The entire Big Mountain genre owes K2 a debt of gratitude for championing the concept of rocker with such fervor that it was soon adopted as an essential design element for any ski over 100mm underfoot. As an early adopter of double-rockered baselines, K2 has a lot of institutional expertise at making a very wide ski that’s very easy to steer. The Mindbender 108 Ti continues this tradition of simplifying off-trail skiing with just the right balance of baseline, sidecut and flex pattern. One of the Mindbender 108 Ti’s strong suits is its huge ability envelope, which means almost anyone can get on it and have a ball.
It takes only one section of uncut powder to realize that this unsullied canvas is where the Mindbender 108Ti would prefer to display its artistry. Who wouldn’t rather ski unblemished freshies? By afternoon what was once pristine has become a mogul field. Remarkably, its soft, rockered forebody allows the 108Ti to conform to gnarly bumps – I’m looking at you, snowboarders – as if they were only a minor inconvenience. Because it isn’t torsionally rigid throughout, the Mindbender 108Ti doesn’t feel as wide as it measures. In soft snow it feels comfortable enough to be an everyday ski, but that’s asking a lot of a ski that likes powder as much as you do.
K2 has always placed Forgiveness at or near the top of its hierarchy of desirable ski qualities. True to this heritage, the Disruption 82 Ti earned its highest marks for Forgiveness/Ease, which helped make it one of the few Finesse skis in a horde of Power-crazed carvers.
The most obvious reason why the Disruption 82 Ti comes across as easier to ski is its width; at 82mm underfoot, and with a less radical sidecut than most Frontside Power skis, it’s easier to throw into a drift and it won’t buck when introduced to ungroomed terrain.
The less transparent reason pertains to how it’s built: the Ti I-Beam that gives the Disruption 82 Ti its bite is only as wide as its midsection. This gives the edge elsewhere a subtle flexibility that’s ideal for anything but boilerplate or frozen ridges of spring corduroy.
While it’s definitely a carver of the kinder, gentler variety, beneath its easy-going veneer it’s still a trench-digger at heart. The widest model in the Disruption clan, the 82 Ti is predisposed to a medium-radius arc that it can reel off without much effort on the pilot’s part. It stays connected in part because the Ti I-Beam runs tip to tail and in part because its baseline has only a teensy bit of tip rocker that doesn’t prevent the low-to-the-snow shovel from finding the edge at the top of the turn.
K2 completely changed every core model in its 19/20 line, without straying one centimeter from its core values. True, the Mindbenders were built differently than the Pinnacles that preceded them, using all wood cores in their Ti incarnations (saying ta-ta to Nano-tech), and more Titanal in the tail section to increase rear support compared to the passé Pinnacles.
Even though the Mindbender Ti series, of which the 90 Ti is the narrowest, aims for a better class of skier (if you’ll pardon the expression), they’re not so stout they can’t be controlled by adventurous intermediates. The Mindbenders’ Ti Y-Beam construction puts Titanal over the edge in the forebody but moves it away from edge in the tail. This adjusts the skis’ torsional rigidity requirements to create more bite in the forebody and easier release of the tail, without affecting their even, balanced flex longitudinally.
Light and responsive to a gentle hand on the reins, the Mindbender 90 Ti may at first blush feel a tad too loose in the tip to trust at warp speed, but it proves trustworthy if given a chance to run at high rpms. An elevated platform connected to the core by its robust sidewall gives the Mindbender 90 Ti turbo power when rolled on edge. “It turns the way you ask it to and holds with confidence on hardpack,” attests Ward Pyles from Peter Glenn.
The personality profile of the Mindbender 99 Ti can be traced directly to the Ti Y-Beam, its principal structural component. As if often the case, Titanal laminates have such a profound effect on torsional rigidity and vibration damping that both its presence and its absence are palpably evident. In the Mindbender 99 Ti, wherever the Ti goes, Power properties follow; where it’s excised, Finesse facility blooms in its absence.
The forward prongs of the Y-Beam yoke travel over the edge, so at the top of the turn early tip pressure is rewarded with engagement at the earliest contact point. Through the critical mid-section, the Y-Beam expands edge-to-edge for max torsional rigidity before retreating to the center of the ski in the tail. Its edge grip underfoot derives from the wall-to-wall section of the “Y” pattern, sticking to any surface that will hold snow, then relaxing its grip through the bottom of the turn. This creates a built-in micro-drift that helps the tail release and keeps it pliable in manky bumps.
No ski will feel easy if it can’t grip on hard snow, so K2 attaches an insurance policy in the guise of a slender, separate core and sidewall combo that sits astride the Mindbender 99 Ti midsection. Dubbed Powerwall, its bonus standheight and damping multiply any force applied from above, amplifying the skier’s efforts. It’s a classic K2 embellishment, reducing the exertion required of the skier without compromising the result.
Any ski with a Power/Finesse Balance score above 90 is doing a lot of things right. The flex of the new ZX100 from Kästle is balanced and even, and the ZX100 resides comfortably on the borderline between drifting and edging as it dances close to the fall line. If you want to make a tighter turn that’s more carve than swivel, be prepared to work for it, but that’s the case for just about every ski in this genre. It somehow manages to feel lightweight and more maneuverable than most AMW models, yet it’s not particularly light; the Kastle FX 96 Ti is actually lighter, despite sporting two sheets of Titanal.
While there’s nothing extraordinary about its essential elements or their construction, the ZX100 gets all the basics right. Its non-metal make-up is refreshing in a genre loaded with as much metal as a gunboat. You may get it to quake at supersonic speeds and of course the baseline is rockered and the forebody tapered to neuter the shovel, but overall the ZX100 feels stable and confident.
The only quibble I can concoct is that Kästle should reconsider aligning the ZX too closely with the budget-challenged youth of America, as its blend of security and peppy personality could suit skiers of any generation. In full awareness of the irony of the gesture, we award the ZX100 a Silver Skier Selection.
