Laser SC

[The test results and review for the Laser SC are from 2016; its only changes for 2017 are cosmetic.] The Laser SC loves its turns short, its accelerator pegged, its runs smooth and its pilot skilled. You can’t fault the Laser SC for knowing what it likes for what it...

GT 84 Ti EVO

There are moments in life when you recognize an instant rapport, be it after a few minutes of dinner party banter or when you sink into the first few arcs of an inaugural run and your skis respond as if your connection were telepathic.

This is how the new Nordica GT 84 Ti EVO introduces itself, as accommodating as the most obsequious servant, unassumingly tearing the mountain to ribbons while ferrying its master, unperturbed, to the end of the gravity stream. Before this season, no one could have ever skied the GT 84 Ti EVO as none existed, yet taking it for a spin feels like coming home.

Hero Elite ST Ti

“Super quick, almost too quick!” exclaimed Pat from Powder House, indicating that what the Hero Elite ST wants to do it does very, very well. The question is, are you up to it?

For the wheelhouse of this slalom are turns that dive in and out of every arc with the staccato speed a ZZ Top guitar solo. “This ski lives up to its name: SHORT TURN,” opined Zac Larsen. “Your legs run out of turns before you run out of mountain.” Brother Luke Larsen was on the same page, advising prospective ST skiers to “buckle up – it’s got a lot of rebound.”

Laser AX

How to describe perfection? Is it a list of all the ingredients the perfect thing contains? Is it the meticulous construction that assembles all the pieces into a fluid whole? Is it the action the product makes possible, the interconnection between man, snow and gravity?

It’s all of these elements, of course, but to Matt Finnegan of Footloose, perfection entails the alchemy to make their amalgam evaporate, leaving only sensation behind. “This ski just disappears underneath the skier,” he marvels, capturing the sense of unfettered freedom the Laser AX inspires. Nothing is impossible on an invisible ski.

Glory 84

[The test results and review for the Glory 84 are from 2016; its only changes for 2017 are cosmetic.] If your plan is to ski 30 to 40 days this season and make your big move up the ability ladder, the Glory 84 probably isn’t your ski. If you tell yourself the same...