The Landscape Collection is a pinnacle range of freeride snowboards from K2 designed to enable riders to tackle any terrain the mountain has to offer with confidence. They are mindfully manufactured, precision-engineered, and built to enhance the rider’s end-to-end experience. All of the boards in the Landscape Collection have a sharp focus on specific riding styles and types of terrain and have been designed from a gender-neutral perspective. Your snowboard doesn’t know what gender you are, and it doesn’t matter. This is simply an assemblage of high-performing all-mountain snowboards for riders who want to rip the mountain their way.
The Excavator is a directional all-mountain machine for riders who want a board that floats better and digs deeper. It specializes in keeping riders on top while navigating bottomless pow and carving up the mountain like a Thanksgiving turkey. The smooth-flexing, power-packed board has a mental edge hold that turns on a dime thanks to its multi-radius sidecut. Its combination camber profile features traditional camber between the bindings for control and stability and the early-rise rocker in the nose for easy turn initiation and fantastic flotation.
The Excavator loves riding powder and carving, but you also benefit from a shorter, wider board when navigating tighter terrain. Its Volume Shift design results in a wider perimeter profile that reduces toe drag and allows riders to size down around 5 cm in length from their average board size without sacrificing performance. Justin Clark, K2 Development Engineer, explained, “With Volume Shift, you ride the board a bit shorter because it has a wider than average waist width, so you’re getting the same surface area as an equivalent larger or longer board. For example, a 154cm Excavator would have approximately the same surface area as an average 159cm snowboard. That extra surface area is going to make the board float really well, and the reduced length is going to keep it really nimble through the trees without creating toe and heel drag. With the Excavator, we wanted an amazing powder board, but we also wanted a super fun board for carving on groomers because, as much as we’d like to, we don’t get to ride powder every day.”
Aya Sato is an up-and-coming freerider based in Japan. She frequents the lofty slopes around Hakuba on Japan’s main island, riding the Hida Mountains in the northern part of the Japanese Alps. Aya spoke about her experience with the Excavator, which she spends the majority of her season on, and the advantages of its Volume Shift design.
“For steep mountains or deep snow, I used to have no choice but to ride longer boards, but long boards can’t be maneuvered quickly, so I really like this design—it’s floaty yet maneuverable.”
The Excavator has a 20mm taper that keeps you on top when the snow has no bottom. The taper refers to the difference in width between the nose and the tail, with the nose being wider and the tail being narrower. The Excavator’s bigger, wider powder-sniffing nose puts more of its surface area up front, giving it float and helping to maintain maneuverability. Its narrower tail sinks into the snow more efficiently, propping the nose up naturally, keeping you in the driver’s seat rather than the back seat, and reducing the amount of physical exertion needed to keep the nose up. All of this results in a board that’s easier and more fun to ride in powder so that you can focus more on finding the perfect line down the mountain and less on burying your nose.
Whether you’re looking to have a mellow time on the mountain or push your limits, having the right gear is key for everyone. Being a female freerider on the rise, Aya commented on her perspective on accessibility and the Landscape Collection's gender-neutral approach to board design, “I feel like female riders have been held back in the past by having access to fewer product options. When the places I wanted to go and the products I was using didn’t match, I felt restricted. Many times, I wished I had the same products as the men so that I could go farther. I believe that boards like the ones we have now in the Landscape Collection will bring out the power in us that we don’t yet know we have. It’s great to be able to choose a board that fits our physical characteristics and our riding style—this makes snowboarding more fun and more equal for everyone.”
Lake Tahoe local ripper and Excavator advocate Tim Eddy commented on the topic of non-binary boards, “In snowboarding historically, it’s been predominantly dudes running the show making choices for other genders, and there’s so much assuming going on. It’s cool to see K2 bringing in a more balanced network of people to put in their influence and opinion on how the boards should be made, what the graphics should look like, and how we talk about it. That’s how it should be. Especially for boards because there’s no reason not to have boards that go across the spectrum for anyone who wants to ride them. It seems weird to classify it all and put people in these gender boxes when snowboarding is all about not being in a box. Snowboarding is for everybody, and I like the idea of boards being more style or terrain-specific rather than rider-specific.”
