Who knew? K2 was in the Water Ski Business?

[Hallpass]

Was buying a used trick ski off craigslist and the guy made me haul off some old skis.

I had no idea that K2 is, or had been, in the water ski business.

 

[Shell]

never knew...

[mwetskier]

i knew. it was actually part of a ' feud ' between herb obrien and k2 in which herb tooled up to manufacturer a rear entry snow ski boot to compete with a similar k2 ski boot. k2 didn't like that and herb didn't like them building fiber glass water skis but i'm not sure who fired the first shot. neither product succeeded in the market place. early 70's i think.

[Edbrazil]

Best as I recall, the K2 water ski was a good bit squirrely. Only around for a short time.

[lpskier]

I trashed an ankle on a K2 in 1973. I loved the ski. Kept me out of the army! Not really, but it would have if my number was called. #iskiconnelly

[OldboyII]

Awesome ski bag!

[Deanoski]

My dad had one he crashed and the ski sank to the bottom of lake sammish

[eddie_roberts_jr]

I still have one. They were made on Vashon Island right across from Three Tree Point where we used to ski all the time. It didn't ski real well.

[Texas6]

Bindings are waaay back

[mwetskier]

anyone got fin numbers for it?

[eleeski]

I had both a K2 Three and a K2 Four. Neither skied particularly well. I moved the fin to the middle of the ski (somewhere under the back foot - DFT 20"?). Pretty much unskiable. A fun experiment though.

 

Eric

[oldjeep]

Sounds like their water skis performed as well as their snow skis.

[MarkTimm]

I was at the K2 facility in Seattle last summer, the reason given for abandoning water skis was they didn't float.

[eleeski]

@oldjeep At that time, K2 skis were excellent. My K2 Three snow skis made me a good skier. A while later, Bode Miller rode the K2 Four as the first shaped ski to World Cup fame. The Coombas from a couple years ago really rocked. K2 makes quality performance skis.

 

And K2 owns Full Tilt - the most innovative boot company now. And they use Intuition liners!

 

However, no more K2 snow skis for me now. I'm loving my Goode snow skis.

 

Eric

[Edbrazil]

Quite a few years back, I had a pair of the K2Four snow skis. An early ski that featured

some extra sidecut, before the more radical shaped skis came in. I liked them; think I

donated them eventually to a younger skier.

[jipster43]

K2 VO Comps rocked!

[oldjeep]

@eleeski All I remember of 80's and 90's k2 skis was sending them back constantly for delaminated tips. And the pair of apache recons that i tried out last year were built so poorly that the binding screws pulled out.

 

K2 hasn't made a race ski in years because body aside, nobody would buy what they were selling.

 

Lol on full tilt being innovative. They reproduced a Raichle flexon boot from the eighties.

[dvskier]

My K2 5500's tips delaminates after many years maybe 10? Excellent skis for the whole mountain.

[slow]

Got a free pair of k2 Pinnacle Skis last year from the CMH Rotor Lodge. Gave them away they skied so bad.

[mullyman]

anybody got a pair of jobe snow skis? i think they were built by kneissl..

 

[Hallpass]

I have not skied K2 snow skis in a few years, but it does not appear the skis have held back Jonny Moseley, Seth Morrison, Shane McConkey, and many others.

[lpskier]

@oldjeep I think Phil and Steve Mahre might disagree with you.

@dvskier I had a pair of 5500's with Saloman 505 bindings. Great skis.

Now, if you want to talk about truly great skis, let's talk about VR17's and LaCroix.

#iskiconnelly

[Edbrazil]

Of course, we can also dig deeper into the past. Like Jean Vuarnet winning the 1960

Olympic Downhill at Squaw Valley on metal skis for the first time. Mais Oui. That course

did not feature a lot of technical challenge. I know, since I've skied recreationally on it.

One key Austian that I knew said they missed the wax, which would have been critical.

Vuarnet also was using the "egg" position, or a newer version of the downhill tuck.

