The quiver freeride test

Posted: 12 March 2012 11:03 AM

So the weekend after the “Treeride worldtour” had hit the local hills of Svanstein, Sweden we had weekend with 20-30 cm fresh snow and it was time to test the track of the tour in sweet conditions.

The track and the lines around it offer pillows, cliffs, open spaces and thight spaces. Rather steep in some places.

The board set up to be tested was:

K2 DarkStar 155 cm (camber edition, true twin)

K2 Eldorado 159 cm (  classic K2 board, true stance, dual progressive…ie directional)

Rossignol One Mag 10/11 (future classic board, directional twin)

I had several questions to be answered beafor the test

1. How would a 155 cm board ride compared to the bigger boards

2. How would the handling of the drops and pillows feel with the diffrent boards?

3. How would it be to trow spinns and land them switch?

Test result:

1. The 155 did well in the steep pow runs. Given that there were some harder surface underneat. The downside of a smaller board were more in the low speed approach on flatter sections off the hill were one easy get stuck and has a strugle to get to the lines that you want to ride.

2. I think that al the boards handled drops pretty well. The best feeling gave the K2 Eldorado. Directional and siftt. The down side for the 155 is again flotation at low speed. If you dont know the landing you might want to approach the dropp a bit more carefull and that is difficult if you have a smaller surface area to float on. Winner: K2 Eldorado.

3. Trow spins BC: one need speed and / or float to do that. The landing with the Eldorado was a bit diffrent than whit the other two boards.  It was a bit hard to get the 155 to spin due to the float issue. Winner in this class was, not unexpected if you know about the board, the biggest board. Rossi One.

Point to notice:  for more open spaces the K2 DarkStar really give the big size board a match in this class. The ampek profile does, however, wounders for the big board as it handles wery well for its size. And size in B.C means less needs for clean landings and that gives more charge….

To sum things up: witch one did I like the most? I would have to go for the K2 Eldorado. The stiff tail gives the best response in treeriding and the feeling is superstable. I don´t film so I really don´t need to land switch and stuff. Speed, bigger dropps and flow is a higher priority for my riding. Even tough K2 don´t produce the board any more there are some boards that look´s pretty similar around and if your riding style matches mine that is the no one bargain.

Point to note no 2: this is not a “what board to buy text”. I have al the boards I need I just wanted to investigate them a bit further. If I would pick a board to buy for a regular rider, say 10-30 days on the mountain I would pick the Rossi One 10 times out of 10 times due to its “can do it al” profile.

Posted: 12 March 2012 01:47 PM

Hey MP, what are your stats?

I reckon you bump that powder up another 20-30cm, to half a meter and you’d see the performance of the Darkstar tail-off big time.

Posted: 12 March 2012 03:10 PM

My stats: 179 cm. 78 kg.

Yes. For big dumps the 155 would probably be long gone. But it was interesteing to see that a small board like that could perform quite good even when taken out from its original context.