Head’s Kore series provides a perfect example of why a great off-trail ski and an ideal women’s ski share the same design criteria. In 21/22, the changes made to the unisex Kore collection were ipso facto applied to its women’s iterations. The same alterations that make the latest Kore 99 a better all-terrain ski also make the Kore 97 W a better women’s ski.
The most visible change was to the topsheet, which is now smoothly beveled so the ski slips sideways virtually without resistance, a big help when the snow is deep. A top coating of urethane was added in 2023, to help protect its fleece top. Inside, the Kore’s core was modified by eliminating Koroyd honeycomb and replacing it with more of its Karuba-poplar wood core. This delivers a subtle change in snow feel and feedback that makes the ride feel smoother and more predictable. The only thing the skier notices about the lightweight design is that it takes less effort to steer; there’s no sense of it being skittish or easily knocked off course just because it’s light.
As mentioned in the introduction to these reviews, we don’t usually recommend that a recreational woman use an All-Mountain West model as her everyday ride. But the Kore 97 W is so well balanced between its Power and Finesse properties and so confident in all conditions that it’s an exception to this rule.
For several seasons, Fischer 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.
Two years ago, Fischer debuted an entirely new Ranger series, ushered from the drawing board to the ski shop wall by none other than Ski HOF member Mike Hattrup. 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 new models like the Ranger 96, which is available in two alternative cosmetics, one of which is a slightly more fem version with a bright yellow topskin. The interchangeability of its men’s and women’s versions inspired Fischer to offer the yellow Ranger 96 in all of its men’s sizes (up to a 187cm!) as well a couple of shorter lengths for lighter ladies.
Like the Ti’s of yesteryear, there’s metal in the new Rangers, just not as much as before. The Titanal is confined to the area underfoot, so there’s not enough of it 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.
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.
The biggest problem with skis as wide as the Kore 111 is that their shortcomings start to show up as the powder “day” fizzles out around mid-morning. The Kore 111 could care less that the powder is kaput. Perhaps because Head replaced the Koroyd used in previous Kore cores with Karuba and poplar, the Kore 111 provides the feedback of a classic, wood and fiberglass chassis despite belonging in the same weight class as an anorexic Alpine Touring model.
I realize this sounds like a stupid thing to say, but the Kore 111 doesn’t ski wide, or at least not as wide as it measures, in part because it lacks Titanal laminates. Titanal accentuates torsional rigidity, which in turn augments the sensation of width because there’s no give along the longitudinal axis of the ski. Two sheets of Titanal is also a heavy load to haul around, particularly in powder, where they promote sinking over floating. The Kore 111 can afford to kick Titanal to the curb because it has Graphene in its guts, carbon in a matrix one atom thick that’s absurdly strong and damp.
The Kore construction didn’t need the 111 to validate its growing reputation as one of the great off-trail series of all time, yet it may be the archetypical Kore that epitomizes what this design does best. One of the defining characteristics of a great ski is its ability to perform tasks at an elite level that it was never designed to do. Starting from scratch, without design or cost limitations, I doubt anyone could make a ski better adapted to off-trail skiing than the Kore 111. Yet it transitions to hard snow so seamlessly you almost want to look down to be sure they haven’t shrunk to a Frontside waistline.
About the only caveat I can concoct is that the Kore 111 could use a little cushion to push against. By that I mean, if the top 1mm of the snow surface is unrelenting, of course it’s going to drift; but if there’s even an ounce of cream for the base to brace itself, the Kore 111 knows how to come around on a line. While we don’t recommend skis this wide for all-day, hard-snow skiing, the Kore 111 can handle it if you can.
When it was introduced in 2020 as the Enforcer 104 Free, there already was an Enforcer 100 and an Enforcer 110, to go along with a 115, and a 93 and an 88. At the time, it seemed like a classic case of over-reach: why try to fit a 104 into an already over-served market for fat skis?
The original Enforcer 104 Free proved it belonged from the very first turn. It was easier to mix up turn shape and change direction in deep snow than on the Enforcer 110, while floating close enough to the surface to deliver the ease one seeks on a fat ski. In the duel between the two models for the off-trail skier’s affections, it was the 104’s greater maneuverability and terrain versatility that won out over the 110’s greater surface area. The agile 104 shape is still in the line; the more lugubrious 110 is not.
Now that it’s the chubbiest kid in the family, the Enforcer 104 is transparently Nordica’s best tool for tootling through the chop that is the prevailing condition on powder days. An ever-evolving crud field best describes the condition we encountered on the gently flowing slopes of the Shirley Lake area at Palisades Tahoe when we sallied forth with a quartet of Enforcers. Here’s the lightly edited testimony of Jim Schaffner after he had sampled the test batch.
“The Enforcer 104 was the perfect choice for the conditions today. I love how this ski drifts. It allows for amazing versatility in all terrain, all conditions, all turn shapes. Overall, the entire Enforcer group is the most cohesive group of skis that I have tested this spring. The versatility, perfect balance and ski-ability in all terrain make the 104 the best pick for someone that likes to travel off the beaten path, always looking for some chopped up or rougher snow conditions to plunder.”
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Enforcer 104 is it can handle buffeting whether traveling straight downhill or completing every turn. Normally, precision in the fall line comes at some cost of drift-ability, but you can etch the top of a turn on the 104 and smear the bottom of the same arc, and the Enforcer 104 makes it all feel as natural as breathing.
