Ski of the Year category winners 2011-2012In addition to our overall Ski of the Year Winners, at Fall-Line we also like to highlight some outstanding skis in their class. See below for the skis we felt outperformed the rest of the line up in 2011/12...
Category winner: Piste
Rossignol Z76 Basalt
£600 (including bindings)
From the random wanderings of the Quiksilver-owned days, Rossignol is back to being a heritage-laden brand oozing excellent skis. Last year it picked up the Big Mountain award with the S7; this year it’s the other end of the scale with its punchy, focussed piste series of Zenith skis.
From the start, the aggressive styling leaves you in no doubt that these are meant to charge rather than meander. Stepping away from pure race graphics is a statement in itself, and hanging a high-spec construction underneath the topsheet to slam home the concept seems to be a good step.
There’s a lot of competition in the world of piste skis, because it’s what most people who go skiing use. To edge up to the top of this pile you either need to be smooth, engaging and strong (like last year’s winner, Head’s Titan) or poppy, grippy and snappy like a race-derived slalom ski – say Dynastar’s Course series.
This year we’ve gone for a ski that hits both. The naming of Rossi skis has now reached a microbiological level of complexity but fortunately all the Zeniths are excellent, so if you forget which precise model you’ll still win.
Check out the vital stats and leave a review of the Rossignol Z76 Basalt.
Category winner: Freestyle
Line Stepup
£300
My, what a difference a year and a few tweaks make. Line were bold bringing out maple laminate skis based on skate deck construction, but they were very specific and, frankly not as good as conventional skis. Believing that they were onto something, and knowing it would take a bit of thinking, within two years the Stepup has gone from being an exotic oddity to a gotta ride ski.
The inherent toughness of an all-wood ski makes sense in the world of jibbing, where you’re rattilng off obstacles and spending relatively little time on snow. Fears of skis absorbing water and delaminating seem to have been put to bed, but what’s raised the Stepup from a jibber to a slopestyle ski is the addition of some carbon layers between the wood. Adding torsional strength and increased pop rarely harms a ski, and coupling this with the natural dampening abilities of the wood has made a ski that made all the testers sit up. Sadly there wasn’t a step-up obstacle to see how it coped, but even in the underwhelming halfpipe it delivered effective edge hold before popping vigorous clear of the lip.
So we’ve got a cleverly-constructed, engaging and vibrant ski which works brilliantly in its chosen environment. That will do nicely: have a Fall-Line award, Line Stepup.
Check the vital stats and leave a review of the Line Stepup.
Category winner: Big Mountain
Line Sir Francis Bacon
£460
Here’s a category which is over-represented by some margin, certainly if last year’s snow was anything to go by in much of Europe. But when it’s patchy here, it dumps somewhere else which is why there’s always development and a good showing at the Ski Test. And when it does drop, boy do these skis come into their own.
The category can be sub-divided further to big mountain freestyle, hard charging and flattering powder planks, but we reckon a good powder ski should entertain throughout the mountain on a snowy day. What this has angled our award away from over the years are the single-minded chargers and towards the rockered, slightly softer skis which are spot on for monstrous tricks but also work incredibly well for most powder skiers.
Line’s Sir Francis Bacon, named after a famous Elizabethan philosopher and backcountry jibber, has been around for a while but with fairly constant tweaks. With the sidecut nibbled at to make it a bit more useful on harder snow, plus some work on the flex which would apparently reduce the sidecut’s new-found effectiveness (but doesn’t), for the 2011/12 season we now have one of the most effortless off-piste skis ever created.
The lift in soft snow is almost levitational, and the response and control through turns is complete. No-one managed to shake them loose or trip up without trying some very silly stuff, and we saw plenty of folk start lobbing themselves off lips and attempt other powdery antics, and survive.
It’s a ski that makes you want to have a ball, and since that’s what skiing’s about for Fall-Line, the Sir Francis Bacon deserves this award in spades.
Check the vital stats and leave a review of the Line Sir Francis Bacon
Category winner: Value
Head SBC 79
£340 (including binding)
Head make a funny old mix of products. Conservative, barking, innovative, Teutonic, smooth and original would be some words we’d throw in the company’s direction, but rarely do the Head skis we really like strike us as being particularly cheap. A nasty word, and one most manufacturers despise, but in this case we’re using it in the “Good grief, have they missed some numbers out?” context rather than the “I think your base has just fallen off, Doris” meaning of the word.
It’s always hard to understand exactly why some skis are cheaper than others. The word with the SBC is that it’s a model from previous seasons with a new topsheet. If that model happens to be the old Jon Olssen Pro, which we suspect it is, then it’s bound to be a blinding ski. As a twintip it’s relatively narrow under foot with its 79mm waist, but then a fairly stiff halfpipe-biased flex makes it a very credible all-mountain weapon. It was one of the most entertaining twins to ski on piste, gripping like a loon either way round, and the freestylers picked out rapid rotation and good pop in its favour. If you want to experience all that’s excellent about twintips and don’t expect to be chasing powder, you won’t go wrong with the remarkable Head SBC 79.
