Stöckli Ski Test, Meiringen/Hasilberg 6th March 2005
6th March 2005
I’ve decided to get some Stöckli skis, I’ve tried various models before and been really impressed with the production quality.
The Laser SC is the ski I’ve decided to get having skied it earlier this week. It’s a race carve ski and what I love about it is the phenomenal grip it has and the stability at speed. I’d previously skied on the 168 version and really enjoyed it; had I reached a Stöckli store before they closed yesterday I would have bought some already. As there was a chance to try them again it seemed worthwhile so I started off with the SC at 178cm. I found this skied well, particularly in powder but on hard pack there was a slight loss of precision compared to the 168cm version. The 168cm version has stats of 107-63-90 and turn radius of 16.6m.
Just to be sure I took some 168’s again and found them just as good as I had previously.
I’m actually really happy with my Zags as a freeride ski, which at 179cm is 134-84-113 and gives a turn radius of 13.5m but I hear good reports about the StormRider. I took the XL’s, the AT is a model lower and is composite core and I don’t ski composite cores personally. The vital statistics on the XL’s are 116-75-102 with a turn radius of 18m at 174cm.
There was some powder about and a ski called StormRider was about right for the conditions. What really struck me about the ski was how similar it was to the Lasers in terms of grip and precision. It’s a pretty stiff ski so it can be skied fairly quick on and off piste. On the piste the good grip makes it fairly easy to handle and it handles marginally better on ice than the Zag. On balance it’s not quite as good as the Zag as a freeride ski but if you wanted one ski for all conditions then the StormRider is probably a better bet purely due to the better on-piste handling. The Stöckli guy at the test was saying the XL is now pretty popular for touring as well which doesn’t surprise me at all.
I have to credit the Stöckli guy at the test I was talking with, he took a lot of time to talk about the skis and clearly knew the product range really well.
Anyone thinking of getting Stöckli skis needs to be really sure they’re going to a very, very good dealer though. As handmade skis each pair differs slightly particularly for the wood cores in terms of flex, as a result it’s reckoned any given pair will have three flexes available so you need to be sure what you get.
And the icing on the cake is that the Stöckli sale starts tomorrow 
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