Unlike most made-for-women skis, the Vantage 90 CTi W pulls practically no punches compared to its men’s counterpart. Its all-wood core is a little lighter, that’s it. The women’s ski still sports a cutout Titanal sheet called Titanium Backbone 2.0 that’s a principal contributor to the ski’s success in cruddy conditions.
The other special sauce that elevates this Vantage’s versatility is the Carbon Tank Mesh. Covering the length of the ski, the carbon component pumps up the performance in every criterion.
At Realskiers, we contend that one definition of a great ski is how well it performs in conditions for which it was not intended. The Vantage 95 C is ostensibly an off-trail ski with plenty of flotation for forays into two feet of fluff. Yet it’s scorecard suggests a ski with a high hard-snow IQ, able to stay connected to the snow at any edge angle. It can make slow, short turns or long, fast ones, take your pick.
The Cloud 12 isn’t made for the lackadaisical carver who wants to hang out on the tail end of a turn long enough to check her messages. The second self-evident feature that helps define the Cloud 12’s behavior is its svelte shape. This streamlined rocket thinks of recreational runs as another opportunity to win something, taking off down the fall line as if suddenly freed from a bad relationship. .
The new Atomic S9 is as close as a civilian should get to a true race slalom. Set it to a high edge once at the top of steep face and it will go off like a string of firecrackers, striking and recoiling with every pop, pop, pop. Despite the intensity of its grip, there’s nothing nervous about it; the ski remains calm, even at its fastest and most furious. Like its stable mate, the G9, the Redster S9 is considerably slimmer than the Atomic that preceded it. This helps keep its orientation in the fall line even though its 12.7m radius sidecut (165cm) can pivot on a dime.
The signature feature of the Legend X 96 is called Powerdrive, a multilayer sidewall that uses TPU, Paulownia and ABS in a vertical sandwich. The reinforced sidewall remains separate from the laminates in the central core, which can move more easily in relationship to one another. This allows the forebody to follow terrain rather than banging off of it, creating a sense of connection that is, in the words of Sturtevant’s of Sun Valley’s Peter Nestor, “predictable, comfortable and confidence inspiring.”
