PSA: 2012-2013 Stockli Stormrider 95's on eBay

[VON]

Hey all,

Thought I'd share this info for anyone else who might be interested.

Picked up a new old stock pair of Stockli Stormrider 95's from bigskisale.com's eBay sale. Nice guy to deal with. He's out in Salt Lake. I think he has a couple pairs left.

The catch: only available in 192cm! 24.8m turning radius.

I picked up a pair because it was such a good deal and I was curious.

Now that they've arrived, I figured I'd share some observations"

1. Length - these are long. Before Stockli started adding rocker to their skis. I'm 6'4" 185 lbs athletic skier and spent half of last season on the 187 bonafides. Never felt the need for any more length, ever. Now that these have arrived, I realize I miiiight have jumped the gun. They have a good amount of camber and no rocker. A good deal more running length than the bones, that's for sure.

2. Flex - the older stormriders have a rep for being super burly skis. So I thought stiff flex plus this length might make these a handful. To my surprise, the flex is pretty moderate. I would say medium-stiff, and pretty consistent throughout the ski. A nice medium+ (maybe 7 or 8 out of 10) flex in the forebody is nice. I have noticed that some of the newer stormriders are quite a bit stiffer in the tail than they are up front, which isn't very conducive to how I like to ski. Just my opinion/style though...

3. Construction - very solid. Big sidewalls on these

4. Weight - heavy!

This will be interesting!

 

[KKitchen]

I just set up a pair of these for a customer - wax and bindings (Griffons). Curious how they ski. And yeah they're big and heavy, but the guy we set 'em up for is 6'5" and a strong dude on boards, so I have a feeling he's gonna have a ball on 'em.

 

[VON]

I just set up a pair of these for a customer - wax and bindings (Griffons). Curious how they ski. And yeah they're big and heavy, but the guy we set 'em up for is 6'5" and a strong dude on boards, so I have a feeling he's gonna have a ball on 'em.

They're pretty much my go-to skis for mixed/variable conditions.

The flex is actually very manageable and I'd say the front third of the ski might even veer on soft-ish for some people. That being said, I haven't found a speed limit on these. They are very stiff underfoot and the tails are stiff as well.

My one beef with them is probably the sidecut. Personal preference, I know, but I feel that 24.8m is a bit long for a ski that's only 95mm wide. I'd prefer something closer to the 22m range. That said, the combination of long radius and soft-ish tips made this ski surprisingly good in powder and very predictable in crud, which I like. However, when skiing groomers, I would have prefered a slightly turny-er ski in hard snow conditions. This ski really wants to go fast and straight, and there have occasionally been instances where I have had to briefly hit the brakes in sections where I would normally and preferably have done shorter radius (but high speed) carves on slightly more frontside-oriented skis in this general category (this year's Blizzard Bonafide, or the Enforcer 93, for example). All-in-all, this hasn't been a big issue for me as I'm usually skiing big mountains, but it's worth noting for anyone planning to use this as a quiver of one.

Anyway, this review is a bit moot. I'm not sure there's many pairs of these floating around anymore and the design is quite a bit different than current version of the SR95. The new version has shorted the radius (which I like) but added a good deal more rocker (don't like) and softened the flex (don't like).