The Navigator 90 borrows the Enforcer tip radius, but substantially shortens the distance from the widest point in the shovel to the forward contact point. In other words, the Navigator is designed to stay more connected to the snow, improving its Frontside performance. Both models are cambered underfoot, but the Navigator uses a square tail that’s turned up only at the very end. This creates a more solid and responsive platform along the full length of the ski.
The Blizzard Black Pearl and Völkl Kenja have company at the top tier of women’s models, the new Santa Ana 93 from Nordica. The springboard that launched the Santa Ana 93 into this elite company is a new construction built around a poplar/beech/ balsa core with a center channel of foam. Sandwiching the new wood core are laminates of prepreg carbon, a significant weight savings over glass, and .4mm sheets of tip-to-tail Titanal, in essence re-investing the weight savings in a power account.
The Enforcer 100 remains one of the most powerful skis in the All-Mountain West category, a fall-line charging engine with a penchant for pulverizing crud. Of course it’s great in powder; what Recommended ski in this genre isn’t? Powder is never the problem. Battered, inconsistent crud, particularly when it’s as heavy as lava, is the problem. The Enforcer 100 tears through a corrugated crud field like it was an old cotton sheet.
The new core created for the Enforcer 110 (and Enforcer Pro) embodies several more clever ideas. The central core uses a relatively thin laminate of poplar, beech and balsa around a channel of foam that it sheaths in top and bottom sheets of .4mm Titanium. To compensate for the added weight of metal, the Enforcer 110 core replaces heavy glass layers with laminates of carbon fiber prepreg. The resulting structure weighs no more than the Patron, the model the Enforcer 110 replaces in the Nordica line, despite sporting two sheets of Ti the Patron lacked. Quite the coup.
The buzz at Nordica is all about the Enforcer series, off-trail wonders that are reviewed elsewhere in these pages. The clamor over the Enforcers has shifted attention away from what has been a Nordica wheelhouse, its Frontside carvers. That’s a pity, because Nordica continues to make some of the finest carving tools on the hill. The GT 84 Ti’s most lovable trait is how natural it feels, as though it was custom made for you. At a moderate edge angle it produces a moderate, medium-radius turn. The daily activity this rhythm most closely resembles is walking. Right. Left. Right. Left. You get the idea. It feels that simple.