Enforcer 99
The new Nordica Enforcer 99 isn’t up to the standard of last year’s Enforcer 100; it exceeds it.
I hesitate to call it a completely different ski, for it still rewards a strong, technical skier, but there’s a newfound smoothness through every phase of the turn, whether on groomers or in a foot of fresh. I had the idyllic opportunity to catch my first runs on the Enforcer 99 early in the morning on the first day of the Mammoth Trade Fair in early February. The main runs were already riven with tracks, but the Enforcer 99 made the ride feel satin smooth. Crud is a dish best served with speed, which made the Enforcer 99 even more responsive. The longer, shallower tip rocker did a masterful job of clobbering crud with a minimum of deflection, and the more turned-up tail – a design feature borrowed from the Enforcer 104 – let go of each turn like it was releasing a fledgling bird.
Nordica completely rebuilt this ski with a new Double Core design purloined from its technical skis, the powerful Dobermanns and Spitfires. Two sheets of end-to-end Titanal are sandwiched around both a wood core and a Pulse core, made from a shock-sucking elastomer. The is the foundation of the strong edge grip and unruffled ride the Enforcer 99 displays in all conditions.
The second time I forayed out on the Enforcer 99 I wasn’t alone. With me was Jim Schaffner, probably the world’s foremost authority on Alpine ski boots who doesn’t work for a ski supplier, and a top-notch coach. He’s also as strong physically as he is technically, so he’s an excellent ski analyst. He doesn’t hurt that his enthusiasm for the sport is bottomless.
Schaffner’s capsule report on how the Enforcer 99 handled a boot-top snowfall at Palisades Tahoe suggests a ski with a broad performance envelope. “Perfect sweet spot!!! So well balanced in fore/aft position. An excellent execution of an all-mountain tool.”
M7 Mantra
The evolution of the Mantra since the launch of the M5 (in the fall of 2017) presents a master class in how to stagger the flow of new design elements across an entire collection. The total line make-over began with two cornerstone design elements, Titanal Frame and...ZX100
Kästle’s MSRP’s hover near the peak of the retail pricing mountain, where the air is so thin only a few brands can survive in it. Kästle’s relatively new Czech ownership wants to expand the line by dropping a few experimental models down to a lower altitude, where the people, particularly less affluent younger people, can afford to acquire them.
Hence the ‘Z” in its name, a reference to Gen Z, otherwise known as young adults. The first foray in this direction was the ZX108, a non-metal, robustly rockered Big Mountain model with surprising moxie, introduced just two seasons ago. The ZX100 is its first offspring, with a retail tag of $649, a pittance for a Kästle and right in line with the rest of the market.
The low price wouldn’t be worth much if the ski couldn’t cut it, but the ZX100 is a knockout, particularly in the softer snow it’s made for. This became evident on a spring day at Mt. Rose, where the snow surface evolved from boilerplate to mush in the span of three hours. As soon as the top surface became loose enough to dislodge, the ZX100 was in its element. Its classic wood-and-fiberglass sandwich is strong on the edge and peppy coming off it. It’s sidecut is also right out of the time-honored playbook, with just a little more shape and tip-to-tail taper angle than the norm. Without metal to dampen its response to pressure, the ZX100 feels quick and lively even though its natural sidecut radius is 18m in a 180cm and short turns aren’t really its wheelhouse.
Its balanced flex feels easy to stay centered on, where the skier can instantly switch between smooth smears and sharp edge sets as the ZX100 hews closely to the fall line. If you want to make a tighter turn that’s more carve than swivel, be prepared to work for it, but that’s the case for just about every ski in this genre.
Ranger 96
Prior to the 22/23 season, Fischer had subdivided its Ranger family of off-trail models into two distinct clans, indicated by their suffixes: Ti, for those with metal in the mix, and FR, for those without. Among Fischer aficionados, the softer and surfier Ranger FR models had a more distinct, looser character that distinguished them from the large cadre of all-mountain skis with metal in them. In the Realskiers scoring system, which favors snow connection over smearing, the Old School Ti models would consistently out-perform the New School FR’s, but it was clear from the tester comments that the Ranger FR’s had a bigger fan club.
Two seasons ago, Fischer unveiled an entirely new Ranger series, ushered from the drawing board to the ski shop wall by none other than Mike Hattrup, who recently earned a well-merited induction into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. As one might expect from a mash-up of the old FR and Ti branches of the family, some of each genome is entwined in models like the Ranger 96.
Like the Ti’s of yesteryear, there’s metal in the latest hybrid Rangers, just not as much as before. The metal is confined to the area underfoot, and while there are some changes in how the metal part is configured across the line, none possess enough Titanal to suppress the loose extremities that appealed to FR fans. Because the metal is mostly underfoot, the tip and tail feel lighter, easier to pivot sideways and generally more genial than a ski with tip-to-tail Ti laminates. 258
As is often the case, the metal plate in the middle extends its influence beyond its boundaries, so the Ranger 96 feels secure all along the tail. On balance, the 2025 hybrid Ranger behaves more like the FR side of its pedigree, albeit with a stouter tail that holds up under the sustained pressure of a long-radius turn.