I skied my wife's brand new K2 Pinnacle 95 skis last night in pretty firm snow and 25-30F temps. They were 177 cm long, which is way to short for me in this ski (6'4", 240lbs), but I wanted to try em out. They are also last year's model, which has been called a "clown shoe" which is exactly what I thought after a couple of runs. They were probably the easiest turning ski I have ever been on. Did a good job absorbing the hard lumpy slopes. These are pretty soft forgiving skis, but definitely not noodles. Seemed very stable too, although I didn't get them up to any significant speed. The big negative I noticed is they didn't carve for sh**t. When I said they were easy turning, I mean easy to pivot and toss around. My wife has not skied them yet, and I want to make sure they are dialed in before she gets on them. I decided to check some reviews, and sure enough saw several complaints about total lack of grip on ice. Most everything else agrees with what I said above.
When I got home I checked the edges and the factory tune felt pretty poor in terms of angles and sharpness. Whoever out there thinks that "factory tune" numbers are appropriate, sorry to burst your bubble. They can be all over the map, and for these skis, not what you want. I checked the base bevel to make sure its not greater than 1.0 and found one edge of the ski to be 1.0 and the other edge to be 2.0. Checked the other ski and same thing. The side edge angle was about 2 degrees. The edges were well polished and medium sharp. K2 should be ashamed to sell a ski with base bevels as high as 2.0 and inconsistent. I recently bought a Moment Bibby Pro ski for my son and it came with an impressive 0.5 base, 2.0 side tune. It was changed to a 3.0 side and it skied great on the east coast. I also read on the Moment website they bought a new Winterstieger tuning machine this year, and it shows.
So I decided to turn dialing in my wife's skis into a base tune experiment. I sharpened the side edges to a 3 deg angle and left the bases alone since I couldn't put a 0.75 angle on without a base grind. I made sure the edges were Very sharp and off I went to ski last night. There was a little more snow on the hill than the previous night, which helped edged grip a bit, but the skis were vastly improved. I could easily roll onto the edge and find grip. They were no where near my race skis, but that wouldn't be expected. I like the skis a lot more and felt pretty comfortable pushing them a bit at speed, even over boiler plate. I tried to feel the difference in the base bevel as one ski had the 1.0 edge on the inside and the other the outside. I couldn't really claim to tell the difference, which surprised me. I chalk most of the improvement up to the edges, and a small amount to the snow. I also noticed the skis weren't quite as easy to pivot, but I think that is what having a sharp edge that will grip does for you. All in all, I would call it a success and I will have the skis base ground by the end of the season to fix the base bevels.
When I got home I checked the edges and the factory tune felt pretty poor in terms of angles and sharpness. Whoever out there thinks that "factory tune" numbers are appropriate, sorry to burst your bubble. They can be all over the map, and for these skis, not what you want. I checked the base bevel to make sure its not greater than 1.0 and found one edge of the ski to be 1.0 and the other edge to be 2.0. Checked the other ski and same thing. The side edge angle was about 2 degrees. The edges were well polished and medium sharp. K2 should be ashamed to sell a ski with base bevels as high as 2.0 and inconsistent. I recently bought a Moment Bibby Pro ski for my son and it came with an impressive 0.5 base, 2.0 side tune. It was changed to a 3.0 side and it skied great on the east coast. I also read on the Moment website they bought a new Winterstieger tuning machine this year, and it shows.
So I decided to turn dialing in my wife's skis into a base tune experiment. I sharpened the side edges to a 3 deg angle and left the bases alone since I couldn't put a 0.75 angle on without a base grind. I made sure the edges were Very sharp and off I went to ski last night. There was a little more snow on the hill than the previous night, which helped edged grip a bit, but the skis were vastly improved. I could easily roll onto the edge and find grip. They were no where near my race skis, but that wouldn't be expected. I like the skis a lot more and felt pretty comfortable pushing them a bit at speed, even over boiler plate. I tried to feel the difference in the base bevel as one ski had the 1.0 edge on the inside and the other the outside. I couldn't really claim to tell the difference, which surprised me. I chalk most of the improvement up to the edges, and a small amount to the snow. I also noticed the skis weren't quite as easy to pivot, but I think that is what having a sharp edge that will grip does for you. All in all, I would call it a success and I will have the skis base ground by the end of the season to fix the base bevels.