Tim noted some of the Excavator’s highlights after spending some time on the board across a variety of terrain and conditions, “The Excavator really surprised me, and I know it does for a lot of people. At first glance, it’s a powder board; it has a tapered shape and a big nose. It just looks like a pow board, and it is an amazing pow board, but in my experience, it’s an everything board. Obviously, riding powder is the best, but when you get back onto the groomers on that board, in between ripping stashes, you're still getting that same feeling on the hardpack, and that badass sidecut really translates between the two. Whether I’m railing a pow turn or railing on a low-angle groomer, the Excavator makes those two things somehow feel so similarly sick. That's what gets me really hyped on that board. It spans a really broad spectrum of riding, and it does just as well at both ends, from getting radical carving groomers to an epic pow day and everything in between.”
Another big backer of the Excavator is Caley Vanular, a Pacific Northwest powder hound and all-around global adventure seeker. Caley is based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, but her connection with the board sparked further East in Japan’s famed Hokkaido region. “Riding in Japan is where I really fell in love with the Excavator. At home in BC, the terrain is generally tighter and steeper, and there’s a lot of side hill traversing, but in Japan, the terrain is less steep, a bit more open, and the powder is really, really deep. It’s also lighter, fluffier snow, and the slightly shorter length and added width on the Excavator make navigating easier.” This is the volume shift at work. Caley expanded, “On that board, I find that I’m staying on top of the powder more easily, and the turns are incredible—it’s like a turning machine. The way it feels in that environment is so surfy and fun. I brought three boards to Japan but rode the Excavator the entire time. For me, it’s by far the best board in the lineup for that terrain.”
A specific and easily identifiable design feature found on the Excavator and all K2 snowboards is the patented Hybritech construction. Hybritech features tried-and-true cap construction in the board’s tip and tail, which blends into a modern sidewall construction along the effective edge. Pairing the cap and sidewall constructions makes the board less torsionally stiff, resulting in better edge hold, lower swing weight, added durability, and an overall smoother ride. Additionally, with the cap construction technique in Hybritech, the board’s sustainable wood core can run up to the ends of the tip and tail, which are then capped. While many manufacturers use a tip fill—a large plastic square that fills up the nose and tail of the board under the topsheet, K2 is able to side-step that, bypassing the use of the plastic, another holistic benefit of the Hybritech approach. Ultimately, the result is a higher-performing board that is better riding, more durable, and more eco-friendly.
The Excavator’s sustainably sourced S1 wood core comprises a mix of FSC-certified aspen, bamboo, and paulownia. Aspen and paulownia are selected for their exceptional strength-to-weight ratios—strong, lightweight, and poppy; while bamboo was chosen due to its density and ability to absorb vibration. Reducing the vibration keeps the board under better control. The ICG 10 Biax Glass runs tip to tail and includes ten stringers; this also supports dampening and vibration absorption, as well as adding backbone and supporting the board’s precision response. The Excavator also has great pop, thanks in large part to its pre-cambered Carbon Power Forks, which start at the back insert and go out to the rear contact point. The Power Forks give more power to your back foot, which delivers an added energy boost going into and coming out of turns and getting off the ground with ease. The Power Forks also add essential stability. As Tim put it, “I'm pretty tall and like to ride fast, and on that board, I'm never looping out, which is sick because that happens often for me [laughter]. That board is always there.”
Another proprietary tech included on the Excavator is its uniquely textured SnoPhobic topsheet, which sheds snow like water off a duck’s back; Justin put it plainly, “We’re making lightweight, high-performing snowboards that are great on any day but are ideally intended to be ridden in powder and softer snow conditions—you don’t want all that snow sticking to the board, anchoring it down and making it heavy.” While it efficiently reduces unnecessary weight, the SnoPhobic topsheet material also adds definitive durability. Clark, detailing the added benefit, “Say someone rides over your board in the lift line; it’s not going to take a chunk out of the side of the topsheet as easily. Nick something under the snow, and it’s not going to chip as easily.”
