Testweekend at Tandådalen

This weekend I was at a Swedish resort called Tandådalen. They had a bunch of manufacturers exhibiting their skis and snowboards. The kind folks let you try everything free of charge.

My usual kind of riding is when you get to go fast and make long nice turns. Beeing in control and surfing down the mountain that’s what I like. From that point of view I chose the boards I did. The runs that were open was really hard and somewhat icy and there was no park to speak of.

DC
The guys in the DC tent told me that their entire line this year is basically pretty much freestyle and park oriented. For my style of riding they recommended me the HKD 158, it’s an directional lightweight all mountain snowboard. It suited me pretty well, very responsive and it allowed me to go fast. I thought it would be fun to try another kind of board aswell. Therefore I tried the XFB Pro Lauri, which is Lauri Heiskari’s pro model. It’s pretty much a board designed for the park. It did work pretty well outside the park even though it was a bit too soft for my taste.

Bataleon
I’ve never ridden a board from Bataleon before and didn’t know too much about them. I started out with The Jam 161, and it felt very different, different but good. It allowed me to go really fast and yet feel total control. It was like the base wouldn’t let go of the piste. Bataleon themselves calls it magical and I think I have to agree. I also tried Fun.Kink 157, it’s about having fun as the name claims. It’s much softer than The Jam and is meant to be used in the park. It almost had the same feeling as The Jam, being stuck to the piste, but not quite the same. It didn’t have the same feeling of control and it felt a bit weird. I think the feeling of the based being stuck to the piste is because of the “Triple Base Technology”, which basically means that the base isn’t flat, but divided in three sections. Extra plus for the best looking graphics.

Burton
I used to ride Burton snowboard but I have done it for a while. The first one I tried was the T6 159. It’s supposed to be a high speed rocket and you’re supposed to slay the mountain with it or something. It didn’t do too much for me, it could be because of the icy condition and the stiffness of the board. It didn’t feel that smooth, it gave me a bumpy ride and it lacked that feeling of control I want. I also tried Burton Hero 155, the first rockered board from Burton. I’ve never ridden a rocker before and I really liked it. This board was voted “Top Ten Snowboard for 2009” (or something like that) by Transworld Snowboarding. It’s supposed the be a true all mountain board. It handled itself really nice at fast speeds and long turns. The rocker design felt like it helped you when you turned. It’s hard too explain but it kicked back and straightend itself after turning.

Extrem
Extrem is a swedish company based in Åre. I owned one of their boards some years ago and I didn’t like that one at all. This time I tried their Justice 157, a model that have been around for some years now. It’s an allround board, I didn’t hate it or love it. It felt like an average snowboard and it just didn’t do anything extra for me. I really hoped it would be good, being swedish and all.

So to sum up, the boards I liked and probably could buy was Bataleon “The Jam” 161, after that one I really liked the Burton Hero 155.

I would have wanted to try boards from Lib Tech or GNU but those bastards wasn’t there. Hopefully next year!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 by Fredrik and is filed under Snow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Back to frontpage