Bent Chetler 100

https://www.atomic.com/en-us/shop/product/bent-100-aa6650.html#color=37703

1

These are FANTASTIC soft snow skis.

Welcome to closing weekend at Vail, where we are in the midst of a raging snowstorm after two weeks of unseasonably high temperatures. Colorado is not like Vermont. Where you eke out your last runs on narrow white ribbons while the landscape around you comes awake from the winter and is finally turning green. No, Vail closes with plenty of snow, they're just lacking CUSTOMERS!

People can't wait to get out on the hill in November and December when conditions are shaky, but when there's plenty of snow in the spring, they're contemplating golf and...

But this week has been much more crowded than the previous few. Because of the Mexicans. From Mexico. Vail caters to them. They're here for Easter break. And they're RICH!

Little kids wearing Bogner clothing. High class brand names everywhere. Sometimes you feel like an alien in your own town.

Not that it's really crowded. Is there ever truly a lift line? But like I said, it was empty and now that they've closed down two-thirds of the mountain...

Yes, they do that to save money.

Anyway, today I took out the Bent Chetlers. Wary of the conditions. Afraid they would be the legendary dust on crust. That's a term all dedicated skiers know and are afraid of. When it's rock solid underneath, with just a smattering of snow flakes on top. It's even worse in the spring, because the surface underneath has melted, refrozen and is not smooth and...

It wasn't that bad, I was pleasantly surprised. Not that you could not feel the crust underneath.

I was thinking of taking out the Peak 104s, because they hold like motherf*ckers. But none of my skis are as lively and playful as the Bent Chetler 100s, and they'd been utterly fantastic in the crud we'd had, so...

I donned them. And kept thinking about writing about them, and here we are.

I'd been planning to post a review all season, but I wanted to ski them in all conditions, I wanted to get a definitive take. But riding the lift today I felt if I wrote about skis...that would be tone-deaf in light of the political turmoil in our nation. But then I was riding Chair 3, and the flakes were coming down and Mother Nature didn't seem to care about the folly of men, so I said to myself what the f*ck, I'll put fingers to keyboard, because if I wait...I might never be inspired again.

2

So Chris Benchetler wanted to send me a pair of his skis. He's got his own model, the Bent Chetler, with Atomic. Chris used to be with K2, but Atomic gave him a lot of opportunity, and Chris can now live off the royalties alone.

What made the model was the 120. Which you really don't need inbounds, at a resort.

Okay, let me explain how this works. Skis have lengths and waists. The lengths are in centimeters and the widths are in millimeters.

Before the shaped ski revolution of the nineties and early two thousands, we all skied on narrow waisted boards, oftentimes in the sixtysomething range. But then snowboarding became all the rage. And innovative ski makers decided to learn a lesson from the upstarts, they started infusing skis with radical sidecuts.

Now skis always had sidecuts. And expert skiers could use these to their advantage. You laid the ski up on edge, and you carved a turn. Very few people could do this. But now with shaped skis, EVERYBODY can do it. There's a plethora of great skiers on the mountain. If you mastered the skills of yore you could complain, except that the shaped skis render such a better experience.

Presently there's a debate how wide you should go. Commentators want the public to go shorter, for more maneuverability and fewer injuries. Not that the public listens, they still want wide boards and...

If you go to Sun Valley, which gets very little snow (there's a ton of snowmaking), the runs are usually firm and everybody skis on narrow skis. Furthermore, that's what they sell in the shops.

In the old days, every shop had every model. Now, no shop has every brand and model. You might read about a ski but be unable to buy it.

And in Vail, it's nearly impossible to find a ski for sale or rent that's narrower than eightysomething at the waist. Because Vail is vast and broad and...

Vail didn't used to compete with Aspen. John Glenn implored Felice's parents to buy a condo here after burning out on the scene in Sun Valley, where every Hollywood celebrity went if they weren't in Aspen.

But Aspen is different from Sun Valley. Sun Valley is relatively quiet. Whereas...

Aspen is a scene. Hippies through the seventies, then the wealthy moved in and...

Aspen is a great town with great skiing, but it's inconvenient. There are four separate mountains and getting to them...

Vail is all of a piece. It's all connected.

And it's relatively flat. That's the beef amongst elite skiers, Willy Schaeffler, the legendary ski coach at DU, pooh-poohed the mountain because of its lack of steepness.

But it turns out that most people don't want steep slopes.

And Vail has the Back Bowls. They may call them bowls at a few other ski areas, but there's no comparison in the U.S. Whistler? Whistler has some great bowls. But otherwise, you have to go to Europe for skiing like this. Vast and wide open. Legendary.

And then they added Blue Sky Basin and sealed the deal.

Vail is close to Denver, you can come for the day, even though now the traffic is horrendous, whereas you wouldn't do this with Aspen, it's too far.