[oldjeep]

Well, thing to remember is that Olympic racers don't race on anything resembling production skis. They may say a familiar name on them, but they are not what you buy in the store. Most of the time they quick take away the race skis and hand them a production model as soon as they finish the race.

 

I used to get K2 pro-form and even free sometimes in college and finally just stopped using them because you couldn't keep a set of KVC or EIS together for more than a month.

[slow]

K2 is long out of racing but thier parent company Jarden owns Volkl as well, which is having a bit of resurgence in racing.

[oldjeep]

Volkl, atomic and head are definitely the big 3 for racing. And if you can afford them stokli are great too.

[Hallpass]

Rossignol, Fischer, Nordica . . . .

[slow]

Rossi was suprisingly 3 this year in World Cup

[Chef23]

@lpskier I always found the Lacroixs kind of fragile. I had a couple of pairs in the late 80s when I was working in a shop and they skied well but never lasted for me.

 

I did like K2s back then had some VO Slaloms, GS Electras and a pair of KVCs that I loved. I was a big Volkl and Atomic fan back then also.

[rickstuebing]

Does anyone have a K2 water ski for sale?

[Keith_Menard]

My first 'real' pair of skis when I was a kid was a set of K2 KVC Comps. I loved those skis and kept them around in case one day I could figure out what to do with them.

 

For my birthday my wife did a recreation of a photo I saw at Sunday River. I told her how much I loved it...and she asked...now can we get rid of them? :)

 

 

[usaski1]

totally want to see a video of someone using a snow ski on water...

 

[LOTW]

The KVC's were AWESOME when I worked at Louise in the early '90's, ask Plake and Schmidt.

[Onside135]

@usaski1 Skip to 1:45 in this video....but then go back and watch the whole video!

 

 

[eleeski]

@usaski1 Enjoy this thread.

 

https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/comment/290225

 

I've heard the current crop of K2 skis are excellent. Worth a try next winter.

 

Eric

[sunvalleylaw]

Saw one or two of those old things under the ramp for one of the chairlifts at White Pass, back when I worked for my season pass up there in the summer. I think the twins skied on them at one point. But at this point, in the late 70's to very early 80's, they were just tossed under the lift.

[sunvalleylaw]

@oldjeep I have a race stock set of VO's ordered through a buddy whose brothers may have been olympians, which were way too stiff for me, though I could handle a "normal" pair of VO's just fine. These ones had the pink and grey KVC top, as that was what the company was selling then. But these were definitely very stout VO's, with the massively thick all foam with tons of fiberglass construction, and split steel edges. I still have them in a shed, with the MRR's on them. I keep threatening to bring them out in for some goofy day spring skiing, but am a little concerned I might hurt myself. ;)

[oldjeep]

@sunvalleylaw nostalgia is fun for a run or 2 and then it sinks in how much better todays skis are. I had a set of old 205 atomic race stock slaloms that i took out for a few runs a few years ago. Found out that i was incapable of making them turn any more, turned them into shot skis

[sunvalleylaw]

@oldjeep , I have saved enough skis of the ones I really liked over the years that I am making an adirondack chair out of them. Just need to get to the hardware store and get a blade that cuts metal. There will be some Elans in there (my old twin tips), maybe some old rossis (turn of the century slaloms, bright yellow), my Elan boomerangs (finally dead powder skis, pictured in my avatar pic), mebbe some old Heads, Oh, and a pair of RD Zero G slalom skis that were Elans in drag, with a made in yugoslavia sticker on them. And maybe my K2 V's. I can't bring myself to cut up the old VO's. Plus, they were foam with no metal, and I am not sure how well they will hold up as chair lumber. If I could figure out a way to work my old Duvall slalom in there, I would. But can't think of how that would work.

[MatadorMaine]

Just picked this K2 Ski up!

2

 

[lpskier]

@mmadore21 Don't ride that POS. I ruined my front ankle on that ski about 48 years ago and am semi-crippled as a result, needing either ankle replacement or fusion. The ski is very unstable and unpredictable. Do yourself a favor and shoot it with a silver bullet.

[bbruzzese]

Ski might stink but the bag looks awesome