When Nordica introduced the original Enforcer five years ago, it already had a 100mm-underfoot model in its line, the NRGy100, and the more acutely rockered Enforcer could have been misconstrued as redundant. Yet the Enforcer immediately earned a name for itself as a new breed of all-terrain ski that disguised a fully cambered baseline – and all the power it entails – between rockered extremities. As the Enforcer family grew, first wider, then skinnier, the arrival of an Enforcer 88 became inevitable.

Now that the long and winding road between the first Enforcer and the last has reached its destination, one can only wonder, what took them so long? This ski is a marvel, stable enough to navigate scoured wind crust yet ready to pounce turn to turn on hardpack with barely a transition between the two contrary conditions. Its score for short-radius turns is off the charts, yet it can lay into a big-bellied arc as comfortably as a cat curling up on a sofa.

True to its bloodlines, the Enforcer 88 sports a tip and tail that go looking for trouble off-trail just so they can demonstrate how well they can handle it. The tip is rockered sharply enough to go over a stump and the rounded tail won’t get up hung up in oddball bumps. But the real magic lies in the middle, where the Enforcer 88’s long camber pocket percolates with understated power. If you set off a rhythm of staccato edge sets you’ll find out what I mean as it ping-ping-pings from turn to turn.

The Enforcer 88 has the empowering property of making anything seem possible. It’s the perfect antidote for a bad mood. It doesn’t matter what the conditions are or what type of turns you care to carve. “A very good ski in powder or afternoon slush,” writes one of the Peter Glenn crew. “I felt very confident picking up speed in both conditions. I had to work a little harder than I’d like to get on edge en piste (compared to a Frontside ski). A great ski for pow days!” As another of the Peter Glenn cohort confides, the Enforcer 88 is “a fast, powerful ski that you can finesse. Inspires confidence!”

There’s something magical about All-Mountain East skis with an 88mm waist. It seems that smart brands that do a lot of prototype testing end up on this dimension, even when the focus of the model family is elsewhere, as it the case with the Nordica. This can’t be an accident, or if it is, it’s a remarkably recurring one.

Allow me to cast a light on the Enforcer 88’s versatility via a vignette culled from my personal time on skis early last March, before the hammer fell. I was insanely fortunate enough to be granted access to early trams at Snowbird, which in turn made it possible to share a chair ride out of Mineral Basin with Ed Chauner, who has spent four decades on this massive mountain, instructing, patrolling and guiding. We got to chatting about gear – wonder how that happened? – when without prompting Chauner expounded on the Enforcer 88’s ability to handle any condition Snowbird could concoct, which for a patrolman is virtually all of them. Any ski that can handle Snowbird whether teaching, hauling a sled or leading a troop off-trail is more than capable of handling everyday in-resort skiing, and do it without ever making it look difficult.