Tester: Claire Challen
If you’re looking for a one-ski quiver for both groomed and un-groomed trails, the Experience 88 Ti W is for you. Whether you’re a seasoned intermediate starting to explore off-piste terrain or an expert skiing all over the mountain in any conditions, these skis will take you where you want to go with confidence. The Experience 88 transitions from off-piste to on-piste terrain with ease, making them my go-to choice for the majority of days on the mountain. I know I’ll always have a good time no matter the conditions. I use my Experience 88’s for my own free-ski play days because I like to explore off-piste but I also to like to ski fast on groomed trails. They’re also fantastic do-all skis for instructing because I can confidently navigate all terrain and snow conditions, switching up trail choices per the needs of my clients. The 88’s are playful and easy to turn yet also stable at higher speeds. I can go from solid carving turns on groomed and hard-pack conditions and hop over to an un-groomed trail for some fresh powder turns. These skis are a well-utilized pair within my quiver.
The Enforcer 94 gets a new number to underscore that it’s an entirely new ski, and not just an exercise in relabeling. Whenever a brand invests in new molds it represents an opportunity to re-examine every detail. For the Enforcer 94, this meant creating five new sizes, each with a unique baseline and sidecut. Adjusting the rocker/camber intersections for every length results in a ski that feels fully cambered, its abrupt but brief rocker zones solid and unflappable, both literally and figuratively speaking.
I’m not sure if the Enforcer 94 can actually confer expert status on anyone who steps into a pair, but it sure won’t hold anyone back. It’s a nearly perfect ski in that a lateral drift or trench-cutting carve is immediately accessible at all times. Every movement feels intuitive, unforced and integrated with the flow of the mountain.
It’s hard to pigeonhole the Enforcer 94 as a specialist at any one thing, for it has the chameleonesque ability to be whatever its pilot wants it to be. The key to its mutability is how mindlessly simple it is to transition from a crisp edge to a friction-free drift. This facility is what makes the Enforcer 94 to masterful in any terrain, from brittle hardpack to fluffy powder and every crud-junk-chowder consistency in between. It’s the epitome of an all-terrain tool.
This year, Liberty moves its VMT—Vertical Metal Technology—into its women’s line of all mountain skis with two new Evolv models, and all I could utter after trenching up Steamboat’s corduroy during a ski test is a breathy, “Thank you.” The 84 is a built to be an all-terrain vehicle (between the racy V and freeride Origin lines), with a touch of tip rocker and progressive flex, but it definitely prefers to mach the groomed at eye-watering speeds. That’s not to say it’s impatient, however; it will hold your hand and coach you into a carve if you’re an advanced intermediate. As for the VMT (which made its women’s debut last season in the V frontside carvers), I’m not sure how this homegrown brand in the Vail Valley managed to invent something so groundbreaking, but I do know it works.. In my humble opinion, it unequivocally puts this former pow-ski brand in the big leagues when it comes to edge grip and stability.
Remember those inflatable punching bags made so kids can work out their juvenile aggressions? They had a round, weighted bottom that allowed Mr. Binky to take the most vicious blow and bound right back up, ready to roll with the next haymaker. That’s sort of how it feels to descend on the Blizzard Firebird WRC, a slippery yet solid foundation that seems impossible to fall off of.
The Firebird WRC is a beast of s GS ski that is easily tamed, as long as you meet a couple of prerequisites. First, stop asking it to turn at slow speeds, a total waste of its talents. The WRC solves this problem for you by continuing to accelerate until it feels inspired to take the top off its first turn at around 30mph. Second, keep it on trail. If you take it into soft snow it will burrow into it until it finds the bottom, where it will stay until you get a crane to extract it.
Third, don’t ski it passively. Presumably you’re contemplating a race ski because you already know how to drive one, so get after it, for therein lies the reward.
When Nordica introduced the original Enforcer five years ago, it already had a 100mm-underfoot model in its line, the NRGy100, and the more acutely rockered Enforcer could have been misconstrued as redundant. Yet the Enforcer immediately earned a name for itself as a new breed of all-terrain ski that disguised a fully cambered baseline – and all the power it entails – between rockered extremities. As the Enforcer family grew, first wider, then skinnier, the arrival of an Enforcer 88 became inevitable.
Now that the long and winding road between the first Enforcer and the last has reached its destination, one can only wonder, what took them so long? This ski is a marvel, stable enough to navigate scoured wind crust yet ready to pounce turn to turn on hardpack with barely a transition between the two contrary conditions. Its score for short-radius turns is off the charts, yet it can lay into a big-bellied arc as comfortably as a cat curling up on a sofa.
True to its bloodlines, the Enforcer 88 sports a tip and tail that go looking for trouble off-trail just so they can demonstrate how well they can handle it. The tip is rockered sharply enough to go over a stump and the rounded tail won’t get up hung up in oddball bumps. But the real magic lies in the middle, where the Enforcer 88’s long camber pocket percolates with understated power. If you set off a rhythm of staccato edge sets you’ll find out what I mean as it ping-ping-pings from turn to turn.
