Dynastar M-Tour 99 F-Team Open Review

Dynastar's M-Tour 99 F Team is the latest iteration in a line of this French company's all-around, all-conditions ski touring stick. We greatly enjoyed its neutral performance across a wide range of conditions. It inspired such confidence that our lead test and accomplished expedition ski guide Jed Porter chose to use it on a standard-setting guided expedition on Denali during our test period. Much of what we report is based on his experience on that significant and serious trip.

Performance Comparison

Weight

The Dynastar M-Tour 99, as tested in size 178cm, weighs 1366 grams per ski. That's 2731 grams or 6 lbs for the pair. This "weight point" is what we have long concluded is the sweet spot for all-around, self-propelled backcountry skiing. Many of our favorite skis in the past 10 years have weighed between 1200 and 1400 grams.

You can go heavier and get slightly better downhill ski performance, but efficiency suffers on the way uphill. Any lighter than 1200-1300 grams, and the downhill ski performance suffers with every lost gram. It is no coincidence that our favorite tested skis are in this weight range. The Dynastar strikes a great balance. You could go lighter, but it wouldn't be worth it for most skiers.

Firm Snow

Our team found the Dynastar M-Tour 99 F Team to be "good enough" in hard, icy snow. In friendlier firm snow (corn conditions, for one), they are a dream. Where the snow got truly icy (like we found, for instance, high on Denali in historically dry and firm conditions), we clearly survived on the M Tour 99 but also found ourselves wishing for greater edge hold. It is hard to attribute edge hold to any particular design or materials attribute, but we got enough mileage to be confident in our conclusion. Other available products in this weight class will grab better on icy snow. Our test experience included descending directly from the Denali summit on the hardest of wind-blown snow and, lower down, skiing a few inches of snow over blue ice.

Powder

We skied a little bit of really deep snow and tons of shallower, fast-n-fresh stuff with the Dynastar M-Tour 99 F Team. In all our experiences with powder snow, the Dynastar 99 served us well. The light construction and relatively narrow profile (narrow, that is, for soft snow) doesn't blast powder like bigger products will, but the light form factor allows for greater energy savings on the way up for good to great performance on the way down in powder.

Crud/Poor Snow

The poor snow performance of this Dynastar M- Tour is especially good for the weight. The centered, dampened flex profile seems to help with predictable edging and flotation in breakable crust and sloppy "mashed potatoes". More mass would help even further, but at the expense of efficiency. Poor snow performance, more than any other attribute of a backcountry ski, is a balancing act. One of the greatest determinants of poor snow performance, in our experience, is weight. More weight works better in poor snow. If we were to graph our anecdotal experience with poor snow performance against ski weight, that line would start to plateau around 1200 grams.

Stability at Speed

Rail 'em as you like, within reason. The familiar Dynastar dampening factor (other tested skis from this company have skied relatively damp — that is, not especially springy) comes to the M-Tour 99 and grants continuity to any particular high-speed skiing. With this ski, the speed limit will likely (or, more accurately, should) come from the consequences of crashing in the backcountry more than ski comfort at that speed. Other skis might inspire even more confidence, but nothing about that ski or confidence changes the fact that crashing at 40mph in the wilderness is a bad idea.

Should You Buy the Dynastar M-Tour 99 F Team?

Yes, we recommend this ski. The breadth of potential applications of this product is significant. Most will have one pair of skis for human-powered skiing, and these Dynastars (or any of our Editors' Choice or Best Buy winners) are perfectly suited for this "quiver of one" approach. Even if you can justify more than one pair of backcountry skis, the Dynastar M-Tour fits in your quiver. This is the ski you choose for the Haute Route, for an Alaskan expedition, for a month in Chile, or that fantastical "work from home" season in Chamonix.

What Other Backcountry Skis Should You Consider?

In this same sub-category of backcountry skis, your choices are great. If the all-around high performance of the Dynastar M-Tour 99 is appealing, you will also do well with the Black Crows Camox, Blizzard Zero G 105, K2 Wayback 106, Fischer Hannibal 96, or DPS Pagoda Tour 100. This list could go on and on. All around backcountry skis right now are very, very good, almost entirely across the board. You get to shop by brand loyalty, price, availability, and color.