One of the tricks to making a great All-Mountain West ski is to somehow make it feel narrower and more maneuverable than its ponderous girth suggests is possible. At 100mm underfoot, the Atomic Vantage 100 CTI is as wide and floaty a plank as we allow in our AMW category, yet it manages to feel quick to the edge and responsive off it.

“Light and agile for 100mm underfoot,” notes the perspicacious Matt from Footloose. “It carves like it’s narrow, but has a big platform for versatility in soft snow.” One reason this 100 skis like a more petite model is that, despite the obligatory front rocker, it hooks up early as long as the skier is in an aggressive, forward-pressing stance. Several testers noted the need to stay forward in order to get the most of the Vantage 100 CTI’s potential.

Construction always plays a role in on-hill comportment. The “CTI” suffix in this model’s name offers a clue or two as to why the Vantage 100 manages to be so strong without acting overbearing. The “TI” refers to Titanal, which usually translates as “heavy,” but the “Backbone” used by Atomic in the Vantage 100 isn’t a wall-to-wall slab of metal but a spine-like silhouette that imparts stability without the unsettling sensation that you’re steering a tanker.

The “C” is the key to how Atomic pulled off the illusion of agility in the Vantage 100 CTI. It stands for Carbon Tank Mesh, a standard component in the Vantage series that delivers a brilliant blend of longitudinal and torsional stiffness. Atomic doesn’t say what it weighs, but it can’t be more than 2 or 3 tropical butterflies. The “C” is the main reason the Vantage CTI feels light and narrow for ski that’s actually strong as an ox and wide as an all-condition ski should be.