Last spring I was lucky to review some this season’s Völkl skis. I really liked all the skis in the test (except some reservation for the Tigershark model) and thus I was planning a similar test for this spring too. But it looks bad at the moment, time is running out (too much other dutys in life!) and it seems like I can’t organise a similar testing session anymore for this season – we have to wait until the autumn and early winter. I promise that we work our asses off to get some quality gear tests to the site next winter.

Luckily the Internet is full of useful information these days (if you know what you are looking for!). Our russian neigbours have made great overview of the whole Völkl 08/09 line-up. You can find the original version here - great if you know russian… However, someone at Epicski posted a version translated by the Google for the rest of us (= english speaking/reading web ski community, which I guess consists of a quite large amount of people these days?)

The original translation is so-so, and partly hard to understand (read here, if you are interested – at least the photos and figures are nice). I’ll try to do my best to pick up the important facts from text, combined with the information I’ve searched from other sources (mostly TGR and Epic sites)

V-ski

For the coming season the Völkl’s whole freeskiing line, called V-ski, is divided into three groups, rather than two as before (freestyle and freeride). For 2008/2009 there is three subcategories: freeride, backcountry freestyle (tricks off natural terrain and on the soft snow) and “pure” freestyle (park skiing, urban rails, half pipe, “jibbing”). The lines include the following skis:

Freestyle: four adult models, Bridge, Wall, Ledge, Pearl and 2 juniors: Bridge Jr. Mini Pearl

Backcountry Freestyle: 3 Models, Chop Stick, Gotama, Cosmo (women)

Freeride: Five adults models,  Kuro, Katana, Mantra, Kiku (women), Aura (women) and 1 for juniors – Mantra Jr

Freeride line

On the freeride line Katana and Mantra stay almost unchanged (see also my 07/08 review: Katana, Mantra). Gotama is said to be again just  a tad stiffer and gets vertical sidewall instead of angled. This is said to add some durability and there is also some speculation that the power transfer to the edges is slightly more efficient with that construction (believe who want to believe…)

Kuro is something that got my attention from the first time I heard of it. See what I wrote eariler this winter, in the general 2008-2009 new ski/innovation article, here. Kuro was one of the skis I was most interested about (along the new Armada JP vs. Julien, which was my clear favorite of the bunch!).

The russian guys really seemed to dig that ski.  Read the (well) translated review from this thread. I like the personal tone on that review btw. – gives you some more perspective!

All in all seems like the freeride line has three well thought and tested, proven designs and one new (very strong) contender. If the Kuro works as well as the first tests let us believe, I think it must be one of the real hits for the upcoming years (think about the original Gotama as a “benchmark” case!).

I’ll continue this overview with a part II post soon – concentrating more on the offers in the freestyle lines. Some really interesting stuff on that side too, even for someone who mostly tends to stay on the solid ground while skiing.