Super-fan Tim Eddy co-signed the Excavator’s topsheet tech, “It's annoying scraping snow off your board on every run. I’ve had three knee surgeries on my front knee, so I'm always trying to get all the weight off my board in the lift line so that I don't have a heavy board pulling on my leg on the chair. I had my first knee surgery when I was sixteen, so I’ve always been doing that, and now, on these boards, I look down, and it's already off. For me, that has been such an upgrade. It’s a no-brainer.” Tim continued, driving home Clark’s initial point, “We’re riding high-end snowboards that are designed to be light and responsive. If we're gonna care about all the small technical nuances but then just have a bunch of snow and ice caked on top of our boards, that defeats the whole point. I'm always trying to keep my board fresh and clean so I can fully utilize this freaking badass piece of equipment.”
The shape of the Excavator is fun; just looking at it makes you smile. It’s the perfect balance of playful and powerful, which translates into how you ride it. In Tim’s eyes, “The visual of the Excavator plays into the feeling I get when I’m riding it, and more than any other board, I really connect with the shape. Just looking down at it, I get hyped! The aesthetics of a board can change how it rides for you because it changes your approach to riding it and your vision of what it can do. If you took the nose and tail out of the picture and just looked at the contact points, that thing is a ripper. It could have a boring shape with the same bones, but you wouldn’t get that same feeling when you look down—it changes the way that you snowboard.”
On the subject of aesthetics, Peter Sutherland is a prolific multi-disciplinary artist, shredder, and well-published photographer based in Colorado. He has contributed a number of original artworks to K2 Snowboarding and is currently collaborating on an upcoming limited-release Landscape Collection project, with more to come on that. In talking with Peter about his long-term love affair with snowboarding, he spoke about the sport as a constant source of inspiration, “There are a lot of things about snowboarding that I love. It started for me when the sport itself was really just coming into popularity. I was snowboarding at an age where everything that was happening was happening for the first time; it was kind of the first wave. I grew up in Colorado, but I was two hours from a real resort, and I think that distance made me want it more and made it really special when I actually was snowboarding. I also saw snowboarding as a natural link to skateboarding, and it was the same with skateboarding, where it was literally evolving in front of us. Every year, someone would bring something new to it—a new trick, a new look, a new shape, and new videos.”
Peter dug into the profoundly impactful and multi-dimensional medium of video along with what’s keeping him standing sideways, “I was always really excited about the videos and the way that they would bring everything together. That's what snowboarding is for me; it’s something that brings together so many things that I love, like music, style, nature, athleticism, art, homies, graphic design, and pretty much everything. It's been really easy to just love it this whole time. I don't lose sleep over what's happening in the scene or anything; it's more just the sport itself; the activity itself is what keeps me interested. I started surfing later in life, and even that made snowboarding more special because then I started to think about the shapes of the boards and the hydrodynamics—what makes these boards work and what makes them not work. It just keeps going. I feel lucky that I found it. Now I take my son snowboarding; I really love that. I think there are a lot of cool things within it. It's always kind of like a self-perpetuating youth culture, like skateboarding, so it just kind of stays inspirational.”
Sutherland also elaborated on how the right setup can have a positive effect on the functional experience, “When I look at people that are really good at skate, snow, or surf, they don't waste energy. A good surfer takes two paddles and pops up on the wave. When I have a board that I like, and the time to figure out setting it up the way that I like it, I don't waste energy. And the transfer of energy is what I'm obsessed with within snowboarding. It's just that standing sideways that leaning carving thing, and as I'm getting older, that's what I'm interested in mastering. I look at a lot of the Japanese riders; they took carving and evolved it into a new thing. I love it. It’s like … we’ll say it jokingly, but artisanal turns [laughter]. It's that transfer of energy, and when you get a board that feels right, you're not wasting any energy. It feels seamless with the grade of the hill and the snow conditions. That’s what I get excited about.”
And what is function without form? Peter continues, “When you zoom out, snowboarding is a form of personal expression. If you're riding centered on a popsicle shape, maybe you're saying I’m gonna do spins. On a board with a directional shape like the Excavator—a shape that looks kind of like a fish surfboard, to me, it says, I’m gonna do turns. Of course, it does more than turn, but that’s what it says to me.” Sutherland expands on the final piece of the puzzle, “The shape can really bring it all together: the way you stand on the board, how much you bend, how much you try to make it look easy, how much you struggle, and how much you push yourself—those things are all there. For me, the shape of this board fits perfectly with the way that I like to ride and how I want everything to look when it all comes together.”
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