Review: Rossignol Sender Free 118

Rossignol Sender Free 118 Specs

• Size skied: 186 cm
• Lengths available: 176cm, 186cm
• Sidecut: 146mm - 118mm - 141mm
• Radius: 25m (186cm)
• Profile: twin rocker
• Weight: 2500g (186cm)

Shape, Flex and Construction

Powder skis come in many shapes and sizes, but the Sender Free 118 draws heavily from Rossignol’s freestyle-forward Black Ops series. The ski is almost symmetrical (a rare sight these days, even in narrower park skis), quite heavy, and features a very long turn radius.Like the smaller Sender Free 110, the 118 features a twin-rocker construction, with long and low rocker in the tip and tail married to a more traditional tip/tail shape without much taper. 

Inside, the ski features nearly the same construction as the Sender Free 110 and 100, complete with the honeycomb construction in the tip (Rossignol calls this Air Tip), a poplar wood core, full sidewalls, and a stiff yet very poppy flex.

Mount point is pretty close to true center on this ski, and some testers found it to be too far forward, so consider mounting this on the recommended line or even slightly back (the blasphemy!) if you’re not spinning cliffs or windlips all day long.

On-Snow Performance

At 118mm underfoot, the Sender 118 was never going to be quick edge to edge. It’s still not a light ski either, so it isn’t the easiest to handle on groomers. However, our testers were very impressed by how well the ski tracked on edge regardless of conditions–firm, soft, or blower (who needs edges then, anyway?). It’s undoubtedly a big ski, but skied with the right technique, and plenty of power, it’s manageable in the resort. Of course, it’s a big day ski but it handles much more than just powder predictably and confidently.

In powder, the new construction of Rossignol’s 118mm option makes it much easier to ski than its predecessor. We often think of swing weight as something that only affects a ski in the air, but when a ski is really heavy, you can feel it when turning too. That swing weight effect is more or less gone for the new 118 thanks to less material in the tips and tails, making it much easier to ski on lower-angle slopes and in tight terrain like glades. It floats like a dream, and it’s still more of a fall line charger than a “surfy” ski, but it’s much improved for ease of use in soft conditions. For that, it does give up some of the crud-busting performance of the Sender Free 110, but it’s still one of the most capable skis we’ve tried in choppy snow.

Getting the ski into some more open terrain and some softer snow and chop, helps it feel much more settled. It turns and slashes well, but feels most solid blasting down the fall line through crud and chop at high speed, even with patches of crust underneath. 

“I felt really confident just pointing it down the fall line and skiing hard on it–it’s a tank that wants to run, and wants a strong skier on top of it who wants to point it downhill and ski fast. It also ate some weird compressions and hard bumps hiding under the snow very well,” says one tester.

Comparisons

The Sender Free 118 definitely feels like more of a “niche” ski than some of the other big pow skis we’ve tested, which could be more versatile with the range of conditions you often find on a typical resort pow day. 

Despite the narrower waist, this felt like a bigger ski than the similarly-sized Nordica Unleashed 120. That’s perhaps best explained by the longer effective edge and less tip/tail taper on the Rossignol. 

Somewhat surprisingly, the Unleashed 120 fares better across a wider variety of terrain, but the Rossignol wins on all-out charging when you want to ski like you’re in a TGR movie, especially if there’s tricks involved.

Another comparison can be made to the Blizzard Rustler 11. Again, the Blizzard is an infinitely more balanced ski, in that it can also be skied hard and charge, but just has a much larger and friendlier sweet spot, which ultimately results in more fun in more places around the mountain.

What type of skier is the Rossignol Sender Free 118 best for? 

The Sender Free 118 makes Rossignol’s widest option a lot more accessible without detracting from its top-level performance. It’s definitely still a niche tool, for someone who’s always charging hard somewhere that it also snows a ton. For most skiers, we’d recommend the smaller and more approachable Sender Free 110, but if you’re the right skier with legs of steel, these are skis that could make your day a whole lot better.