Last season, no new ski model made as significant an improvement in its performance range as Blizzard’s Sheeva 9. A longtime member of the Blizzard Freeride collection, the Sheeva 9 – along with its men’s counterpart, the Rustler 9 – went through a significant re-design last year, boosting its abilities in any terrain it’s likely to encounter during its lifetime. In Realskiers’ terminology, it embellished its Power properties while remaining one of the most accessible, easy-to-steer models in the Women’s All-Mountain West genre.
Driving up the Sheeva 9’s fab Finesse scores were two principal drivers: the adoption of Blizzard’s TrueBlend core concept, and a palpable increase in overall width dimensions. TrueBlend is a precise allocation of sturdy beech stringers interspersed with lighter weight poplar in the mid-section and a dose of lighter-still Paulownia at the tip and tail. TrueBlend creates a perfectly balanced flex adapted for each length offered, so the 150cm has the same properties as the 174cm. This adaptation is particularly valuable for the Finesse skier who isn’t used to loading a ski.
The increase in waist width (from 92mm to 96mm) gives the Sheeva 9 a substantial boost in surface area, inherently improving both its flotation in new snow and ease of steering in chopped-up terrain. Naturally, this alteration means the Sheeva 9 shifts from a carve arc into a drifted turn with relish, another trait that assists the Finesse skier.
Head’s Kore series provides a perfect example of why a great off-trail ski and an ideal women’s ski share the same design criteria. In 21/22, the changes made to the unisex Kore collection were ipso facto applied to its women’s iterations. The same alterations that make the latest Kore 99 a better all-terrain ski also make the Kore 97 W a better women’s ski.
The most visible change was to the topsheet, which is now smoothly beveled so the ski slips sideways virtually without resistance, a big help when the snow is deep. A top coating of urethane was added in 2023, to help protect its fleece top. Inside, the Kore’s core was modified by eliminating Koroyd honeycomb and replacing it with more of its Karuba-poplar wood core. This delivers a subtle change in snow feel and feedback that makes the ride feel smoother and more predictable. The only thing the skier notices about the lightweight design is that it takes less effort to steer; there’s no sense of it being skittish or easily knocked off course just because it’s light.
As mentioned in the introduction to these reviews, we don’t usually recommend that a recreational woman use an All-Mountain West model as her everyday ride. But the Kore 97 W is so well balanced between its Power and Finesse properties and so confident in all conditions that it’s an exception to this rule.
For several seasons, Fischer subdivided its Ranger family of off-trail models into two distinct clans, indicated by their suffixes: Ti, for those with metal in the mix, and FR, for those without. Among Fischer aficionados, the softer and surfier Ranger FR models had a more distinct, looser character that distinguished them from the large cadre of all-mountain skis with metal in them.
Two years ago, Fischer debuted an entirely new Ranger series, ushered from the drawing board to the ski shop wall by none other than Ski HOF member Mike Hattrup. As one might expect from a mash-up of the old FR and Ti branches of the family, some of each genome is entwined in new models like the Ranger 96, which is available in two alternative cosmetics, one of which is a slightly more fem version with a bright yellow topskin. The interchangeability of its men’s and women’s versions inspired Fischer to offer the yellow Ranger 96 in all of its men’s sizes (up to a 187cm!) as well a couple of shorter lengths for lighter ladies.
Like the Ti’s of yesteryear, there’s metal in the new Rangers, just not as much as before. The Titanal is confined to the area underfoot, so there’s not enough of it to suppress the loose extremities that appealed to FR fans. Because the metal is mostly underfoot, the tip and tail feel lighter, easier to pivot sideways and generally more genial than a ski with tip-to-tail Ti laminates.
Two winters ago, I was able to ski all the new Stances on several occasions, from a foot of fresh to manicured corduroy. The more I skied them, the more I was led to a conclusion that, at first, I didn’t quite believe: they all ski remarkably alike.
That may sound like a particularly unremarkable observation: if they’re all built the same way, why shouldn’t they ski alike? Fair enough, but it’s rarely the case that all members of a product family ski identically, and in the case of the new Stances, they don’t just ski kinda like their siblings: any two adjacent widths are all but indistinguishable on the snow, particularly in the off-trail conditions they were made for.
The obvious implication of this interchangeability is that the middle-of-the-range, All-Mountain West Stance 96 not only exhibits the same quickness to the edge as the All-Mountain East Stance 90 displays on a groomer, it also mimics the Big Mountain Stance 102’s Finesse properties in broken powder. That’s a great thumbnail description of what one hopes to find in any All-Mountain West model.
Every tester account makes some reference to how easy the Stance 96 is to guide into a smooth, balanced turn that it exits as gracefully as it enters. Like most of the double-rockered skis in its genre, the Stance 96 uses a tapered tip that isn’t going to connect to the tippy-top of a carved turn, but once one accepts that the shovel is just there as a terrain buffer, the skier can focus on how well it holds from the forebody back to the end of its square tail.
Skiers who want to smash through crud at max velocity have plenty of other options; the Stance 96 is more for the technician than the daredevil. Its defining trait is its predictability, moving confidently from turn to turn whether the snow surface is perfectly manicured or a hot mess that’s never seen a grooming machine.
Völkl has built an enviable reputation for its high-performance women’s skis, despite the fact that many of its most revered models – the Aura, Kiku and Kenja, for example – weren’t really women-specific models, but unisex skis in short sizes. The Secret 96 falls squarely in this tradition, for it faithfully mimics the construction of the new men’s M7 Mantra.
What makes the M7/Secret 96 design so remarkable is how its various features work together to create a ginormous performance envelope. One of its foundational elements is Tailored Titanal Frame, that breaks the usual topsheet of Titanal into three separate parts: two long-armed horseshoes wrap around the tip and tail, and a thinner, disconnected plate rides in the center. Just below this Titanal triad is a long slab of fiberglass, a coiled spring just waiting to be energized by compression. The fusion of the metal and fiberglass elements is what gives the Secret 96 its peppy rebound, a trait not often found in wide, all-terrain skis.
In the same iconoclastic vein, the two new features that elevate the performance ceiling of the 2025 Secret 96 – 4 Radius Drive and Tailored Carbon Tips – focus on sharpening the short-radius aptitude of the very tip of the ski, where every other ski that calls itself “all-mountain” is rockered entirely out of contact. The new features are meant to enhance the Secret’s ability to cut a clean, sharp corner into a short-radius arc, a level of steering accuracy that no other ski in the genre can match.
