Silbaerg Snowboards - The Next Evolution of Snowboard Design?

The 2010/11 winter season was a big year for innovation, we’ve seen all sorts of camber profiles, from banana to Flying V. Nearly every brand has dabbled with sidecut geometry to put more grip at the feet of the rider and we even saw Forum lift the profile of their Honeypot and Holy Moly boards at the feet.  In comparison next year’s boards look a little bland or familiar to be more precise. A lot of brands plan to rest on their laurels for the 2011/12 season, and who can blame them; it feels like the last 3 years has seen a constant flow of innovation, and innovation costs money.  Fear not, there is one brand that comes to the market next season with one of the most exciting snowboard design innovations since Mervin decided that snowboard sidecuts would benefit from a bump or seven and Bataleon announced that building boards with a flat base was for luddites. I introduce to you Silbaerg Snowboards and their ALD technology.

L to R: Eric, The Jibbomat and Joerg

Silbaerg is the blood, sweat and tears of Joerg Kaufmann and a team of researchers and students at the University of Chemnitz in Germany. Started in 2007 as part of Joerg’s PHD in Composite Materials Engineering, Joerg and his team started looking into the application of materials like Fibreglass and Carbon Fibre in such a way that when a load is applied to the material the material changes shape in a designed manner. All pretty complicated stuff, but after 4 years and thousands of computer models later the team have created a snowboard that when flexed into a carve has edges that actively dig into the snow and when board sliding, edges that lift up, away from the rail reducing the risk of hang ups. Silbaerg call this innovation ALD Technology. I met up with Joerg and Eric at the Kitzsteinhorn glacier in Kaprun Austria to try the boards, see and feel the effects of the technology and find out their plans for the 2011/12 season their first year on the market.

A video of our day testing and the guys talking about and demonstrating ALD technology.

After an hour drive from my home to the base of the Kitzsteinhorn I met with Joerg and Eric, two very down to earth and friendly guys who have found themselves adapting very quickly from lab engineers to Snowboard brand owners. One thing is for sure these guys relish the chance to go riding and the fact that they get to do it on their own boards makes the few days on the mountain they get even more special. Eric and Joerg picked up two passes from the lift pass office courtesy of the Kaprun lift company (thanks) and we headed up the mountain. Despite having a car absolutely filled to the roof with test boards Joerg and Eric had selected me a 152 Jibbomat Pro… not the length of board I usually ride, to say the least.  After a couple of lifts we strapped in and headed into Kitzsteinhorn’s perfectly cut Super Pipe which we had spied from the lift. I dropped into the pipe and fired up the frontside wall. At 2800m altitude the pipe was solid from consistently cold weather, but my 152 Jibbomat Pro gripped incredibly hard up the wall. Maybe all the talk of incredible edge hold I’d been exposed to on the chairlift was having a placebo effect on me, so we searched out some sheet ice. Again faultless edge hold, I was making tight radius carves on sheet ice! I really cannot vocalise how good the edge hold was for a 152, it was easily comparable to that of a board in the realm of 160cm, and it’s not like the flex was super firm, I’d say it was like any mid-flexing cambered freestyle board, not as soft as the Jibbomat name might suggest but a good flex for riding all of the features in the park, from jib to 20m jump. The next test was rails. I don’t pretend to be a good rail rider but when testing demands I’ll give them a shot. After a couple of warm ups on smaller features I lined up the flat-down-flat box and hit it with a backside boardslide. There’s always a first time for everything, but the Jibbomat Pro travelled through the down-flat kink with no problems. Interestingly, the uplift of the edge on rails is almost twice that of down-turn of the edge in carves, so even though the technology offers outstanding performance on hard snow its design is more adept to rails and jibs. One of the problems I envisaged the Jibbomat Pro having was that the edges would be catchy at the nose and tail when buttering, I can happily report that I didn’t have any problems and I didn’t feel like the downturned edges were waiting to flip me into an unintentional head plant.

After a day riding I was really impressed with Silbaerg’s ALD technology, and the scope for its application is incredible. For real rail focused riders Eric and Joerg both agree that applying a 3-4 degree bevel along the edge will improve their board’s performance on rails even further without sacrificing performance on hard snow, when compared with traditional cambered boards. I’m hoping that in the future they apply the technology to a more directional all –mountain shape because for me the biggest advantage was the edge hold that the ALD tech offered on hard snow and in the pipe. If you have no intention of switching you’re your board between pipe and rail runs, I can hand on my heart say that the Silbaerg Jibbomat Pro is the board for you. 

For the 2011/12 season Silbaerg snowboards will be available in very limited quantities from select retailers. ALD technology comes in three flavours; standard ALD tech is designed for less experienced riders; ALD Pro has more exaggerated edge movement and works harder than standard ALD technology but uses standard glass fibre for a manageable flex; finally ALD Carbon is lighter, stiffer and offers even more grip than the ALD Pro technology that I tested. Silbaerg will applying the technology to a range of 8 boards. The Carvomat Pro and Carvomat Carbon meet the needs of aggressive all mountain freestyle riders and the Jiibbomat and Jibbomat Pro the demands of park focused freestylers and progressing intermediates. The Carvomata Pro, Carvomata Carbon, Jibbomata and Jibbomata Pro make up the girls board range and pretty much echo the rider-fit of the men’s range but with softer flexes and smaller sizes. All boards are twin shaped with Structurn structured bases.

To find out more about Silbaerg’s revolutionary technology, the company and the board line-up visit www.silbaerg.com but have your German dictionary on hand.

He might spend most of his time thinking up bonkers technology, but Joerg can still get out of an Icy Superpipe

Posted by Rich Ewbank in Features.

Next entry: Tested - 2011 Good Boards Wooden 162 Previous entry: Tested - 2011 Good Boards Flash 185

User Comments

Comment on this article:

Remember my personal information?
Notify me of follow-ups to this snowboard article?

Submit the word you see below:

What colour is powder?

Steve Medeiros on March 08, 2011  at  05:57 AM

What???!!!?!?!?!!!!  This is so insane.  I just contacted them about distribution over here. :)

Rich Ewbank on March 08, 2011  at  10:13 AM

Best thing is that these guys are super hungry for more product innovation. I think they’ve got some ideas for bindings in the pipeline but they wouldn’t divulge too much information. The Robert Dysons of the Snowboard world.