Atomic Maverick 88 TI review

I bought these skis to act as a good all-round ski that I could us while skiing and teaching in Australia and they were brilliant.

For a ski that is quite light and not particularly stiff, I found I could get a decent amount of performance out of them, and I could certainly trust them to hold an edge through medium and long turns. Being on the lighter side also made them nice and agile when performing short turns, and again, they had enough performance that you could push them to the limit even on steeper terrain.

The 88Tis are 87mm underfoot and are definitely not designed for the deepest of powder days, but they were just light and flexi enough to give you the float you needed to deal with the vast majority of ‘in resort’ ‘off piste’ skiing you will come across. They also dealt really well with tight tree runs, moguls, and all sorts of ‘variables’ I came across.

The 88Tis, being the narrowest in the Maverick range, are geared more towards ‘on piste’ skiing with the ability to handle ungroomed terrain when needed. For a ski that’s not designed to do any one thing perfectly, but rather to do all things well enough, I found this to be by far one of the better all mountain skis I have tried.

The only issue I had with them, and ultimately the reason I sold them, was that the top-sheet did not hold up well enough to a teaching environment, the wrap around decal over the edges began to peel immediately after kids started skiing over them. This is, however, a pretty unique issue to being a ski instructor and I’m sure that with just general use the top-sheet would last a lot longer.

Overall, they were a really good ski, and I had a lot of fun on them; they’re not a race ski, they’re not a powder ski, but if you only want to buy one ski and do everything on it, they are a great option.