My Gear This Year 2012: Boards in Review

Going into every year is a good time to take a look at your boards and think about your needs (usually wants) for the coming season. I have a few boards and a few wants. Let's take a look, shall we?

First, old faithful. The 7 iron. The trusty, if rusty. She's always there for me and can do almost everything I ask. My 2001 Option Kevin Sansalone 158.5.

Man's best friend

This is my first non-Wal-Mart board. I had no idea what I was doing when I bought this board. Riding or buying. CCS was happy to take my money, all the same. Its default stance is set back three inches with a long nose and short tail. And I grew up riding 500' vertical Midwest hills. Now, it has broken in just right. It still has a medium flex and is cambered, which I like. Now, I also live closer to the mountains it was meant for.

As I said, this board handles it all. Hardpack at resorts. All but the deepest of pow. Trees. Banked slaloms. Jumps. Speeeed. No jibs, though, homey don't play that. I will continue to ride it until the base builds and covers up some of the lurking stumps and treetops. Then it will be my pow board.

So far, I haven't done much damage to the board at all. No core shots. The edges are fine. I did break a quarter-size chunk out of the topsheet, but I 'repaired' it with a sharpie, so it looks more normal. I'm thinking about P-Texing it, but it's small enough, that I don't think it matters.

Canadian board, Canadian quarter

I am seriously entertaining the notion of splitting this board. I absolutely will split some board in the next year. Getting out there on a splitboard is just the next logical step. It's either split the Sansalone or this one:

Full House

I have on good authority that this is a Never Summer SL 164 prototype. I believe 2004. A friend of mine won it and three other beat up boards in a poker game for a $15 bet. When I told him I was visiting the Never Summer factory, he just gave it to me.

What can I say about this board? I've never actually ridden it. I has a blown out edge and a large core shot in the base. I've been using it to practice my P-Tex work and I'm thinking of splitting it. 

Git yer tetanus shots.

You should see the other board.

Next up is a 2009 Stepchild Corporate 155 that I got for doing some work with Snowboarder Magazine. 

Dig that graphic.

This is another early-season, thin-coverage board. Weird thing is, I've never really damaged my 'early season' boards, while my main board has two core shots. More on that later. I can't complain much about this board, other than it's too small. It's fun for springtime cruising. It handles pow and trees OK. It's got that camber pop. It doubles as my girlfriend's pow board. Being directional, this board can really lay down a nosepress - pow or park.

This brings us to the end. My everyday driver. Nothing fancy, but a real blue-collar board. My 2010 Never Summer SL-R 158.

Don't know what SFD means? Better axe somebody!

The 'new' board. Jack of all trades, master at none. Closer to twin than the Option. It also has a little rocker between the bindings and camber outside. This makes it float OK in powder, but not like the Option. This also aides butters and slightly detracts from pop. Dampness is where this board shines and that's important in the Northwest. That and stability were two big selling points for this board. See, I spend most of my time on the ground. I'm not fooling anyone otherwise. Might as well get a board that can handle it. I maybe should have gone with the 161, but other than that, this board is perfect for me. That and I got it at the end of the year for 40% off. Miserly instincts die hard.

Middle left and lower right

Here's the bummer, a season and a half in and I've put two core shots in it. Not that rad when you consider how NS prides themselves on their bases. One was my fault, I tail tapped a rock. The other, I have no idea, but it looks like it almost took my edge out with it. A little P-Tex kleenex wipe and she's good as new. Let that be a lesson not to ride your good board when the conditions are a little thin.

Anyway, that's how the gear is looking this season. A couple boards, mostly all-rounders. Hardly a full quiver, but I'm not complaining too loud. In a perfect world, the Stepchild would be my girl's pow ride, the SL prototype would be P-Tex practice only, the Sansalone would be the early-season board, I would ride the SL-R 75% of the time and I would have a deep pow stick and a splitboard (possibly the same board). As it is, I'm ripping, saving and plotting. Anybody got a split Charlie Slasher or a Whale?

Check out my other "My Gear This Year" reviews: Jackets and Pants.

Board Exam: 09-10 Never Summer Heritage-R

The Rep Said: This one's got a lot of sidecut and it's his favorite board in the line this year. Let's see if I agree.

Stats/Setup: I'm around 6'1" and 170# with size 10.5 boots which are 32 Focus Boas inside Union Force SL bindings. I tested the 158 board.

