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Conditions: soft groomers, piles of loose “sugar”/granular snow, small/medium table to jump (with sketchy landing)

Resort: just another of our little local hills (with decent-enough pitch to get a couple of turns in…enough for some ski test observations)

Reviewer refer to the beginning of Salomon 1080 CR Lab ski review for info

Atomic Bent Chetler – Chris Benchetler’s new rockered wood core pro model

This ski has a funky shape: measurements of 142mm-123mm-134mm with some camber and sidecut in the middle of the ski with rockered and somehow tapered tips and tails (but the taper isn’t as huge as in Armada JJ).

The graphics are typical “new school” – loud and complicated. I didn’t mind as the ski was so fun to test but many older guys seem to get slightly distracted by the looks of the Bent Chetler. But that is a matter of taste anyway…

According to www.backcountry.com Atomic’s Jordan Judd says the following about the ski:

“Chris wanted the float and flex of the Thug in the backcountry, plus the pop and edge hold of the Punx, combined in one ski.” So, starting at the tip, the Bent Chetler has an early rise, reverse-sidecut profile, widening to a floaty 142mm before starting a slightly directional (8mm front/rear) conventional sidecut and camber underfoot. The same thing happens behind the binding, where the ski has a rockered, close-but-not-quite-true-twin tail. Atomic calls it “Pop Rocker,” and it gives Chris both the reverse-camber float and the hard-snow pop he was seeking. Also new is the “Step-Down” stacked sidewall which brings the durability and power transmission of vertical ABS underfoot, a half-cap in the transition areas for weight reduction and chip resistance, and thin vertical sidewalls in the tip and tail for smooth pop and crud-punching power.

Well, let’s move on to the skiing part…

Atomic Bent Chetler is one playful ski – tons of fun, even on a soft groomed slope

Bent Chetler has already gained some good reviews. As an Atomic’s attempt at new “hybrid” sidecut/camber ski, it has been called e.g. “the Armada JJ on steroids”. I kind of hate to admit it, but that description might be true (I just bought a pair of JJ’s by the way – that was a score for sure but it is pretty annoying to find a potentially even better ski just after the purchase). At the test site, there was one guy who said the very same too. But I don’t know how much the guy had skied the JJ’s though. Hard-pack testing probably don’t give the right results in this case?

Anyway, I remember having pretty similar feelings when I tested the original Salomon Pocket Rockets in Lapland back in 2001. “Fat” but fun and agile, a ski that makes you more playful than usual – trying new things and just goofing around. The Bent Chetlers felt good right after the first turn and were very easy to ski too.

Here is few observations from different types of skiing:

Short turns: bouncy and full of energy.This really suprised me and I loved doing old-school mogul type of short turns with these skis. Short turns launched from little jumps and rollers were tons of fun, “pop rocker” is the right term for sure, you feel like you get more launch than you should from tiny slope features. As an old mogul skier I feel strange to state that short turns on small hill can be fun on a 123mm waisted ski!

Long turns: Very different feel from short turns. The sidecut is obviously much longer than e.g on the Armada JJ or Rossignol S7. Due to the width of the ski, it takes a while to engage the edges to the real carve. But once on the edge you could do GS turns just fine. But I’d say the feeling wasn’t as “energetic” as in short turns. The mid section with the sidecut is stiff enough to hold an edge (maybe if you are a really big guy these would feel a tad soft skis though).

Jumps: There was only one middle sized table top jump. However, I really dug jumping with the Bent Chetlers. Somehow I felt like I was able to jump in a more relaxed fashion on these things than on the “traditional” camber skis. Because the tail/tip doesn’t hook at all on landings you don’t have to worry about the landing – this feeling made me feel better in the air too (more compact and more relaxed). The landing off the jump was quite sketchy, a very abrupt bumb-rut-bumb. I was not planning to land switch on that jump at all but then tried one 180 on the Bent Chetlers…and again no problems. I didn’t try any switch take-offs (except off little rollers)  but I guess due to rocker they would be a blast  (fakie a.k.a backwards skiing was very easy on these too). Also, I think that with a few days of practice even an old-school guy like me would learn to “butter” the spins from the take-off with these beauties!

Goofing around, fakie riding, little silly 180’s etc.:  This kind of ski makes even little-hill skiing much more fun. Sure you can have moguls, pipes, rails, gates whatever but with Bent Chetlers I felt like little features I wouldn’t even notice with some other planks started to make some sense. Little 180’s of bumbs, “ral slides” on slope banks (yes, you can really slide sideways while still having lots of forward momentum; a pretty cool feeling), backward turns etc.This kind of stuff probably gets old after a while – but still I say that this experience reminded me the good old days of snowboarding in the 1990’s when the first “jib revolution” came around.

Other observations: I only get to ski a very small amount of soft snow but obviously Bent Chetlers would offer excellent soft-snow performance. Small patches/piles of soft snow felt like “miniature stashes”, pretty amazing, considering that with the other skis you didn’t get that feeling at all.  I guess the rocker makes 5cm (about 2 inches) of snow to feel like 10cm (4 inches), 10cm like 25cm etc. The binding mounting point was quite centered but when skiing it didn’t felt that way (here is one difference to the Armada JJ’s that I am a bit concerned about). And actually I felt that Bent Chetlers would reward an aggressive, forward stance. It seems like the amount of rocker/camber, sidecut/taper and the flex of the ski is very thoughtfully engineered.

Well, a group of friends just came from Japan and they kept praising the fat rocker skis, and especially in “tricky”snow conditions (the guys hadn’t had the best luck and got some slush, crud and heavy snow while  in Japan). And after trying a few offerings myself I am beginning to be “a believer” too. To me it seems like rockered skis offer the best of many different worlds: they ski short on hard snow (think race skis and carvers), long on soft snow where you need all the float, make spins and little jibs much easier, offer tons of “pop” and generally give a healthy dose of playful skiing even to the old school guys. A friend of mine compared rockered skiing to surf/skate long boards…feeling vs. performance perhaps? I think the racer guys tonight probably didn’t quite understand my sideways slides on the banks of the slope but I am pretty sure I was grinning more than any racer on the hill! (Btw, I don’t have anything against racing).

I tested some other Atomic tonight too. Reviews coming soon: Atomic Atlas, Atomic Snoop Daddy , Atomic Patent and Atomic Coax.