Homeboy’s Skiing Blog

I reviewed few news skis from Völkl last spring. This is the second post of the four part review series. The first one was about Völkl Katana (183 cm.). In my future posts of this series I will discuss about two other skis as well, namely Gotama and Tigershark 10FT Power Switch. The review was done on last spring in northern Finland as soon as these skis were available. Check out the review conditions and skier details from the first post of this series.

177cm Mantra

These were probably a bit small for me…or so I thought at first. I normally ski 06/07 190cm Gotamas and/or 189cm older (green) Seth Pistols, and some 180cm park skis.

The dimensions of the Mantras are a very versatile 133-96-116mm. In the slopes, I was really surprised how well the 177cm Mantra behaved. I’d say predictable and stable but still somehow unforgiving. Both Mantra and Katana have a little bit softer flex and somehow “lazier” feel, whereas Gotama is very “snappy” but at the same time a bit more demanding.

My groomer technique needs some up-date, and I was actually getting some tips from the ski-instructor friend while testing these skis. We both laughed how I was much more comfortable on Mantras than on some real “carvers”, and managed to do much better two footed carves on these wonderful masterpieces of German ski engineering. Conditions probably played a role here: skinnier skis really started to “boot out” in the bottomless slush (yes, really weird conditions…you kind of had to surf the slush in a way just slightly resembling real pow skiing).

I’d say this is a real all around ski. I especially dig the fact the there’s some almost “pintail” design put into the ski: while the tip is as wide as in Gotama, the tail is much narrower. So even with a slightly narrower waist the ski let’s you plane as the tip goes up, and the tail goes down on the snow. Brilliant, don’t you think? Still there’s enough sidecut for quick carves on the harder stuff. The narrower tail also let’s you to finish the turn as you like, skidded or carved.

The only gripe with the 177cm length was that the tail felt really short (ok, let’s admit that a slight back seating is one of my normal bad ski habits). Seems like the standard binding mounting for these is pretty “traditional”, i.e. really far back on the ski, like it usually has been in the Völkl line-up. But I also think that on the 184 cm version, I wouldn’t have even noticed this. I also think that the longer length would rock in some longer turns, and I’d really like to test the 191cm model on some creamy windbuff or just on some groomed long gs-run…hmmmmm, can you say speed!

Overall impression: a very good and well thought ski. Also suprisingly forgiving for Völkl - this might even be considered downside for some people though. These skis are probably not the best ones for any particlular condition but I’d say that if you suck on these, you can’t blame the equipment…