First Sight: My bindings look sweet with that topsheet and it's average to a little heavy dangling from my foot on the lift

The Conditions: Resort, icy groomers to slushy pockets

The Ride: I wanted to test the board edge to edge since the rep made sure to note the sidecut, but this thing just wanted to haul. I obliged. So stable. Poppy takeoffs and damp landings. Enough to make me get all Keanu Reeves and let out a spontaneous "Whoa" a la Ted 'Theodore' Logan. When it did come time to test the sidecut, the thing went back and forth like a ping pong game sponsored by Cocaine No Name energy drink. The straight-line stability carried over to turns of any radius. The Vario Power Grip sidecut kept me upright through the icy spots. In fact, when I went back to a board with a normal, radial sidecut after this one and tried to rail a quick heel-sider, I immediately teleported to my back. Wiggly sidecuts are for real, kids. Take this board into the tightest trees and come out with a wide smile from the adrenaline, not the lacerations.

The places I didn't get to test this board were rails, pipe and powder. One I blame on Ma Nature, the others just don't seem compatible with the board (or my riding style, honestly). I'd agree with Never Summer's assessment of a 6 out of 10 on flex (1 being al dente linguine, 10 being hardwood flooring). Couple that with a directional shape and make what logical leaps you will. Never Summer's Rocker Camber system should increase flotation in pow, but I can't speak to it specifically. Some may take issue with its weight, but once I unloaded from the lift it was hardly noticeable.

I've always felt like I have a wooly mammoth between my legs.

Bottom Line: Freeride with a dash of freestyle. Straight bomb a run so fast your cheeks pull back or get after it in the trees like a couple of horny squirrels. The Heritage loosens things up from the Premier F1-R for those of us who like a little more play in the ride. For me, that's a step in the right direction. This is a board I could use as my everyday resort board. It evens out the choppy, icy, nasty conditions and has a nice, medium-firm flex. Jibbers need not apply.

Check out Never Summer's site for their take on things.

Never Summer Industries: US Manufacturing

In amongst Rocky Mountain National Park and astride the Continental Divide is a section of the Rockies called the Never Summer Mountains. To find the action sports company that bears their name, one travels east to Denver and looks amongst factories and astride a northerly section of Colorado Blvd.

Don't worry, I found it

I made my way from much farther west on my current road trip. Mountain driving inevitably leads me to thinking about snowboarding, so anything snowboard-related was a welcome reprieve from the 90-100° temperatures outside. Just thinking about that now makes me sweat a little bit...

The San Rafael Reef
Don't think I forgot about you, Utahrds (Utahns? Seriously!?)

Luckily, Never Summer HQ was cooler than the outdoors. When I showed up, snowboard sales manager Mike "Gags" Gagliardi showed me around the offices and introduced me to the folks who make the process work. (I mistakenly referred to him as a rep in the last post, but he's taken on some more responsibilities than I was aware) Tim, Tracey, Jeremy, Micah, and Melissa were some of the Never Summer magicians who took a small amount of time out of their busy work days to show a humble blogger what's up.

In one room: the new longboard line...

On another wall: know your roots.
Before Never Summer, they were Swifts
(now the Swift is a longboard in their line)

When Gags had to get back to the grind, the invaluable Melissa brought me into the factory where the decibels are cranked and instruments of mass recreation are produced every day. Step one, the cores.

This block of aspen and birch will result in 6 or 7 cores

Home of the Flight Core Program

This is almost the last shot of snowboards in the set.
Most of the production on this day was skis and longboards.

Next up, a topsheet graphic. Here, Melissa shows off a longboard base graphic sheet.

Graphics are the one thing that is not done in this facility. NS has a different facility where the sheets are actually printed and put together. It is, of course, still in Denver, which allows for quick turnaround on things like color correction. Jeremy and the rest kicked ass on the graphics this year. I honestly think they have one of the best lines I've seen as far as topsheets go. Check out the photos at the bottom of the post.

You've heard of die-cut bases, this is the machine that does it.
Cutting blocks of p-tex into the patterns you see on bases, this one a pair of Icelantic skis
You might think they're one piece, but all Never Summer bases are die-cut


In the foreground on the left you see the die-cut, Icelantic ski bases.
In the background, edges. Each edge is made specifically for each board.


More building materials. Hanging are wide strips of rubber which wrap the board inside the edge to dampen vibration. On the shelf you see some carbon stringers which add stiffness.

