Tester: Robin Barnes
Hummina, hummina, hummina. This ski made my heart go pitter-patter! When I first picked it up, I wondered if the lightness of its construction could stand up to a variety of conditions and speeds. Shame on me for doubting. It dazzled me on groomers, sliced and diced through the crud, and perhaps most astonishing was the way it deftly handled frozen corral-head bumps covered in 10 inches of heavy pow.
The Kore 93 W shows great versatility in being gentle and easy to tip and carve at lower speeds, but throw it into gear and it rips robust trenches or massacres any ungroomed condition that you throw at it. The ski is equally stunning at high edge angles or low edge angle steering, pivoting, and shmearing. At 93mm underfoot, there is really no reason to fret about which ski to bring for the day. It does it all and makes you feel like a champ doing it.
The Kore W series was adopted from the non-gender-specific Kore line with very little modification for the women’s version. Since it was a already a winner as a light weight, supremely versatile ski, Head simply moved the recommended mounting point 1cm forward for the W series, to make the front of the ski even more accessible and let the rest of the technology speak for itself in the women’s market.
Tester: Elaine Furtney
The Head Kore 87W is quite simply the most versatile ski I’ve ever skied. Light, playful and maneuverable, it boasts stability and edging performance that rival that of your typical “carving” skis.
Pairing a modern tapered tip and tail with a svelte 87mm waist allows heretofore unimagined playfulness and “surfability” in this category compared to anything out there. Suddenly a relatively narrow ski can rip up the groomers on that first corduroy lap, and show you refined and forgiving manners in the end of day slush and crud. The narrower waist gives the 87 edge to edge quickness that encourages snappy short turns and lets them dance through the moguls without fear of catching tip or tail.
On a bluebird 6-8” powder day with a fortuitous early up at 7:30, I skied spongy wind-buff, fluffy pockets of light snow, wind-scoured hard snow and groomers. Through it all, the Kore 87W behaved with impeccable manners and added joy to the day. It was literally great in everything!
This ski has such a huge sweet spot I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone from the aspiring advanced skier to the dedicated expert. I used to say “when you’re not sure which ski to bring, bring the Monster 88’s.” That has now changed to the Kore 87.
The new Kanjo 84’s 3D Radius Sidecut is like an onboard coaching tool: the better the skier’s technique, the more often he’ll activate the Kanjo 84’s tighter turning center section. The more the skier can load the ski at the turn’s apex, the greater the rebound off the edge and across the fall line.
This level of performance “would not disappoint an advanced skier,” observes ski coach and tuning technician extraordinaire Theron Lee. “Smooth and easy turning, it’s able to carve with technique but just as happy to slarve into turns. Its fairly big sweet spot allows for a wide range of abilities, from solid intermediate level on up.”
Almost any model priced at the Kanjo 84’s $700 MSRP will satisfy the low-bar demands of intermediates. The beauty of the Kanjo 84 is it won’t overwhelm the first-time ski buyer yet has the performance ceiling of a much more expensive model. For a skier who can only get out a few times a year and is likely to spend that time on groomers, the Kanjo 84 is an outstanding value.
You can tell a lot about a ski by its immediate family. Rossi’s Hero Elite Plus Ti is closely related to the Hero Elite LT Ti and ST Ti, both legit non-FIS Race models, even though the Plus Ti’s plus-sized shape (78mm) is many mm’s more ample than the 71mm waist of the LT Ti and 68mm midriff on the SL Ti. The Hero Elite Plus Ti not only uses the same construction as its gate-bashing sibs, its sidecut radius is the same as the ST’s in the167cm size preferred by slalom specialists.
Two years ago, Rossi converted all of the Hero Elite clan to a new damping system, Line Control Technology. (LCT). Instead of using horizontal sheets of Titanal, as has been the case for decades among race models, LCT uses a vertical Ti laminate down the center of the ski so the forebody is more resistant to deflection. Torsional rigidity is softened a tad to allow the deep sidecut to engage gradually and progressively as the ski is tipped and pressured. “Stable and forgiving into the turn,” assures Scott Sahr from Aspen Ski and Board, “without compromising edge contact.”
Head is the only ski maker with a license to use Graphene, carbon in a one-atom thick matrix, which allows its engineers to stiffen or soften flex with minimal affect on mass. To maintain this weight advantage, the heaviest component in the core is a slice of poplar next to the sidewall; the rest of it is a synthetic honeycomb called Koroyd and a quotient of Karuba, an ultralight wood commonly found in Alpine Touring skis. The Kore 105 gets its power and energy from the carbon, fiberglass and Graphene that are laminated around this exotic core.
This recitation of low-mass components makes it sound as though the Kore’s only selling feature is its lightweight chassis. There’s no question that the Kore design is laser-focused on keeping the ski light, but if that were its only accomplishment it wouldn’t be such a big deal. What makes the Kore construction remarkable is that it’s light but never wimpy. Once you ski it for a few runs you forget about the lightweight and just ski as you would normally, only with less labor and fatigue.
“The dampest lightweight ski ever, awesome energy and snow feel. Works all day inbounds or backcountry,” raved Lucas from Footloose. “[My] favorite ski in the test.” One of The Sport Loft cohort captured its multiple personalities: “Soft for the soft snow, stiff and stable for the hard snow. For the weight, the best ski for the money, period.”
