Freeride skis
Product 2024
Woman, Man
We liked this K2 Mindbender 106C, a true freeride ski, solid underfoot. Let’s start with its performance on hard snow, which clearly isn’t its preferred terrain. However, it’s often on this type of terrain that we can truly assess a ski’s capabilities.
With 106 millimeters underfoot, you naturally feel the leverage needed to put the K2 Mindbender 106C on edge. On steep terrain, on hard snow, you also feel a bit of torsion, it grabs, it releases. A sensation that’s not super pleasant… unless you’re willing to pick up speed and make carved turns. And there, you get beautiful carved turns on fairly long radii.
Changing radii requires some skill because it’s a ski that’s quite energized underfoot: to maintain the turn, you need to be well-positioned. If you’re too aggressive, if you overload the front of the K2 Mindbender 106C, it can skid out. Conversely, if you’re too far back, it can become understeering.
You need to balance both fore-aft movements and angulations. It’s a finesse on hard snow that an experienced skier possesses. On compact or even very icy snow, it’s a bit more delicate… It has good grip, but you need to lean it aggressively. You need speed to put pressure on it, for it to grip, you need to add things, to be active. It’s not necessarily instinctive.
It’s a bit of a characteristic of this type of wide ski (with exceptions), but you need to add things, you need to be attentive, sometimes you need to be aggressive, or on the contrary, ski relaxed, extend, absorb…
However, on soft snow, it’s a real joy because skiing flat feels natural with the K2 Mindbender 106C. In skidded/slipped turns, despite its size, it excels, very responsive. It doesn’t require much mental effort to achieve excellent results.
You can go quite fast with this K2 Mindbender 106C even though it has a bit of tip flop. Due to its rocker, the tip lifts a bit, but it’s not too exaggerated, so it’s quite manageable. Its behavior is quite pleasant, especially in snow clumps where it absorbs and doesn’t send too much feedback to the legs.
It allows you to accelerate, to rise above problems. It’s a true all-rounder.
The K2 Mindbender 106C produces a very characteristic sound. A sound that’s rather encouraging because it doesn’t sound hollow: a solid, muted sound.
The top sheet is super durable, like the rest of the K2 range. The K2 Mindbender 106C doesn’t have a raised tail that catches when doing, for example, skating strides. A pretty cool design.
A very good freeride ski, offering good support and very convincing off-piste performance. A reliable choice.
We used this equipment over a long period of time
These are our thoughts after intensive use:
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