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Poster:
A snowHead
Poster:
A snowHead
So the new stick is back from its first outing in Tignes and the question is how did it fare?
Down to the specifics: although this board is an all mountain ride it's definately biased towards off piste riding which is fine with me as that's where I want to be doing the most of my stuff. When we arrived most of the off piste was tracked out with some places with a small depth of untacked powder to get a hit off. In both these cases the board performed fantastically well, cutting through ruts with enough stability to have not dramtic effect on the ride and in shallow powder it provided enough float without any weight shift required.
On the piste it's harder to carve than mu old board but with an extra two inches at the waist that's to be expected. It's also stable at speed,at least until you get hit by a skier, and responsive without being to twitchy. I hardly fell on a piste all week, even in the bumps, unless attempting something other than just riding.
I didn't take it in the park, freestyle isn't really my thing, and it's a fairly stiff board although there is more flex than on my old one, however, I got more air than normal and landed most of it fairly competently, the extra softness helping here and though it's still hard to ollie it properly I could get enough to 180.
Then it snowed
things were a bit more serious and with one lift open it was important to get on the good off piste early after a few runs down progressively steeper stuff I was stood at the top of an untracked 40 degree slope, only about 3-400m but heart in mouth it was time to test her out in the conditions I'd bought her for so I dropped in. This stuff was deep and leaning well back I picked up speed quickly slid the back foot out and there was powder in my face, completing the turn with a hoot I set the board up for another with the same effect. The slope stopped all to soon so it was back to blasting through the tracked stuff to the lift and another shot, rinse and repeat till lunchtime. After lunch even this slope was tracked and it was off to hunting through the rocks for more stashes but those first couple of runs will stay with me for a long time. Ignoring the fluff up on the cornice drop (me not the boards fault) this was an amazing days riding where this board really came into its own. This was true for the rest of the week standard performance on piste, amazing fun in any powder we found.
The only other downside I had was that although the board looks stunning the glossy top sheet was easily scratched by poles in the lift queue and some of it was scrapped off by skis/boards on the lift.
Roll on March.
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Poster: A snowHead
things were a bit more serious and with one lift open it was important to get on the good off piste early after a few runs down progressively steeper stuff I was stood at the top of an untracked 40 degree slope, only about 3-400m but heart in mouth it was time to test her out in the conditions I'd bought her for so I dropped in. This stuff was deep and leaning well back I picked up speed quickly slid the back foot out and there was powder in my face, completing the turn with a hoot I set the board up for another with the same effect. The slope stopped all to soon so it was back to blasting through the tracked stuff to the lift and another shot, rinse and repeat till lunchtime. After lunch even this slope was tracked and it was off to hunting through the rocks for more stashes but those first couple of runs will stay with me for a long time. Ignoring the fluff up on the cornice drop (me not the boards fault) this was an amazing days riding where this board really came into its own. This was true for the rest of the week standard performance on piste, amazing fun in any powder we found.