The final, unpictured piece of a board is fiberglass. Never Summer uses three different types of glass in their boards: a two-angle (0° and 90°), a three-angle (0°, 45°, 90°) and a pre-tensioned fiberglass (called STS) that's the same type used in a bow string. Never Summer does leave this STS glass out of one men's and one women's model for a more affordable board. Without the STS, however, NS only warranties the boards for one year instead of their normal three years on all the boards with STS fiberglass. That should tell you how important this one material is to the production of Never Summer Snowboards.

Here you can see a board (again a longboard) finished with the layup process.

All the layers of core wood, fiberglass, rubber, carbon fiber and p-tex are put together on their individual molds with an epoxy that is activated by the heat of the presses. The molds are so important, I wasn't even allowed to photograph them. In the photo above, you can see the aluminum sheet that the board lays on. This is the mold. They are shaped specifically with an indentation that matches the shape of each board. That's how the board gets its shape. The most important asset at Never Summer is the people who work there, but the molds are a close second. Melissa's words...

Here we have some boards out of the presses waiting to have the excess material router-ed or CNC-ed off from around their edges.

Almost done. Finishing touches such as base grinding and edge sharpening go down here.

The blue roller puts on that factory wax, the boards are engraved with a serial number and the boards are ready for a scrupulous round of quality control. With everything fully running, NS can produce over 100 boards a day.

Finished, 1st quality boards are bagged and sent to shipping.
Still in the NS headquarters, this is their most guarded room.

There you have it, start to ship production of snowboards here in the good ole US of A. What better way to celebrate our independence (or close enough) than to check out a manufacturing facility that hasn't sent jobs overseas. Advantages of that choice include faster turnaround from R&D to production, the aforementioned graphics turnaround, and on-site warranty work means a fast turnaround (and trusted quality) in that department, too. Also, fully trusting the factory workers means that defects and seconds find their way to shops less frequently. The staff have a personal relationship with the product that you might not get at a big plant that makes boards for dozens of companies. Call it a constant quality control.

To be fair, NS does make skis for Icelantic and Fat-ypus and they've made any number of promotional snowboards. They'll make boards for anyone who can get together the right package of numbers, from beer companies to car dealerships. The big reasoning behind this is to keep the factory moving and avoid downtime. The less starting and stopping, the more efficient the process runs. Speaking of efficiency, Never Summer operates mostly on a made-to-order basis. While it may cost some time if they have to fill an order mid-season, they make it up with less costly inventory reduction at the end of the year.

Now how about a look at next year's boards. Here you go, ladies first...

Women's Pandora

Women's Infinity

Women's Lotus (Melissa's board of choice)

Evo

Heritage (limited edition of 950 and one sick topsheet)

Circuit


Legacy


Premier F1

Titan (also limited to 950 boards)


Revolver

SL-R

And I think that's the whole line. I hear they make killer longboards, too, but that's a whole 'nuther blog. I'd like to thank everyone over at Never Summer Industries for the welcome. Melissa, thanks for taking time to give me a personal tour. Also one last word about this guy...

Gags, Snowboard Sales Manager and top-shelf dude

Gags started his professional life as a 9 to 5, suit and tie kinda guy working on the east coast and in Chicago. Then snowboarding changed his life. He dropped it all and has worked his way up the industry ever since, starting on the factory floor. His passion for the shred is evident from 'hello.' Oh, and did I mention that he literally saved my ass from hitting the floor when I had a seizure at Baldface? Never Summer is lucky to have that one. Maybe give him a bonus or an extra pow day off or some such.

If you made it this far, you must have found intrigue somewhere in my telling. A couple other sources out there have some great info, too. First of all, this 10-minute tour guided by Jeremy has that certain shine only video can deliver. Also, shayboarder has a write-up similar to my own. She's got a standing with NS somewhere below employee, yet above casual fan. Not exactly sure what. Board tester? Take it for what it's worth. Finally, I've only ridden one NS board, it was the 2010 Premier F1-R and you can find the review here.

Any other snowboard companies doing manufacture west of the Mississippi? Shoot me a line. I might just be in your neighborhood on some random road haul. All others, feel free to comment, complain or suggest...

