Jan 28, 2014
I love powder and I love trees.
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I love powder and I love trees.
Salomon Powder Snake Snowboard: A mini-review
Apologies in advance as this one is a bit delayed. The Salomon Snowboard’s Powder
Snake is about two seasons old. When most people think of Salomon, they think of the ski company, which has been known to create some of the best race skis in the business. Some people forget that they also were the first to bring twin-tip skis to the masses as well as twin tip fat skis to the mass market. You may ask what this has to do with snowboarding, but it gives some historical perspective for a brand used to bringing technical innovation to the freestyle/freeride marketplace.
On the snowboarding front, Salomon has been making snowboards since about 1994. Certainly a lot more “core” history than a lot of other brands. They also own Bonfire, some of the oldest OGs in the business of snowboarding. Their boards have always been known to be stable, tracking true and solid. They also pushed the limits of ecologically friendly with their GIFT line, including Wolly Nyfelt’s Sick Stick. When you also look at their team, they’ve got stone cold killers like Bode Merrill and Louis Paradis.
With the Powder Snake, Salomon brings innovation back to the table. Twin tip powder-oriented boards aren’t new to snowboarding. Examples include: Capita, Lib Tech, Burton, K2 and a few others. Salomon brought this concept back to the marketplace (a year before Burton’s Family Tree). With the growth of side- and backcountry, this board is squarely targeted to the quiver-oriented snowboarder looking for that playful deck which can rip and take freestyle tricks into the backcountry.
Overall, I found this board to be super playful and a ton of fun in the soft snow. It’s cliched to say it felt like surfing on the snow, but the board felt like a fatter, high volume surfboard riding down the line of a nice tasty wave. Much like you would expect for a pow freestyle board, it was quickly adept going switch. The pow rocker worked great in the soft stuff, and you can set this board up like your favorite park board (I rode it with a ducked, centered 23” stance). The specs state that this board is centered, but I found it worked best with a slightly set back stance due to the pow rocker or with a bit more of a weighted back foot. The rubber pads provided a lot of dampening (almost too much for my tastes) to let you float over the crud and rough stuff. This isn’t a quiver killer, and I also wouldn’t recommend this as your only board as it can handle the groomers to get you from the lift to the stash, but that’s not its forte.
At the end of the day, this board retails for $399. And at that price, the price is right for adding a pow board to the quiver.
The tech details -
TERRAIN: ALL MOUNTAIN FLEX: 5 SHAPE: TAPERED TWIN PROFILE: POW ROCKER BASE MATERIALS: SINTERED SIDECUT: QUADRATIC FACTORY FINISH: ALL MOUNTAIN EDGE BEVEL, STANDARD STONE FINISH SUSPENSION: ROYAL RUBBER PADS CONSTRUCTION: BA MD, POPSTER CORE TYPE: ASPEN STRONG
New Boards!!! Woot Woot. Hyland Hills, MN.