Category winner: All-Mountain
Dynastar Outland 80 Pro/XT
£435 (including binding)
This is the big-selling category. These are skis that any level of rider can use to make the most of the mounatin, and develop their skills at the same time. We’ve really bounced around over the years with widths and shapes in this bracket – K2’s Kung Fujas is still one of our all-time favourite All-Mountain skis because it’s so complete, but it is at one end of the spectrum, with its hefty width and significant rocker.
This year we’re going for a ski that simply makes it entertaining for folk who are at any level shy of an absolute expert, in which case might we recommend the Pro version costing £100 more which is stiffer and responds better to more powerful inputs. For this category, we’re sticking with the lower spec because they work so well.
Dynastar are experts at making skis that are fun to use. Their race-replica skis are whippy, strong and deliver a very exciting, engaging ride. Their top-end freeride models are super-powerful, world champoinship winning ultra stable chargers. You can sense both heritages in this new Outland series, distilled to a useable level and geared for mere mortals. We thought the on-piste grip and turn response was fantastic, yet the flex works so well off-piste too.
A brilliant progressive ski – that’s one which will take most levels of skier and bring them on, should ooze confidence, and that’s what the Dynastar Outland 80 XP has.
Category winner: Freeride
Völkl Gotma
£520 (including bindings)
We take each year’s awards in isolation, and it’s only once we’ve assembled them that a little navel gazing is indulged in to see what went before. In the Freeride category, the Volkl Gotama has been here before, quite a lot. It seems like it’s one of Fall-Line’s benchmark skis, clocking up two previous Freeride and one Overall Silver award in the past eight years.
Accuse us of a lack of imagination, but at least credit the effort that went into sifting through the contenders. Freeride is what Fall-Line lives for, so should the ski be a charger, like Dynastar’s ballistic new Pro Rider 105? Should it be wide underfoot yet incredible on-piste like Volkl’s own revised Mantra or Scott’s Crusade? Is thin the new fat, or piste the new powder? Those piste-derived freeriders like Rossignol’s Experience series show what can be done with a conventional ski gone wide.
In the end, it’s the cunning blend of flex, sidecut, rocker and sheer skiability that tips the vote the Gotama’s way. It’s the sheer confidence the ski delivers on all terrain that makes it a one-pair quiver for decent progressive through to expert skiers. Hardpack is dismissed and softer snow is shredded. Time aboard Gotamas is rewarded with a continual feedback loop of what these skis are capable of, and you push yourself to do more. That’s what freeriding is all about.
Posted by Online Editor - Sat, 01/10/2011 - 2:48pm
In addition to our overall Ski of the Year Winners, at Fall-Line we also like to highlight some outstanding skis in their class. See below for the skis we felt outperformed the rest of the line up in 2011/12...
Category winner: Piste
Rossignol Z76 Basalt
£600 (including bindings)
From the random wanderings of the Quiksilver-owned days, Rossignol is back to being a heritage-laden brand oozing excellent skis. Last year it picked up the Big Mountain award with the S7; this year it’s the other end of the scale with its punchy, focussed piste series of Zenith skis.
From the start, the aggressive styling leaves you in no doubt that these are meant to charge rather than meander. Stepping away from pure race graphics is a statement in itself, and hanging a high-spec construction underneath the topsheet to slam home the concept seems to be a good step.
There’s a lot of competition in the world of piste skis, because it’s what most people who go skiing use. To edge up to the top of this pile you either need to be smooth, engaging and strong (like last year’s winner, Head’s Titan) or poppy, grippy and snappy like a race-derived slalom ski – say Dynastar’s Course series.
This year we’ve gone for a ski that hits both. The naming of Rossi skis has now reached a microbiological level of complexity but fortunately all the Zeniths are excellent, so if you forget which precise model you’ll still win.
Check out the vital stats and leave a review of the Rossignol Z76 Basalt.
Category winner: Freestyle
Line Stepup
£300
My, what a difference a year and a few tweaks make. Line were bold bringing out maple laminate skis based on skate deck construction, but they were very specific and, frankly not as good as conventional skis. Believing that they were onto something, and knowing it would take a bit of thinking, within two years the Stepup has gone from being an exotic oddity to a gotta ride ski.
The inherent toughness of an all-wood ski makes sense in the world of jibbing, where you’re rattilng off obstacles and spending relatively little time on snow. Fears of skis absorbing water and delaminating seem to have been put to bed, but what’s raised the Stepup from a jibber to a slopestyle ski is the addition of some carbon layers between the wood. Adding torsional strength and increased pop rarely harms a ski, and coupling this with the natural dampening abilities of the wood has made a ski that made all the testers sit up. Sadly there wasn’t a step-up obstacle to see how it coped, but even in the underwhelming halfpipe it delivered effective edge hold before popping vigorous clear of the lip.
So we’ve got a cleverly-constructed, engaging and vibrant ski which works brilliantly in its chosen environment. That will do nicely: have a Fall-Line award, Line Stepup.
Check the vital stats and leave a review of the Line Stepup.
