Burton Gets All Mysterious
Almost exactly 12 months ago I was strolling through the Burton ISPO stand (or should I say complex) when I noticed a display with an unnamed board and bindings balanced on a set of scales. Unsurprisingly the display was designed to show how remarkably lightweight this all-in-black setup was and it had attracted a lot of interest. After spending 2 days filling my brain with the many good, bad and ridiculous products that the snowboard industry had to show, this secretive setup evaporated from my mind. This week I noticed that a black board labelled the Mystery had appeared on the Burton website… the appropriately named shred had been revealed.
Burton isn’t giving a huge amount away on what goes into its Craig Kelly tribute ride. A lot of the materials like the Teflon infused Methlon base and Ultraflycore are shared with the equally ridiculously priced Method. However, Mystery construction and Mystery glass are completely new to the Mystery. What these materials actually are, nobody but JG and the rest of the Burton R&D team know. At 1500 Euros it’s priced the same as the Method but you can’t simply mount any-old binding to the flagship of the Burton range. With a 300 Euro price tag the matching X-Base EST bindings appear to be an absolute snip, but when you’re shelling out 1800 Euros before you’ve even stepped into a pair of boots this set-up is premium no matter which way you look at it. The X-Base EST binding is also completely focused on shaving-off any unnecessary weight. The single component baseplate is minimalistic to say the least… forget all the gadgets Burton has conjured-up in the last decade, the X-Base should be called the Xtra-Basic. The braided Carbon high back and its X motif are salutes to the original X-Base bindings which preceded the C14s and C60s and were the go-to for legends such as Terje Haakonsen, Keir Dillon and Natasza Zurek circa 1999. Together the Mystery board and X-Base EST bindings look very slick indeed.
Whether the SB-RV crew will ever get to test this miracle of snowboard construction is a mystery (see what I did there). I hope, like in 1961 when the USSR fired cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space and inadvertently kicked-off the 1960s space race that we’ll see a furious R&D battle between snowboarding’s elite brands to create the lightest snowboard on the planet.
Posted by Rich Ewbank in Blog & News.
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