Yeah, same with me, for sure. Yikes!!!
To me, by comparison to the above on XC and WRT ST 172 (and for choices of what to buy), the Blossom Whiteout/AM77 is a cheater fall line sort of short to medium turn wonder - a cheater for doing body separation, still upper body, fall line easy carves for hours, among other things (in addition to being an all mountain, versatile, fall line ski for soft snow on and off piste, in uneven terrain, including crud bumps - carving all the way if one chooses). * Whew. *
Gee whiz, what a ski. A really specific set of "wow" abilities that no other ski I know of can match, pretty much.
I do think of getting a pair of those Stockli WRT ST 172s, though, unique in their own way. But so expensive. If the XC could match that, have otherworldly precision and carve performance in a way that is accessible to me also, then maybe the XC comes into play, for me also, at some point, potentially. (So many really good skis, so little time - and money!)
But then, I'm not likely to have figured this out for this pre-season sale!
Maybe that changes things some, though, for the future - the possible XC/WRT ST comparison. What happens in my guesstimates still once the narrower Blossom ski gets more race-like as with an XC (skier cross), is, I start to have to choose between it and other race-like options - say, GS skis for comparison; and to face the overlap crunch there recreationally. For me, it's been that a ski has to have some "wow" ability/factor that no other ski I have or could reasonably have, seems to possess.
To me it is very hard to beat, say, a woman's spec medium flex FIS GS Atomic G9 188/30 in this regard. (Or at the other end of race things, a Rossi FIS SL165.) So any XC would have to be a very special ski indeed to get much use, for my profile. (For me, this kind of unfair comparison results from choice, time and cost constraints, of necessity - what ski am I going to choose to go out with on a given day, and no sense having a really excellent but expensive and overlapping ski that I may not be able to use much.)
(The Blossoms make choosing them easier, since they still seem reasonably priced, relatively; and the pair I have are so good.)