Tested - 2011 Good Boards Wooden 162
The Wooden was my second board of the day at the Good Boards test in Hochkonig, Austria. In many respects it got a bit of a bum deal. The previous board I’d taken out was the Flash 185cm an enormous oil tanker of a snowboard that had vice like edge hold and unmatched stability. Switching down to a more conventionally sized 162cm snowboard after that is always going to be a little under whelming.
The Good Boards Wooden is designed to offer all things to all men. The Wooden is available with Camber in lengths of 165W and 170XW and Double Rocker in 159mW and 162W. I opted for the 162W with Double Rocker, although I was a little bemused by the complete lack of a board with a standard 25cm-esq waist width. Double Rocker is another fancy name for using camber between the feet and rocker at the tips, you are probably more likely to have heard of it being called Camrock. Like the Flash the Wooden is well put together, the craftsmanship is good and the materials are of high quality. The bamboo finish on the topsheet looks nice with the high gloss varnish and although the graphics are a little minimal for my taste, Good Boards target market of 30+ year old freeriders are going to appreciate the simplicity.
Video Review of the Good Boards Wooden
The flex on the Wooden was definitely on the firmer side, particularly between the bindings, the rockered tips certainly made the board more manageable but I wouldn’t go as far as playful. For the first couple of runs I cut some grooves into the corduroy and dropped into some nasty crud by the side of the piste, I can happily report that edge hold was good and the board didn’t feel sketchy at all powering through the hard lumps, the bamboo and Kevlar do a great job of keeping every little vibration under wraps. Although the 162 I was riding wasn’t sluggish edge to edge the wide waist width certainly made the board a little less than agile, you’d want feet in the region of US10-13 to make the most of this board. Also having ridden Camrock pretty much all season with my Rossignol Angus I was really looking forward to snapping the board out of slashes and working the board into some really tight radius carves, but the flex on the Wooden was just too firm; you need to be in the realm of 80-90kg to get the most out of the Wooden’s flex pattern. I managed to find a little soft powder snow to test the buoyancy of the Wooden and no surprises here, the board floated fantastically and as you’d expect felt considerable more agile. Having checked the Wooden for its freeriding capabilities I made tracks to the park. To be honest I wasn’t really surprised that the Wooden could handle transitions in the park, the Double Camber profile keeps the tips forgiving enough for landing a little under-rotated or nose or tail heavy. If you intend on riding backcountry and hitting jumps on occasion then rest assured the Wooden can handle jumps and switch landings.
On the whole my afternoon on the Wooden was pretty positive. When I think back the only issues I had with the board was it being a little too wide for my US9 boots and me being too light to be able to work the Wooden into its sidecut and access the snap and punch from the boards firm flex. When I was turning up the speed the Wooden was extremely stable, in choppy snow the dampening was very impressive and when I took the Wooden through the park its versatile Double Rocker profile did the business and meant the Wooden rode switch very naturally. If you are between 80 and 90 kg and have US10-13 boots and you want a damp powerful board for freeriding but still want to dart into the park to show the kids that you can still clear the pro-line kickers, the Wooden is a good choice. If you don’t meet these criteria, like me, you won’t be able to work the Wooden aggressively enough to get the most out of it.
Posted by Rich Ewbank in Features.
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