cruddy, spring snow.”
While T Lee is doubtless correct that the Ranger 96 has a forebody built for off-trail travel, there’s equally no faulting its edge grip and stability from the mid-body to the tail, that even a skier as talented and strong as Jim Schaffner appreciates. “A big improvement over the Ranger 102,” opines the Start Haus owner. “More predictable and higher stability. Still easy to drift and slarve, but with a much more consistent behavior on hard snow.”
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. The 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. Without 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.
The simplest way to characterize the new 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.
