Atomic Hatchet - 2011

Snowboard Review:

The Hatchet is the board responsible for turning around the fortunes of one of Europe’s biggest snowboard manufacturers, Atomic. The Hatchet has a bigger fan club than Pamela Anderson and seems to deliver almost unexplainable value for money when compared to other boards in its price range. I haven’t ridden a Hatchet since Tom bought one of the first incarnations back in 2002. For 2011 Atomic have replaced the standard camber profile with Pop Rocker; when you load your weight onto the board through the bindings the camber flattens and pushes up the nose and tail from the binding mounts, effectively creating a rockered tip and tail. The advantage of using Pop Rocker instead of standard rocker is that you still get plenty of recoil out of the tail when your carving and more high speed pop than you’d expect from a rockered board. However, you still get the properties associated with rocker, like float in powder, reduced catchiness and a buttery nose and tail. I took the hatchet for a number of runs through the mini shred and was impressed with the boards performance, the Hatchet butters at will but still provides plenty of pop. Grip carving was plentiful and tracking up hard kickers was considerably better than most boards using a standard rocker profile.

Ability wise, the Hatchet can be used by everyone from relative novices to competent park pros. Lifting the start of the effective edge off the snow means the Hatchet has plenty of straight line stability and initiates turns really easily making the Hatchet an ideal choice for first time buyers who want to progress their park skills but want a board that they can ride confidently on corduroy and ice. Experienced riders will enjoy the high performance but progressive nature of the Hatchet; who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

Posted by Rich Ewbank in • Atomic