by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Nordica has been fiddling with the ideal formula for a women’s all-mountain ski over the course of several product cycles. Four years ago, Nordica solved the riddle of how much metal a wide women’s ski needs to assist stability without smothering agility. Dubbed Terrain-Specific Metal, the construction drops the bottom Ti laminate and trims the top layer down to match the likely terrain each Santa Ana was most likely to encounter. As the second-widest ski in the series, the SA 97 scallops out a larger chunk of Ti in the forebody so the ski feels more lively than lugubrious.
For 2025, all the Santa Anas were scrupulously modified to optimize each length in each model, tweaking sidecut and sizing options on the outside and remodeling the core on the inside. The new Pulse core sandwiches a layer of elastomer between two wood cores, creating an easy-to-flex midsection that delivers a smooth ride in rough terrain. The new core allows the lighter-weight skier to bend a ski with the gripping power of Titanal, simultaneously elevating both the Power and Finesse properties of the Santa Ana 97. For the talented women who already knows how to attack a crud field, the Santa Ana 97 delivers on every front. The new design exhibits the rare ability to open up the top of the ski’s performance range but still be so easy to steer that the less skilled skier can confidently make her first forays far off-trail.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Völkl has built an enviable reputation for its high-performance women’s skis, despite the fact that many of its most revered models – the Aura, Kiku and Kenja, for example – weren’t really women-specific models, but unisex skis in short sizes. The Secret 96 falls squarely in this tradition, for it faithfully mimics the construction of the new men’s M7 Mantra.
What makes the M7/Secret 96 design so remarkable is how its various features work together to create a ginormous performance envelope. One of its foundational elements is Tailored Titanal Frame, that breaks the usual topsheet of Titanal into three separate parts: two long-armed horseshoes wrap around the tip and tail, and a thinner, disconnected plate rides in the center. Just below this Titanal triad is a long slab of fiberglass, a coiled spring just waiting to be energized by compression. The fusion of the metal and fiberglass elements is what gives the Secret 96 its peppy rebound, a trait not often found in wide, all-terrain skis.
In the same iconoclastic vein, the two new features that elevate the performance ceiling of the 2025 Secret 96 – 4 Radius Drive and Tailored Carbon Tips – focus on sharpening the short-radius aptitude of the very tip of the ski, where every other ski that calls itself “all-mountain” is rockered entirely out of contact. The new features are meant to enhance the Secret’s ability to cut a clean, sharp corner into a short-radius arc, a level of steering accuracy that no other ski in the genre can match.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Two winters ago, I was able to ski all the new Stances on several occasions, from a foot of fresh to manicured corduroy. The more I skied them, the more I was led to a conclusion that, at first, I didn’t quite believe: they all ski remarkably alike.
That may sound like a particularly unremarkable observation: if they’re all built the same way, why shouldn’t they ski alike? Fair enough, but it’s rarely the case that all members of a product family ski identically, and in the case of the new Stances, they don’t just ski kinda like their siblings: any two adjacent widths are all but indistinguishable on the snow, particularly in the off-trail conditions they were made for.
The obvious implication of this interchangeability is that the middle-of-the-range, All-Mountain West Stance 96 not only exhibits the same quickness to the edge as the All-Mountain East Stance 90 displays on a groomer, it also mimics the Big Mountain Stance 102’s Finesse properties in broken powder. That’s a great thumbnail description of what one hopes to find in any All-Mountain West model.
Every tester account makes some reference to how easy the Stance 96 is to guide into a smooth, balanced turn that it exits as gracefully as it enters. Like most of the double-rockered skis in its genre, the Stance 96 uses a tapered tip that isn’t going to connect to the tippy-top of a carved turn, but once one accepts that the shovel is just there as a terrain buffer, the skier can focus on how well it holds from the forebody back to the end of its square tail.
Skiers who want to smash through crud at max velocity have plenty of other options; the Stance 96 is more for the technician than the daredevil. Its defining trait is its predictability, moving confidently from turn to turn whether the snow surface is perfectly manicured or a hot mess that’s never seen a grooming machine.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
The Head Kore 105 is the perfect ski for our times. No, it doesn’t promote universal love and understanding among all people, but it does what it can, considering that it’s a ski. It’s not just that it’s the lightest ski in the genre, it’s how that light weight contributes to a quickness off the edge that makes the Kore 105 feel narrower than its actual dimensions.
Another reason that the Kore 105 behaves like a skinnier ski is it adheres to a metal-free diet; the absence of Ti laminates softens its torsional rigidity, enabling it to conform to terrain rather than attempting to subdue it. This business about feeling narrower matters because it makes it reasonable to consider the Kore 105 as an everyday ski for western resort skiing.
Its ultra-light weight also makes the Kore 105 an ideal in-resort/backcountry hybrid. The biggest concern any backcountry skier has about a super-light ski is that it will be great going uphill and suck on the way down, which sort of defeats the whole purpose. There’s zero chance the Kore 105 will flame out on the descent, as it’s far more substantial than any AT model of which I am aware.
Another factor that makes the entire Kore series easier to steer off-trail is a beveled top edge that allows the ski to slice sideways almost without resistance. As foot steering is more necessity than indulgence when the snow is up to your knees, the smooth move the 105 makes laterally drastically reduces the amount of effort it takes to steer.
The final piece of the Kore 105 picture is a size run from 163cm to 191cm at 7cm splits. When selecting your ideal size, think about weight distribution – the more you weigh, the more ski you need – and flex. If you go too long, you might not be able to bend the ski, a necessity both for steering in general and for inducing the rebound energy that makes it effortless through the turn transition.
The current Kore 105 isn’t finicky about anything. There’s no need to adapt to it or ski it in any special way just because it’s light. Just hop on and ski as you naturally would. Only with less effort, a formula that works for anyone.
by Jackson Hogen | Sep 3, 2024
Salomon’s QST 106 was already pegged as a star product when it was introduced in 2016/17, and Salomon has been enhancing the QST flagship on a regular basis ever since. One trait that has been preserved in the QST 106 over the years is that it maintains the right blend of stability and agility, so it doesn’t ski as wide as it measures. If a typical expert male were to ski a QST 106 in a 181cm while blindfolded (which I am not encouraging), after a run he probably wouldn’t guess he was on either a 106 or a 181, as it has the quicks of a narrower ski and the quiet ride of a longer one. It just doesn’t feel fat, even though its weight and width are roughly average for the genre. “It’s a 106 that skis like a wide 100,” as Jim Schaffner from Start Haus condensed its character. It’s the epitome of an all-terrain ski, in that its competence and comportment don’t change as it moves from corduroy to trackless snowfields and yes, even bumps. In Schaffner’s words, the QST 106 is “very well blended, a true all-mountain all-star!”
Skiers of all abilities, please take note: just because the 2025 QST 106 climbed into the top echelon of our Finesse ratings for the Big Mountain genre doesn’t mean it’s a soft ski meant for posers. Au contraire, its huge performance envelope includes edge grip at least as precise as all but one Power pick and off-piste proficiency that’s unparalleled in the genre. As befits an elite Finesse model, the charms of the QST 106 are accessible to almost any ability. It never hurts to be a better skier, but in a shorter length the QST 106 won’t remind the less skilled of their shortcomings.
Female skiers should be advised that the QST 106 and QST Stella 106 are the same ski in a different graphic and size run. Should a lass pine for a length longer than 173cm, she can traverse the gender divide without penalty.
Because of its brilliant balance between Power and Finesse virtues, we again award the QST 106 a Silver Skier Selection.
