Ok, I’m an idiot. I wrote a review a while back about the Yes 420 – I said it was good, but had some drawbacks, and that I wouldn’t buy it again.
I’m here to tell you that, actually, it’s the funnest board in the world!!
What’s changed?
Whistler Summer Gravity Camp: adult camp review
While browsing my Instagram feed I saw a clip from Summer Gravity Camps, urging us all to sign up for this summer’s sessions. And I realized that this time last year, I was signed up, paid up, and outrageously psyched up to go!!
Here’s the overview:
SGC Week 4. V2 from Summer Gravity Camps on Vimeo.
My experience was this:
– The riding at Whistler is mind blowingly good!!! There’s a huge variety of trails, for all types of crazy, and the flow trails (my personal favorites) are bigger and better than anything I’d seen before. Some of the corners are banked up to the clouds – you’re riding a nicely sculpted wall at top speed.
Continue reading “Whistler Summer Gravity Camp: adult camp review”
Jones Prodigy snowboard review update
So a few months ago I was looking for a board for my kid, and reviewed the Jones Prodigy, saying:
I’d be all over this like butter on toast except for the directional twin shape. As an all-mountain ripper I have no doubt that this thing is incredible. But my kid’ll be doing a lot of park riding as well as all-mountain ripping this year, so I’m thinking he’ll be better off on a true twin. If I could afford two boards for the kid? TAKE MY MONEY.
Come Christmas time, I couldn’t resist, and picked up a 130cm as his powder board (he usually rides a 120cm Banana Blaster). I wasn’t sure if the larger size would make much of a difference, until last weekend at Stevens Pass, which was possibly the best powder day of the season!!
It’s hard to get a review out of a 9 year old, but here’s what I saw: in about a foot of fresh powder, this board floated beautifully. The nose stayed up on top of the snow and he was able to shred it all. At the same time, it seemed highly maneuverable in the steep trees (Wild Katz trees, for those who know Stevens Pass).
We rode together all morning and at times I had a hard time keeping up 🙂
Snowboard boots for kids who rip
I’m going through all of last year’s gear, seeing what I can sell, and figured I’d write a quick entry about snowboard boots for kids, since we took a long time to find them.
My 7 year old started the year in some Burton rental boots – super comfy, but super soft and squishy and only held together with velcro. We’d bought them new from REI’s rental fleet in 2014, when REI in the Puget Sound area decided to get out of the rental game.
By Christmas it was obvious that his boots were holding him back – he was charging double blacks in a pair of bedroom slippers! So we went on the hunt for a good pair of boots.
I don’t remember all of the ones we tried – most size 2 boots were super soft and made for beginners; there was one pair that was crazy stiff; and then there were the ThirtyTwo Boa Kids boots – super comfy, stiff but not too stiff, and with a Boa closure (key for kids to be able to do up and adjust their own boots).
He outgrew them in half a season, but we’ll get the same ones this year (and now they’re last year’s model, so they’ll cost a bunch less).
Hope that helps!
Review: Yes 420 snowboard
(I’ve posted an updated review here – but you should still read this one first!)
Last year, I was on the hunt for the funnest, surfiest, slashiest snowboard. I didn’t get very far down my list before settling on the Capita x Spring Break Slush Slasher… but by the time I’d discovered it, the board was sold out everywhere.
(This year’s version is out now, though, and available from Backcountry.com.)
Instead, on a whim, I ordered the Yes 420:
The 420 is a short, fat, flat powder board, that rides kinda like those flat-bottomed skiffs the Aussies like to race:
In deep powder, it’s insanely fun to ride! It sits up on top of the snow, and turns like a dream – you can drop a rail into the snow to rip a turn, or stay up on top and drift your turns. Super fun.
Downsides are: on chop, you feel every single bump, and you’ll soon be exhausted; on groomers, it’s slow edge to edge, just because of its crazy width; in the lift line, it’s a bit of a pain since it’s hard to tilt it up on an edge.
So its useful conditions are pretty much deep, untracked snow – and for that, it’s an amazing board. Definitely a very focused board that’s meant to be part of a larger quiver. Would I buy it again? Probably not, to be honest. While it’s fun to ride in powder, so are many boards!!! And this one sucks once you’re out of the soft stuff. For resort riding, that means you can ride it for the first few runs of the day, or until the goods have been tracked up, and then you have to go and switch out to a board with better dampening.
Think it’s the right board for you? Buy the 2017 Yes 420 at Backcountry.com.
Snowboards for kids who rip: Never Summer Bantam
This post is part of a series on Snowboards for kids who rip. See the original post for the full list of boards.
Never Summer Bantam
This is another new board for 2017, and it replaces the Evo Mini which got consistently good reviews on the “dads overthinking their kid’s board” forums that I frequent 🙂 From the spec list, they seem very similar: rocker-camber-rocker-camber-rocker (banana!), their form of magnetraction, damping underfoot, and a sintered base.
In fact, this is the only little kids’ board out there that I could find with a sintered base – the rest all went for extruded. Why is that? As far as I can tell, extruded bases are slower, and they require waxing all the freaking time!!
So: fast, good profile, magnetraction. “Super soft flex” is the only question mark for me. Available sizes: 119, 125, 130, 136, 142.
All sizes currently available on Amazon for 279.99.
Continue reading “Snowboards for kids who rip: Never Summer Bantam”
Snowboards for kids who rip: Jones Prodigy
This post is part of a series on Snowboards for kids who rip. See the original post for the full list of boards.
