Secret 102
As was the case with its men’s counterpart – the Mantra 102 – last year, the latest bundle of modifications to the Secret 102 has infused it with a complete personality transplant. As succinctly summarized by former US Ski Team member Edie Thys Morgan in her review of the 2023 Secret 102, “This is not the ski for the faint of heart or of flex.” The 2025 Secret 102 has shed its hell-bent ways. It no longer seeks to subdue whatever gets in its way, instead responding to its pilot’s subtle suggestions with grace and poise.
What happened to turn a barely tamed bronco into a well-trained show pony? Two factors did most of the heavy lifting, Tailored Titanal Frame and Tailored Carbon Tips. In the original Secret 102, the forward section of the 3-piece Titanal Frame was a one-size-fits-all affair; as of the 2024 iteration, each size received its own part. This is of particular importance in the smaller sizes women prefer. Every aspect of the Secret 102 is size-specific, so shorter skis aren’t saddled with over-sized components.
Part of the reason that the double-rockered Secret 102 rips groomers like a fully cambered ski is the manner in which Völkl applies an extra dose of carbon to the shovel. Most carbon that goes into skis are either thin stringers or weaves in a pre-set orientation. To get exactly the pattern they wanted, Volkl engineers created hundreds of prototypes, stitching carbon thread into a fleece matrix to arrive at just the right dosage to keep the tip quiet.
Ranger 108
Now that the Fischer Ranger series share a common construction, they also share a similar behavioral profile. Nothing affects a modern ski quite as much as the addition or subtraction of Titanal, so when Rangers were made both with and without Ti laminates, their performance profile would change radically from one model to the next. In 2023, Fischer homogenized the Ranger line by doling out a measure of metal in every model. By dint of its extra width, the Ranger 108 earned a mite more in its midsection, making it the smoothest Ranger in the new family.
The Ranger series has always been aimed squarely at off-trail skiing, where surface area dictates the degree of flotation, which in turn has a direct bearing on how easy a ski is to swivel. News bulletin: skiing deep snow isn’t like skiing hardpack. Not just in the obvious way that snow you sink into and snow you can barely dent require different tactics, but in the subtle ways that deep snow affects stance and turn finish, which can’t be carved and therefore has to be swiveled to come across the fall line.
The point of the previous paragraph is that the wider the off-trail ski, the closer it inherently comes to optimizing its design, at least for the purposes of skiing powder, which is the only reason to own a Big Mountain model in the first place.
Blessed with more flotation and power than its stablemate, the Ranger 102, the Ranger 108 delivers the sort of elite performance experts expect. When allowed to run across a field of syrupy corn snow, it’s a gas to lay over like its waist was 20mm thinner. Of course, connection at the top of the turn is inhibited by the usual steep front rocker and pulled-back contact point found in virtually every Big Mountain ski, but most of the Ranger 108 is in the snow and unperturbed by the jolts delivered by irregular terrain.
Mantra 102
Don’t let the model name fool you: Völkl still calls this ski the Mantra 102, but the addition two years ago of Tailored Titanal Frame, Tailored Carbon Tips and a tweaked sidecut has totally transformed its personality. The Mantra 102 circa 2022 was a barely tamed beast, subduing all in its path; the latest incarnation is a pussycat that readily bends to its pilot’s will. It behaves like a different ski.
One measure of a ski’s steering facility is the skier’s perception of width. In its first incarnation, the Mantra 102 was notable for feeling wider than it measured; the 2024/25 version “skis narrower than indicated, making it very easy to turn,” according to veteran tester Theron Lee.
The combined effect of a triad of new features is what made the Mantra 102 suddenly so tractable. Like every Big Mountain ski in Christendom, the Mantra 102 is double rockered, but it imparts the sensation of full, tip-to-tail contact, in part because Tailored Carbon Tips keep the entire rocker zone quiet. Tailored Titanal Frame keeps the mass in the forebody proportional to the ski’s length, facilitating earlier turn entry. The slightly wider tip encourages more pull into the turn, opening up the short-radius spectrum, while the skinny tail helps the skier stay close to the fall line, making crud and powder a hell of a lot easier to plunder.
A big contributor to the Mantra 102’s outstanding performance on any snow surface is its first-in-class rebound coming out of the turn. Part of the magic of the Titanal Frame design is the freedom its three-piece top sheet has to flex and compress a full-length glass layer that reacts to this pressure like a coiled spring. Now that the Titanal Frame is tailored by size, the whole ski is more responsive. The Mantra 102 naturally rises as it uncoils during the turn transition, so it’s unweighted while crossing the fall line.
Regardless of how relatively narrow it feels underfoot, the Mantra 102 is still a wide and torsionally stiff ski, so it’s not ultra-quick edge to edge, but that’s its only performance limitation. In mid- to long-radius turns, it’s as secure as a Swiss bank account.
Santa Ana 102
The first edition of the Santa Ana 110 swapped the Enforcer 110’s poplar/beech core for balsa, but otherwise faithfully replicated its unisex structure, including two full sheets of .4mm Titanal. That’s a lot of ski, too much for most women hoping to make powder skiing easier, not more demanding. Three years ago, Nordica found the solution, Terrain Specific Metal: the wider the ski, the more metal is cut out of its forebody. The widest model in the 2025 Santa Ana series is now the Santa Ana 102, an acknowledgement that the best women skiers don’t need skis the width of a barge to float their petite frames in deep powder.
Opening up the Santa Ana 102’s performance envelope is largely attributable to a new Pulse core that bisects its vertically laminated wood core and inserts an elastomer laminate in the middle. Splitting the core makes it easier for a lightweight skier to bend it, and the shock-sucking center smoothes out the ride from tip to tail. The top Ti laminate of Terrain Specific Metal provides more than enough bite for hard snow, and keeps the ski calm underfoot on choppy traverses and tracked-up run-outs.
All powder skiing entails some foot steering, which is lots easier when there’s less mass to toss around, so the trimmer shape of the new Santa Ana 102 helps make it more maneuverable.