And Vail has turned into a megalopolis, an endless valley of development. And the original village is a copy of Zermatt, and there's an ersatz element.

But... Vail has a legendary bump run, Highline, which is never groomed. And if you want something steeper, you can go to Beaver Creek next door, but no one ever does. The locals ski Vail, they drive right by Beaver Creek for the sheer quantity of terrain, the greater quantity of snow and...

That's Vail.

3

The standard Vail ski is 100mm. Actually, somewhere between 94 and 100. Because at this width, you can ski all the terrain Vail has to offer. From groomers to deep powder. A ski of this width is not perfect for almost anything, except for a few inches of powder, but it's a great compromise, because when you go either narrower or wider that ski will be bad in the powder/crud or on the groomers respectively.

So when you read about the need to go to narrow skis... Maybe at your ski area, but not in Vail.

And the truth is dedicated skiers have a quiver of skis. Multiple pairs for multiple conditions. I know you can't fathom that but...

Why not have a dedicated powder ski. I've got my 116 K2s which are great.

And I've got another K2, the 108ti Mindbender which is a dream. It turns like a much narrower ski, but will plow through almost everything. I don't use it as a groomer ski, but it's just fine on groomers on days where the powder becomes skied out or I'm making a few runs with people afraid of...

Oh, despite all the hoopla about powder, the average skier is afraid of it.

But it gets worse. Unless you go helicopter skiing, if you get in line before the lift opens and rush you'll get one untracked run, if you're a student of the mountain and lucky, maybe two. And the powder is not always like in the movies. The snow can be heavy and...

The best powder in the country is in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons in Utah. Because of the low moisture content.

But at Alta and Snowbird the powder gets skied out nearly immediately. Vail is so vast you can always find untracked, or good crud, even days after a storm, even though you might have to go into the trees. Then again, despite Steamboat being famous for tree skiing, there are TONS of trees to ski in at Vail.

And in the middle of February, we got 50" of snow in a matter of days. At times it was so deep that it became overwhelming, I was on my 108s jus wishing I was on my 116s.

Equipment makes a difference, skis make a difference, then again I can't tell you how many avid skiers are terrible. Because they learned in the pre-shaped ski era and refuse to utilize the modern sidecut, or they never took lessons, I'm a big believer in lessons.

But the better you are, the more advantage you can take of equipment. And the boots! They're more comfortable than ever before. Not that they're always so comfortable.

But if you've got a great pair of boots with great response, which usually means a tight fit, you can take advantage of the skis and...

4

I purchased a new pair of boots this season, the new Lange RS130. This was the first time the boot was redesigned in years! And for the first time, it could be designed from the ground up, without needing to be able to be tweaked for the detuned RX model. Last year Lange introduced the Shadow, a true revolution, and if you're a good recreational skier, I'd check it out, not that every boot fits every foot, but the Shadow is legendary for being comfortable.

The new Lange RS130s replaced my old Lange RS130s, whose liners were wearing out. They were the best boots I ever had. But the new ones...

Let's just say I've wrestled with a few fit issues, but the performance is amazing, OFF THE CHARTS!

I've got two pairs of K2 Mindbenders, the only difference is the paint job. But the new ones turn so much better than the old ones. It didn't make any sense. But a couple of days ago I took the old ones out with the new boots and VOILA!, it's the boots!

But no one likes to admit that equipment makes such a difference. Mikaela Shiffrin goes through 80 pairs of skis a year but if you start talking about having multiple pairs the hoi polloi says it makes no difference, that it's about the skier.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Which is why I took out those old 99mm K2 Mindbenders the other day, the ones with the old paint job. You see the Bent Chetlers... When I skied them in the bumps, the forebody of the skis...just didn't come around, just didn't flex like I wanted them to. Was it me or the skis?

Turned out it was the skis. The Mindbenders didn't get thrown by the bumps, the forebody flexed. And now we finally get to the point.

5

Chris Benchetler wanted to send me a pair of his 110 Grateful Dead skis. Thanks Chris, fantastic, but I've already got a pair of 108s and 110s and how often do I go out on a ski this width anyway, I'd prefer it if you sent me your 100s.

And then there was the issue of length, because the Bent Chetlers have a turned up tail and a shorter running surface for the same listed length. My everyday skis tend to be 172s or so. But we decided the 179 Bent Chetlers would be best. Thank god, anything shorter... Yes, skis can be too short. As a matter of fact, many ski on skis that are not long enough. But those details are for another day.

And I got the skis and then the bindings and I took them out on a bright sunny day in February and...I HATED THEM!

I mean you start on a new pair of skis on the groomers, to get a feel, and I just couldn't get a feel for the Bent Chetlers. They just didn't carve like any other ski. I was tempted to go back to the ski valet and change them out, but I figured best to ski them in every condition to be sure.