Jones Prodigy
Now here’s a board I’m really stoked on! It’s a brand new board from Jones, and it sounds like they’ve put a lot of effort into making a killer board for kids. It’s a directional twin with the new spoon nose technology for easier turn initiation (I’m just going on what they’re telling me here – sounds like the Yes 20/20’s powder hull design that everyone loved last year). Super sweet graphics, magnetraction, and a medium flex. It’s a rocker-camber-rocker shape.
I’d be all over this like butter on toast except for the directional twin shape. As an all-mountain ripper I have no doubt that this thing is incredible. But my kid’ll be doing a lot of park riding as well as all-mountain ripping this year, so I’m thinking he’ll be better off on a true twin. If I could afford two boards for the kid? TAKE MY MONEY.
(From poring over specs, it looks like it’s a 20mm setback that makes it directional; no mention of different flex front and back.)
Plus Jeremy Jones himself said that this is just the beginning of their kids line, so I’m super stoked to see what comes next!!
Snowboards for kids who rip
It’s really hard to find a good snowboard for a little kid who rips. There’s plenty of boards for little kids who are just getting started – super soft, raised edges, flat camber, perhaps cheaper materials. But if your 8 year old is hitting boxes and rails in the park, shredding deep powder, and riding the double-blacks on the mountain, you’re likely looking for a board that can keep up with him – or at least give him the edge he needs to keep progressing.
Here are the boards that I’ve sifted out of the stack as being “non-beginner” boards. On many of these, it’s damn hard to tell – their websites give a marketing-y overview, with some catchwords, but don’t really explain who the board is designed for. If you have direct experience with any of these boards (or boards I haven’t covered) feel free to contact me!
I’ll be adding to the list below as I finish each new page.
Boards for kids who rip:
In the pipeline:
- Lib Tech Banana Blaster
- and more…
The search for the funnest, surfiest, slashiest snowboard
I’m on the hunt for the funnest, surfiest, slashiest snowboard there is!
I’ve always enjoyed playing around at the side of the trails, and finding pockets of strange snow (who doesn’t?), and this year I’m on a mission to perfect “the slash.” That got me thinking: what is the funnest, surfiest snowboard out there? Which one would be an absolute blast in all conditions, skating and surfing down the hill?
This list is probably similar to a list I’d put together for powder boards, except I’m leaving out those boards that are too powder-specific. There are plenty of amazing powder boards, with all sorts of shapes… and maybe next year I’ll get the chance to go shopping for one 🙂
Below are some of the candidates. I’m nowhere close to being able to decide – can you help me?! If so, please post up in the comments.
K2 Cool Bean
Most of the reviews say that the board excels in deep powder, but is totally fun and surfy in all conditions. And I was super stoked on it, until I saw this video from the Good Ride:
These guys are saying that it suffers horribly outside of clean, untracked goodness, which knocks down the claims of it being an awesome all-rounder. Whom to believe? I’m not sure. Maybe I need to track down that guy at Stevens Pass and see what he thinks. Ridden one yourself? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!!
Price: $500
Lengths: only available in 144cm
Available from: Evo, Amazon
Capita Slush Slasher
If I was going purely by name, this would be the one! Sounds pretty slashy and non-pow-specific to me!
I’m not a huge fan of the look of the board, but its design sounds like it might be a winner. The philosophy was to create a board that’s just fun and surfy, with no other pretensions. From CAPiTA’s website:
No snowboard in the history of snowboarding was designed to make party like these bad boys. From mid-winter to the spring or summer, if the sun is shining and there’s something to slash, these babies want to do the slashin’.
Check out what whitelines.com has to say:
Laybacks and slashes on the piste edges are the order of the day, thanks to a heavily set-back stance that grants this board a loose, surfy feel – in fact I’d be tempted to re-christen it the ‘Soup Surfer’: a quiver stick for those porridgey April afternoons.
This actually sounds like the winner. And at under $400 ($370 to be precise) it’s well within budget (with money left for fluoro shades and Pina Coladas). Anyone ridden one?
(Only problem: it’s out of stock everywhere!! I’m not the only one who thought it sounded awesome.)
Next up…
There are a bunch more boards on my short-list! Still to come:
- Flow Darwin
- Burton Fish
- Salomon Derby
- Yes 420
- LibTech Round Nose Fish
And a few honorable mentions:
- Korua Puzzle
- Jones Hovercraft
- Jones Stormchaser
- K2 CarveAir
- Yes 20/20
Snow chains for a Winnebago View
Over Christmas we drove the Navion (an Itasca Navion is another name for the Winnebago View) to the ski resort for a night. It had been dumping snow for days, and we wanted some of it, and it seemed a great chance to try the motorhome in the snow.
Because the weather had been so bad/awesome, chains were required on the road up to the mountain. So here’s what I learned:
- With duallies, you need to be careful with chain clearance between tires. So even though there’s a ton of clearance in the wheel well for chains, low-clearance chains are still recommended because of the smaller space between the inner and outer tires.
- Installing chains on a duallie motorhome isn’t too bad. You drive the inner tire up on a ramp (in my case my Lynx leveling blocks
), so that the outer tire is suspended in the air.
- Bring foul-weather gear. You’ll be on the ground checking the chains, and that ground is going to be slushy, cold, and filthy.
Once the chains are on, try to stay on the snow-covered portion of the roads. Driving on bare pavement drastically reduces the life of your chains – and it rattles the heck out of the occupants! I kept to 25mph with my emergency flashers on, and was quite happy.
For chains, I bought these:
Security Chain Company SZ429 Super Z6 Cable Chain
They were easy to install, remove, and store away, and cost less than $100.