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 new 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 for 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.

One of the many advantages of having Graphene in one’s design quiver, is this one-atom thick matrix of carbon can be moved around the ski platform to facilitate one behavior or another.  In the case of the Kore 97 W, Graphene is integrated into the tip and tail, lowering swingweight, which is always helpful when snow is deep and the tendency to swivel is all but automatic.    

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. Because it takes less effort to ski whether one is in two feet of fresh or on two inches of cream, we again confer upon the Kore 97 W a Silver Skier Selection.