WildSnow News Roundup — Splitboard Plumbing

It ain't backcountry, but it ain't wrong. Or, once a spider crawls up your leg, does a crawlspace count as backcountry?

So, you think I rest during summer? Fat chance of that!

Despite our little mountain town of Carbondale becoming the heat soaked Dubai of Colorado, I’ve been staying close to home and improving WildSnow HQ. Channeling my previous life as a builder and remodeler, the repairs have flown fast and furious — as have the Lowe’s receipts. What keeps me going crawling through 110 degree rock wool in a hundred year old attic? Ah, the thought of eventually doing more work at the WildSnow Field HQ cradled in the West Elk Mountains, up where the temperatures are cool and the alpine breeze hints of crystalline arcs soon to commence.

Let it snow!

As for our blog projects, never a dull moment in that area. Yesterday we got our loaner Iridium Extreme satphone, so we’re now fat with three satellite phones for comparo (Globalstar and two models of Iridium). Working on it.

Along with the space phones, I’m heavily into evaluating GPS/mapping smartphone apps for a variety of mind saturating projects that seem to have fallen in my lap like the defensible space trees I wish I was felling up at Field HQ. My Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is seeming to be a hot number; the larger screen just begs to be used for everything from watching vintage Three Stooges videos to GPS survey work on mysterious backcountry property parcels. Battery life is the issue, but, since the Note has a user swappable power cell, the aftermarket has kicked in with some blimp sized batteries that are said to run the phone for “days.” Several of the monster cells are on the UPS truck.

I’ve been asked a few times about our next “Ultimate Quiver” ski review. I’m well along with that; look for publication in a few weeks. Lighter weight skis will be our focus this year, though we’re not ignoring how the planks go down the hill. Along with that, yesterday J.R. lent us a Prior carbon splitboard to stick on the scale and compare to our ski weights. I don’t profess to be the go-to in terms of comparing snowboard weights, but this one seems to mass quite comfortably in the lower weight category.

Still life with Prior. XTC may cause that snowboarder to climb fast.

I’m not sure I got the surface area estimate calculated in a way that compares to skis, but here’s how it turned out: Movement Response-X is still our lightest in terms of weight vs surface area with a score of 63, with Trab Magico at 64 (virtually the same) and Dynafit Cho Oyu at 69. These are amazingly light skis that all go downhill quite nicely. Per “ski” the Prior splitboard fits in there with a WildSnow weight index of 67. Stick your snowboard bindings on there and the story might be a bit different, but still, watch out for that guy with the splitboard coming up behind you, he might just have less “ski” weight than you do.

Here are the actual weights of a few comparos, see this link for complete weight charts:

Pair of Movement Response-X 185 cm, 89 mm waist, 2,402 grams
Pair of Trab Magico, 171 cm, 81 mm waist, 2,000 grams
Pair of Dynafit Cho Oyu, 173 cm, 87 mm waist, 2,366 grams
Pair of G3 Zen C3 178 cm, 105 waist, 2,960 grams (in our view, this is our nearest comparison to the Prior)
Complete Prior XTC Splitboard, 165 cm, each ski has 128 mm waist, 3,054 grams

Splitters out there, what’s the comparison of a splitboard binding setup to an average Dynafit Radical or something like that?

4 Responses to “WildSnow News Roundup — Splitboard Plumbing”

1. Lisa July 22nd, 2013 10:40 am

   Getting those honey do projects done is almost as nice as getting my skis tuned!

2. John July 22nd, 2013 12:46 pm

   On the split, for hard booters; skins, Dynafit toes a few brackets or pucks for the binding, and wire type heel risers. Bindings go in the pack for uphill. Pretty light!

   Bindings such as the new Phantom are very light and do away with some extra brackets. Bomber sidewinders are heavy, but have elastomer tunable medial tilt.

   The TLT5 seems to be the favorite boot for hard booters.

   Don’t know about soft boots.

3. Shane July 22nd, 2013 1:13 pm

   Lou,

   For binding weights relative to soft booting splitters (which I imagine are the vast majority), you should look into whatever Spark R&D and Voile are publishing for their bindings. I’ve been curious how modern splits compare with AT gear in the weight department.

   Back when I was on my early Burton split with their proprietary binding interface I felt that I payed a serious weight penalty relative to my skiing partners, and maybe even my snowshoeing snowboard partners. Now that the bugs are getting ironed out I don’t think I can blame my slow climbing on equipment anymore – particularly considering how light soft snowboard boots are.

   I can however claim age as a somewhat valid excuse. Why is it that all of my BC partners are 10-15 years younger than me?

4. David Buswel July 22nd, 2013 7:32 pm

   A Spark binding is around 1000g, a soft boot around the same. You should get a hold of a Jones carbon hovercraft, reported as 5.5lbs with a 26cm waist. Flat tail instead of a twin.