2027 Elan Wildcat 83 Black Edition

The 2027 Elan Wildcat 83 Black Edition is a carryover ski for this year, featuring the same construction, shape, and graphics as last year. This is a prime ski for on-trail carving and emerging off-trail adventures. Since it sits in the low/mid-80’s in terms of width, there’s some versatility here with the shape, but the overall essence of the ski is more aligned with front side performance and smooth carving turns. By blending carbon and metal in this ski, Elan is combining the reaction and precision of carbon with the damping properties of metal in the best way possible. They are smooth and energetic—ready to make all sorts of different turn shapes and styles at a moment's notice.

Elan does not shy away from sophisticated construction in these (or any) skis. Built with Elan’s Tubelite wood core, the Wildcat Black Edition uses carbon rods milled and placed into the sides of the ski along the sidewalls. These carbon rods have been an enormously successful application of the material in skis ever since Ripstick started using them half a dozen years ago. Since then, this 360-degree use of carbon has been known to be energetic, predictable, and insanely fun when it comes to light weight performance. In addition, the skis use a single titanal strip along the inside portion of the downhill skis. Since the Wildcat is built and shaped asymmetrically, Elan can take more creative engineering liberties in terms of where material is placed for each left or right ski. In addition, the uni-directional carbon strips that are found below the core are different lengths to accentuate asymmetry. Tester Jana Ross notes that "This is an amazing intermediate skiers' friend. It will push you to be daring and advance further. Perfect on groomers, can hold on some ice too. This ski is perfect for intermediate skiers motivated to be better. It’s playful and fun enough with 13 turning radius yet can hold the edge well to push you to become more advanced."

The innovative shape has a lot to do with the ski's success as well. At 83 mm underfoot, the Wildcat has enough width to have a stable platform to stand on while remaining narrow enough for quickness and torsional stiffness. While most skiers will spend the vast majority of their time on groomers, there is enough width and flex here to make this ski operate well in crud, chop, bumps, and packed trees. The skis use a 130/82/110 mm sidecut to generate a 13-meter turn radius in the 160 cm length. This is short, bordering on slalom-like, and with the lack of taper in the shovel, it’s really fun to engage and find that shorter arc. We see more asymmetry here with the rocker profile as the Wildcat has more rocker on the outer portion of the shovel and more camber on the inside, per foot, to accentuate the ski’s downhill edge dominance. Tester Fiona Reed touts the front side application of these skis: " This is not an all-mountain ski lol. I found these to be very directional/frontside oriented, could definitely fly when you opened them up, very good edge hold and quite stable. Good at damping down the chatter from all the frozen granular roller balls. A little more forgiving in the frozen crud maybe than maybe a true frontside or race oriented ski as I never felt like I could get bucked off if I made a bad turn."

This ski has a big range because of its ability to be powerful and manageable. Most skiers in the advanced and expert range will love this ski. While it’s fairly flexible and has a short radius, those looking for ultimate speed carving may be a bit disappointed. All others will likely love the use of smoothness of metal and energy of carbon to create a totally unique feel on snow. This ski performs as asked with a high-end capacity to go along with an approachable feel.