Atomic makes a full array of women’s skis, from skinny and slight to stout in all senses of the term.  The Vantage 90 CTi W is of the second sort, a full-bore ripper that lays into the mountain as if it had stolen its boyfriend.

The things that make the Vantage 90 CTI W great are also its potential liabilities.  “Titanal and carbon gives the ski liveliness but [makes it] harder to control in bumps and chop,” writes Kelli Gleason of The Boot Doctors.  “It bucks you out of the turn, although it is stable,” she admits.

It attacks the fall line like Homer Simpson assaults a box of donuts, but ask it to back off the juice and it wants to know what for?  Somehow the Vantage 90 CTi W knows that life is too short, so it wastes no time getting from the top of every turn – and every mountain – to the bottom.

If this doesn’t sound like the most tolerant of rides, it isn’t.  If the 90 CTi W were taking applications, it would be as selective as Harvard.  But if you’re an A student, don’t you want all that hard work to pay off? As Kelli’s sis Galena contends, this Vantage is “powerful out of the turn → for advanced skiers  only!”