Blizzard’s Cochise is building its own big mountain resume with superior turn initation, easy to access power, and a lively swingweight. Stability and carving also garnered high scores, with its only weakness being powder and soft snow conditions, where heavier snow seemed to slow its reaction time, resulting (like many of the skis in this test) in a giant slalom to longer turn shape.

A carving style big terrain ski, the Cochise is built on the dreams of East Coast skiers imagining their perfect day in the Rockies, with 5 to 20 inches on top of storm frozen hardpack. It really does feel like a race ski chassis designed for big mountain performance, with Blizzard’s soon to be legendary flipcore rocker for float. Big kudos to Blizzard for building a ski specfically for the real big mountain conditions most of us get. Because of the rocker, you may want to size up a length.