Santa Ana 100

Last year Nordica changed the construction of the Santa Ana 100, and while it didn’t fiddle with its shape or baseline, the components of its laminated lay-up were altered in every respect. Its 2017 balsa core was beefed up with poplar and beech and sandwiched between two .4mm Titanal laminates. The Santa Ana metamorphosed from the original, mellowed-out surfer girl into hard-edged gal that won’t take any crap from crud. The great advantage of metal in what’s intended primarily as an off-trail ski is how it behaves in the heavy, harbor-chop crud that can deflect models without Titanal.

Sky 7 HD

As a member of Rossi’s legendary 7 series, the Sky 7 has received every upgrade, including Carbon Alloy Matrix and Air Tip 2.0, that have made its bigger brothers, the Soul 7 HD and Super 7 HD, perpetual benchmarks in their respective categories. Since its...

Enforcer 100

The Nordica Enforcer 100 has been an elite All-Mountain West ski since it materialized several seasons ago. It’s survived long enough to see a few offspring rise to parallel prominence in other genres: the Enforcer 93 is already a benchmark ski among the All-Mountain East clan, as is the women’s Santa Ana 93, and the Enforcer 110 is the crème de la crème of the Big Mountain brotherhood. As wonderful as it is to have successful children, it’s even better if the parent is still youthful enough to rock the fall line right alongside them. When it comes to demolishing a crud field, nothing beats the pater familias.

QST 99

Salomon gave the QST 99 a double shot of damping for 2019, adding transverse filaments of carbon and flax to the longitudinal strands already in place, along with a bottom layer of basalt. The new additions increase the ski’s torsional rigidity along its full...

QST Lumen 99

The Salomon QST series treats men and women equally, ergo the new QST Lumen 99 for women is cut from the same carbon and flax cloth as the unisex QST 99. For 2019, this entails an upgrade to C/FX3, a crosshatch grid comprised of tight bundles of carbon and flax...