Gamble Ramble

Ah, Las Vegas, it's been so long since last we danced. This trip seemed strange because now I have friends who live there, so I stayed with them and not on the strip in some gaudy hotel. In fact, I managed an entire trip without setting foot on the strip. This isn't to say I didn't gamble, it also isn't to say that I avoided over-sized hotels altogether. This trip's extra-curriculars went down oh so close to the strip at the new (or maybe not that new anymore, but I have a soft spot for Binion's) home of the World Series of Poker, the Rio. A brief recap for those of you stuck in the days of the bad guy in the black hat: poker is super-hot right now. Billions of dollars change hands, legally, every year at real and on-line poker tables. The WSOP is the largest, most prestigious series of tournaments in the poker world. The winner of each even is awarded a gold bracelet (and a pile of cash), so if you ever hear of a 'bracelet-winner' you can be sure of that person's skills at the ovular table. The only bracelets I own are the ones that tie back my hair, but I've got some friends (poker pros and would-be pros) who try their skills against the best. I've been known to put a couple hundred on the line, but these tournaments run upwards of a thousand bucks a pop. One tournament even costs $50,000 to enter and they play five different poker games to determine a champion. That's not exactly chump change, unless you don't belong. Then you're just a chump for thinking you can hang.

Two more rooms like this and vendors hawking in the halls and you get the idea

Mulit-millionaire pro Gus Hansen (left) and multi-bracelet winner Eric Seidel (right)
The kinds of guys you play against in $50,000 H.O.R.S.E.

I just happened to be rolling through at that time of year. As you might imagine, the cash games were going strong. (as opposed to tournament play, where you're out when your tournament chips are gone, cash game play lasts as long as your own money lasts or until you choose to leave) My reward for parts skill, luck and patience was a couple hundred more than I arrived with. That should go a long way towards paying for this road trip with some fireworks thrown in there for good measure. Thanks for the venue, Vegas. Now if only it wasn't just as hot and sunny there as it was in Death Valley. Seriously, it was 107° three days straight. Hot enough to break a sweat walking from parking to the casino entrance. Problem, the AC was so high in the poker room that it felt like walking into a freezer. Maybe I should have dressed in layers. This is the only region I've traveled to where buying one of those gigantic gulps from 7-11 is actually an idea worth entertaining.

Enough of the past. I'm writing from Glenwood Springs, Colorado and tomorrow I'm headed east. One of the guys I met up at Baldface was Mike Gagliardi, a sales rep for Never Summer Snowboards. Tomorrow he's taking me on a tour of their factory in Denver. That should be a great opportunity for me to se what goes on in there and hopefully ask some questions about the whole process. Check back for that one and live vicariously through my wanderings yet again...

Board Exam: 2010 Never Summer Premier F1-R

Another day at Baker's Legendary Banked Slalom and I chose to inspect another new board. This one is Never Summer's 2010 Premier F1-R. My initial impression of the board was that it was heavier than average hanging from my foot on the chairlift. That's easy enough to make up for, depending on how it rides... Also, the nose and tail shapes were different, supposedly to enhance float in powder. Too bad I wouldn't get a chance to test that today.

Dangling from my boot

The ride on this beast was stiff and damp. And beast is an apt title. Everything I'd heard about Never Summer boards charging was true on this ride. That was the most noticeable characteristic of this board. Hardpack, chunder, tree bark, no match for the Premier F1-R. That said, this is not a board for pressing and jibbing. Maybe if a tree jib is in your way the F1-R might attack it for sport.

What else? Well, I'm amazed at the differences in companies' reverse camber applications. Never Summer runs what they call R.C. Technology: rocker and camber. Basically, it has a camber point under each insert and rocker between the inserts. On the snow, this translates to less catchy turns with plenty of power out of turns. I would rate the pop as moderate. Nothing surprising either way.

Accompanying R.C. Tech is NS's Vario Power Grip sidecut. Instead of having one radius throughout the sidecut, NS uses three. A deeper one toward the tip and tail, a shallower one near the inserts and a straight line at the waist of the board. This creates six contact points during turns instead of the standard two. This really translates to stable turns, even on the Baker boilerplate.

This board excels at hauling ass in any condition. It can handle anything you can up to a 60° ice skating rink through trees (OK, that might be a little extreeme). It is a freeride ruler, though not a board I'd want to ride everyday, due to it's stiffness. Those racers in the LBS could shave some seconds ripping with a stick like this one. Though it won't be out 'til next year, here's Never Summer's site to check the dirty when it goes live next fall.