Category winner: Big Mountain
Line Sir Francis Bacon
£460
Here’s a category which is over-represented by some margin, certainly if last year’s snow was anything to go by in much of Europe. But when it’s patchy here, it dumps somewhere else which is why there’s always development and a good showing at the Ski Test. And when it does drop, boy do these skis come into their own.
The category can be sub-divided further to big mountain freestyle, hard charging and flattering powder planks, but we reckon a good powder ski should entertain throughout the mountain on a snowy day. What this has angled our award away from over the years are the single-minded chargers and towards the rockered, slightly softer skis which are spot on for monstrous tricks but also work incredibly well for most powder skiers.
Line’s Sir Francis Bacon, named after a famous Elizabethan philosopher and backcountry jibber, has been around for a while but with fairly constant tweaks. With the sidecut nibbled at to make it a bit more useful on harder snow, plus some work on the flex which would apparently reduce the sidecut’s new-found effectiveness (but doesn’t), for the 2011/12 season we now have one of the most effortless off-piste skis ever created.
The lift in soft snow is almost levitational, and the response and control through turns is complete. No-one managed to shake them loose or trip up without trying some very silly stuff, and we saw plenty of folk start lobbing themselves off lips and attempt other powdery antics, and survive.
It’s a ski that makes you want to have a ball, and since that’s what skiing’s about for Fall-Line, the Sir Francis Bacon deserves this award in spades.
Check the vital stats and leave a review of the Line Sir Francis Bacon
Category winner: Value
Head SBC 79
£340 (including binding)
Head make a funny old mix of products. Conservative, barking, innovative, Teutonic, smooth and original would be some words we’d throw in the company’s direction, but rarely do the Head skis we really like strike us as being particularly cheap. A nasty word, and one most manufacturers despise, but in this case we’re using it in the “Good grief, have they missed some numbers out?” context rather than the “I think your base has just fallen off, Doris” meaning of the word.
It’s always hard to understand exactly why some skis are cheaper than others. The word with the SBC is that it’s a model from previous seasons with a new topsheet. If that model happens to be the old Jon Olssen Pro, which we suspect it is, then it’s bound to be a blinding ski. As a twintip it’s relatively narrow under foot with its 79mm waist, but then a fairly stiff halfpipe-biased flex makes it a very credible all-mountain weapon. It was one of the most entertaining twins to ski on piste, gripping like a loon either way round, and the freestylers picked out rapid rotation and good pop in its favour. If you want to experience all that’s excellent about twintips and don’t expect to be chasing powder, you won’t go wrong with the remarkable Head SBC 79.
Category winner: All-Mountain
Dynastar Outland 80 Pro/XT
£435 (including binding)
This is the big-selling category. These are skis that any level of rider can use to make the most of the mounatin, and develop their skills at the same time. We’ve really bounced around over the years with widths and shapes in this bracket – K2’s Kung Fujas is still one of our all-time favourite All-Mountain skis because it’s so complete, but it is at one end of the spectrum, with its hefty width and significant rocker.
This year we’re going for a ski that simply makes it entertaining for folk who are at any level shy of an absolute expert, in which case might we recommend the Pro version costing £100 more which is stiffer and responds better to more powerful inputs. For this category, we’re sticking with the lower spec because they work so well.
Dynastar are experts at making skis that are fun to use. Their race-replica skis are whippy, strong and deliver a very exciting, engaging ride. Their top-end freeride models are super-powerful, world champoinship winning ultra stable chargers. You can sense both heritages in this new Outland series, distilled to a useable level and geared for mere mortals. We thought the on-piste grip and turn response was fantastic, yet the flex works so well off-piste too.
A brilliant progressive ski – that’s one which will take most levels of skier and bring them on, should ooze confidence, and that’s what the Dynastar Outland 80 XP has.
Category winner: Freeride
Völkl Gotma
£520 (including bindings)
We take each year’s awards in isolation, and it’s only once we’ve assembled them that a little navel gazing is indulged in to see what went before. In the Freeride category, the Volkl Gotama has been here before, quite a lot. It seems like it’s one of Fall-Line’s benchmark skis, clocking up two previous Freeride and one Overall Silver award in the past eight years.
Accuse us of a lack of imagination, but at least credit the effort that went into sifting through the contenders. Freeride is what Fall-Line lives for, so should the ski be a charger, like Dynastar’s ballistic new Pro Rider 105? Should it be wide underfoot yet incredible on-piste like Volkl’s own revised Mantra or Scott’s Crusade? Is thin the new fat, or piste the new powder? Those piste-derived freeriders like Rossignol’s Experience series show what can be done with a conventional ski gone wide.
In the end, it’s the cunning blend of flex, sidecut, rocker and sheer skiability that tips the vote the Gotama’s way. It’s the sheer confidence the ski delivers on all terrain that makes it a one-pair quiver for decent progressive through to expert skiers. Hardpack is dismissed and softer snow is shredded. Time aboard Gotamas is rewarded with a continual feedback loop of what these skis are capable of, and you push yourself to do more. That’s what freeriding is all about.