Nordica Santa Ana 97 25/26

The Santa Ana 97 is Nordica's flagship women's all-mountain ski, and the 25/26 version earns that title. Construction centers on a beech-and-poplar Performance Wood core paired with an elastomer Pulse layer — that combination gives the ski a lively, forgiving feel without being nervous underfoot. Underfoot you also get Nordica's Terrain Specific Metal: rather than a uniform slab, the titanal is calibrated by waist width across the line, so the metal footprint widens as the skis get narrower and on-trail-focused. At 97mm that footprint sits just wide enough to deliver real grip and damping on hard snow without locking the ski into a stiff, demanding stance. Rocker in the tip and an unlocked tail (meaning the tail has a touch of rise rather than being fully flat on snow) let the ski release easily and pivot without wrestling it. On a firm groomer it carves a clean, medium-radius arc — roughly 15.5m on the shortest length up to 17m on the longest; once the snow softens or the pitch steepens, the rocker entry and light tail encourage smearing, hop turns, and a float in powder that a stiffer, heavier carving ski simply won't give you.

This is the right ski for an intermediate-to-advanced woman who wants one ski for the whole mountain — someone willing to go off-piste, hit some bumps, and still lay down clean turns on a groomer before lunch. It is not the right ski if you spend most of your day on hard-packed groomers making pure carved arcs at high speed; for that kind of skiing the narrower Santa Ana 92 will give you crisper edge engagement, partly because Nordica's terrain-specific layup puts a wider band of metal underfoot the narrower the ski gets. And if you're chasing deep western powder days more than groomer laps, the Santa Ana 102 buys you five more millimeters of float and a more relaxed feel off-piste. The 97 lives between those two — genuinely versatile, not a specialist in either direction. This is a flat ski; pair it with a binding that matches your boot sole length and DIN range.