Volkl

Mantra Ski

When last year's version of the Mantra emerged from Volkl's top-secret ski lab with a powder-friendly full rocker profile and the same hard-charging titanium backbone as its predecessors, penny-scraping ski bums everywhere swooned, supplies dried up, and everyone cried for more. Well, Volkl heard your cries and brought them back for another winter of pow-slashing, crud-busting, groomer-bashing fun.

If you're into powder (is that even a question?) two words should stand out from the first paragraph: Full. Rocker. While the Mantra of yore could be overly aggressive in soft snow and tight trees, the full rocker profile combines with a tapered shape to ease things up, making it easier to throw your skis sideways, scrub speed, and have more fun when things get soft and you need to be light on your feet, but you'll be able to vary your turn shapes and open things up when you feel the need for speed and quickly shut them down when things get techy.

With all this talk of powder performance, don't start to feel like you're sacrificing hardpack performance. Even though its waist is two millimeters wider than previous iterations, the Mantra uses Volkl's burly, aggressive Power Construction, with a torsion box for stiffness, vertical sidewalls for durability, and a titanium laminate to keep you charging hard, because, after all, it's still a Mantra. There's ash underfoot for power and top-shelf binding retention, with poplar in the tip and tail for a more lively, playful feel. If you find something it can't handle, you're probably trying to use it as a boat, or a machete, or a pair of pants; keep it pointing downhill on the snow, and you'll see why it's such a legend.