And I made it back to Blue Sky Basin, which is so far that it closes just after two PM, so people can make it back to the base, but is a so-called "wilderness" experience. With more features like rocks and trees left in the landscape, and less grooming.

So I pointed the Bent Chetlers down In the Wuides, a broad usually windswept slope that narrows into a bump field and...

WHAT A REVELATION!

I could throw the Bent Chetlers through the bumps, through the crud, better than any other pair of skis I had.

And then I took them into truly terrible snow from Siberia into Mongolia Bowl, where no one in their right mind would go, where there was a combination of deep bumps and untracked and a surface that had sat in the sun too long and...I could throw the skis around with confidence.

But every day?

The Bent Chetlers were not for me.

6

But then it got hot. Almost a month ago. I've still got the blister on my lip as testimony. And looking for a bit of variety, I took out the Bent Chetlers. And in the spring crud? PHENOMENAL!

Okay, crud is cut-up powder. Spring crud? It's like a slurpee. But in places the slurpee can be inches deep.

The Bent Chetlers just plowed through this stuff. Furthermore, THEY WERE FUN!

Fun, playful.

At this point in time, the most popular brands of skis are Nordica and Blizzard. Their signature models, the Enforcers and the Anomalys, are like tanks. Stiff, two layers of metal. They're steady, they'll plow through anything. They're not quite dead, but they are not my idea of a good ski.

If you're happy on these models, more to you. Then again, you probably haven't skied on anything else. You just bought what was popular.

I like a livelier ski, with more pop.

As for the Bent Chetlers... They have no metal! Metal speaks to torsional rigidity, it's what allows your ski to hold on the hard snow. Which is one reason the Bent Chetlers are not so great on the hard snow.

But they're light... Not that lightness is everything, I'm actually against it, the best boots are heavy and I've found light skis to be too skittish. But the thing with the Bent Chetler 100s is...you can just throw them around, they bounce, they're FUN!

Yes, skiing is fun with any equipment, but with the Bent Chetlers you get this elation, this smile on your face, this happiness, that you will never ever get with the Enforcer or Anomaly. You feel the skis swing, you feel like you're dancing. You're cutting and slashing down the mountain with almost no effort. Feeling like you're the only person on the hill who is having this experience, that everybody else is missing out.

So today, I finally skied the Bent Chetlers in powder/crud. UNBELIEVABLE! They just plow through the stuff with no effort. Like I said, I've got a lot of skis, but nothing like this. They made this condition nearly effortless. And I kept thinking how I was going to tell you, and now I have, but with an unbelievably lengthy digressive intro.

7

The Bent Chetler 100 is really a soft snow ski. Unless you ski where it's soft all the time, it's best as a second pair of skis. Especially if you're on the east coast.

But now I realize I missed out. Because I can envision what the Bent Chetler 110 is like. I'm thinking about skiing down Forever in Sun Down Bowl (named such because Pepi Gramshammer skied it and said it went on FOREVER) in nearly two feet of powder on my K2 108s back in February, and now I know it would be so much easier on the Bent Chetlers.

Not that the Bent Chetlers are a secret. Some people say it's the best-selling ski available. (Then again, there are five models in the family.) Not that you see so many in Vail. But every once in a while, someone looks me in the eye and says "You're on Bent Chetlers." Because insiders, those with a quiver, those who study the game, they're hip to the ski. There's an aura, a magic to the Bent Chetlers.

But they're different from anything else.

I'm still a bit flummoxed by the somewhat stiff forebody. I guess it was designed this way for powder and crud, maybe this is evidence of no compromise. But the competition has a more even flex.

Not that the Bent Chetlers are stiff.

8

Okay. I've skied on the Bent Chetlers for about 20 days. But I haven't communicated with Chris about them. I don't want him to think I'm ungrateful. But I didn't want to weigh in until I had a total read on the skis. It took me a while to figure them out.

But skiing in the crud these past two weeks and the powder today...

I couldn't hold back. They're the best skis in these conditions I've ever been on!

But they're not made for every condition. Or should I say there are better skis for other conditions.

Which is why you must have multiple pairs, a quiver.

But people will say you're rich.

Like when I mentioned my Langes a month or so ago, I got an e-mail saying I was a turd, because everyone knows you buy your ski boots at a discount in the spring. Maybe amateurs... Because there's an issue of INVENTORY! I could barely get my RS130s in early December, they had to be trucked from another store.

Everybody's got an opinion.

And everybody's got preferences.

Don't ski, doesn't matter to me. Buy the usual logic, it's cold and expensive and you could get hurt.

But skiing has never been cheaper. And the experience has never been better, with the high-speed lifts and the shaped skis and...

You're missing out.

On the elation and the thrill.

I can talk about this forever, and I think I just did!


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