Why pay more for metal reinforcement or extra waist width you don't want or need? The Bushwacker is a lot less ski to lug around than the show-stopping Bonafide, so it's more forgiving, but not to the point of boredom. The same harmony of sidecut, flex, and rocker that makes the other bulls in Blizzard's freeride collection so great shines through in the value-priced Bushwacker, but there's a quickness and liveliness that suits a light-touch, dynamic attack particularly well. And still it leads the category in Stability and Flotation. "Guess I'm a cheap date," said one particularly hard-to-please tester, "because this might be my favorite ski of the whole test."