K2 Fastplant Snowboard 2012

by Fraser
Updated:

The K2 Fastplant is a popular snowboard. This preview of the 2012 Fastplant will take a look at the board’s design, including new features for this season, to help you decide if the board is suitable for you. There’s also some help on where to buy it, because they’re selling fast…

K2-Fastplant-Snowboard

The Fastplant – by K2

Let’s start with what K2 say about the board:

“SKATE INFULENCE INDESTRUCTABLE STYLE… The 2011-2012 K2 Fastplant Snowboard has quickly become the park to podium freestyle ruler. Bambooyah indestructible core and solid feel paired with the playful Jib Rocker Baseline. Now with more pop than thought possible with the addition of the incredible Ollie Bar. You gotta try it to believe it.”

All mountain freestyle?

The fastplant is undoubtedly a freestyle board. It’s a true twin, it’s got a flat+rocker base, it’s light and it’s got pop. So how much all-mountain performance does it have? Is it going to let you down when you ride outside of the park?

Hyper Progressive sidecut. This is one of the features designed to make the Fastplant ride well on different terrain. Lots of different radii along the board’s edge, blended together, designed to kick in at different speeds. Mellow when you’re going slow, aggressive when you’re going fast. It’s a step to take it from jib board to all-mountain performance. In their words: “responsive at high speeds and smooth enough to butter your way from the peak to park.”

4000 sintered base. That’s a high grade base with good wax retention and durability. A fast base. Good for all mountain performance.

Good in powder? A lot of riders are saying that the board rides well in powder. It’s a twin with just a small amount of rocker, which doesn’t suggest great powder performance. I’m not sure how much faith can be put in this. But the rocker does help, and the feedback seems positive…

Durability and weight

Bambooyah indestructible? So the core material of the Fastplant is supposed to be pretty damn strong. Strong enough for them to offer a 5 year warranty on it. That’s a pretty good feature for a board that’s going to be used for jibbing – because it will take a beating!

Hybritaper. K2 taper out the thickness of the core towards the tip and tail of the Fastplant. This reduces the amount of material at the ends of the board, making it lighter overall, but also reducing the swing weight. Lightness is obviously good for freestyle, and reduced sing weight makes it that little bit easier to complete rotations.

WH4 Core. We’re getting well into board tech jargon here. In a nutshell, K2’s WH4 core has more “honeykomb” than their WH3 core – so it’s lighter than some of their other bases…

Freestyle base shape and pop!

Jib Rocker base. As you can see below, the jib rocker base is mostly flat with a small amount of rocker: “just enough rise in the tip and tail to create a loose, buttery feel on all types of terrain”. It’s definitely a base that’s suited to jibbing – and without having too much rocker, it’s one of the things that will help to keep snap in this board…

Ollie bar… another thing adding snap to this board. The Fastplant was very popular last year. The ollie bar is a new addition for 2012, it’s been added for extra pop. Simple. Rocker boards can often suffer from lack of power in the tip/tail, so this is an attempt to combat that.

Awards and accolades

This is only the second season for the Fastplant, but it’s already grown a strong following. In addition, it’s received the following awards:

  • Best of Test (SNOWBOARDER, 2011)
  • Platinum Pick (Snowboard Magazine, 2011)

Video overview

Overall Verdict

The Fastplant is very popular, it’s got good accolades and the new pop is a definite improvement. The principal design aim is a jibby, skate feel – that they’ve tried to make into an all-round performer. It’s got wide options for sizes and the graphics are pretty cool.

I do think that they’ve added some useful, all-mountain tech to this board, like you can happily ride it everywhere. However, in the area of all-mountain freestyle boards, there are more aggressive boards that are less jibby. It depends what you want…

 

Get hooked up

If you’re thinking about getting the K2 Fastplant, consider the stores below because they all stock it – depending on where you live in the world. If you’re in the UK, it’s pretty hard to get hold of. Boardwise has some so check it out. It seems to be a popular board.

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