At 82mm underfoot, Elan’s new Interra 82 seems to occupy a no-man’s land between traditional carving skis, such as sister ski Insomnia, and the current focus of the women’s market, All-Mountain East models with a midriff between 88mm and 93mm. No doubt about it, the All-Mountain East genre, with its promise of all-terrain mastery, has charmed the market into believing that it’s the Promised Land of women-specific skis.

But as I argue in “82 is the new 88”, the gradual shift to narrower footprints has inspired several suppliers, including Elan, to lay a new stepping-stone in the path back to more realistic sidecuts. The reason the Women’s All-Mountain East genre assumed a dominant position in the U.S. market was its presumed superiority in off-trail conditions. But there are several reasons why many women would be even better off on a ski like the Interra 82.

For starters, everyone’s definition of “all-mountain” is different. When thinking of the pantheon of all-terrain experiences, skiers’ imaginations tend to drift to powder, even though we all know in our heart of hearts that we’ll be lucky to encounter deep powder once or twice even in good snow years. All-mountain is another way of saying, “ungroomed,” which covers a lot of territory. Among the non-powder, non-groomed terrain possibilities are moguls and trees, two places where extra width is not your friend.

Women tend to check their speed by making shorter radius turns, which is transparently easier on a narrower ski. Note that the Interra 82 sports a 13.1m-radius sidecut in a size164cm, which is mighty tidy for a ski this long. Its combination of Frontside features and off-trail aptitude creates a more practical version of what it means to be “all-mountain.”

As a step-child of Elan’s Amphibio carving skis, the Interra 82 embodies their carving-centric traits: an asymmetric sidecut that’s fully cambered on the inside edge and rockered on the outside, matched to an imbalanced top laminate that focuses more force on the longer edge. Helping the Interra 82 cope with any condition is a central section of Titanal above its all-wood core.

Available as either a system or flat, the Interra 82 is a prime example of a new sub-genre of all-mountain skis that are a better fit for the most commonly encountered snow conditions.