The 2024 K2 Poacher returns for another year of mixed-up skiing, from the park and pipe to the natural terrain of the mountain. We’ve loved the versatility and power of these skis for years now, and that love continues into the next year. The twist for this year is the different colors for different sizes—other than that the ski returns unchanged. We all kind of started seeing the Poacher in a different light when Colby Stevenson started winning big events on this ski. We always knew it was a great park ski, but most of us used it more in an all-mountain format. Seeing it atop X-Games podiums certainly brought the authenticity of the ski from a park perspective into the forefront. While this wasn’t totally surprising, it was interesting to see the application of the ski move further towards the competitive side of the spectrum.

As opposed to the narrower Sight and Midnight skis, the Poacher is built with a blend of fir and aspen wood in the core. The fir gives the ski an extra layer of heft for hitting big jumps and landing huge tricks. On top, they use their carbon boost braiding setup that weaves carbon stringers through their triaxial fiberglass laminate. This definitely adds both weight and power to the mix, making the Poacher considerably denser than some may expect from a playful twin tip. In the 177, the ski tips the scales at 2079 grams, so it’s definitely on the heftier side of the spectrum. This ends up being fine, though, given the lower profile and splay of the tips as well as the need to have a strong and sturdy build for high-end park skiing and durability practices. If you’re riding rails all day, you need a burly ski to stand up to all the impacts, takeoffs, and landings.

As a twin tip, the Poacher is relatively symmetrical from a profile perspective, but is more directional from a shape view. The splay in the tips and tails makes switch riding easy and clean, and while the amount of splay is on the low side for a true twin, it’s still more than enough to encourage creative skiing and freestyle chutzpah. Thanks to the multi-directional nature of the profile, high-end freestyle skiers will find all they need when it comes to making their mark both in the air and on the ground. At 96 mm underfoot, this ski seems like it’d be on the wide side for a pure park ski, but in reality, many skiers prefer and appreciate the extra width underfoot for stability and balance. If a ski is too narrow, it loses that platform, and if it’s too wide, the agility gets lost. As it stands, the Poacher sits on the wide side, but still in the middle for a mix of park and all-mountain performance.

Thanks to competitive success, years of experimentation, and a tried-and-true construction technique, the 2024 K2 Poacher brings creative and high-end skiing into the limelight. With a new twist on size-related graphics, this ski takes the design and art to the next level. The combination of pro-level success as well as grassroots marketing from a daily driver standpoint makes the Poacher a very attractive ski for advanced and expert skiers who mix up their time between the park, pipe, bumps, trees, steeps, and groomers.