The 2015 Gear Guide – Snowboard Shapes Explained

Let’s face it, these days, walking into a snowboard shop can be as daunting as the first time you bought a box of rubbers; there’s just so many shapes and sizes. Luckily, the Transfer Gear Guide is here to hold your hand through the process Illustration:: Louis Macindoe

Transfer | Gear Guide

This article appears in the 2015 Transfer Gear Guide, available for free with Issue #18. Purchase HERE

Snowboarding – as surfing and skateboarding’s little brother – will always follow in the footsteps of its older siblings. And just like pro model skate decks of the ’80s and surfing’s current fleet of foam oddities, snowboarding is going through a shaping renaissance. Some boards will help you ride better and some will make you look better, but either way, take the trip and let Transfer walk you through it.

The Chodes

We all know snowboarding imitates surfing, and just like surfers taking too many cues from the bald chia seed man, we all started riding boards way too small sometime around the mid millennial when the ‘jibbing’ thing hit its second wind. Riding the smallest board possible with the stance maxed out not only made you look like a bonafide poo-man, but worked wonders for your press game. Even the slightest bit of over-pressing would have you penguin diving like eddy the eel. Luckily, our boards have grown in length since then. But in recent times, manufacturers have been chiming away on boards with so called ‘reduction’ technology. The current crop of ‘chodeboards’ have come a long way from riding children’s noodles and handle just like your big boy board, however, being 10cm shorter than your normal whip, you get all the playful tossability perks of riding a smaller stick. Wider waist widths, mellower sidecuts and strengthened cores allow for performance handling and durability, while certain manufacturers combine the tech with different tip shapes for different applications – either way, the boards are toned down and won’t have you looking like a clown on a minibike.

Clip-tips

Snowboarders are a fruity bunch, we love to take something completely practical, completely conventional and just wreck it in the name of creativity. We are individualist after all. So it was only a matter of time before some arsehole got the harebrain idea to start lopping the nose off their snowboard in order to make some kind of custom, never seen before, nose shape. This eureka moment spiraled quickly into the destruction of a perfectly good, but boring snowboard when the steel edges began protruding out like mangled barb. But all hope is not lost, because board builders began capping rails and sidewalls just after the effective edge and sandwiched the rest of the nose like a skateboard, consequently promoting hillbilly hack-jobs all over the place. Shaka nose shape? You got it! Nothing says f–k authority like a tail in the shape of thebird. Sure your warranty will be void, and there’s probably a disclaimer somewhere on the cheat sheet stating: “Cutting equals death”, but when the board is called ‘the nose-job’ what are you suppose to fricken do?

Blunted-tips

When the first wave of ‘bluntedout’ boards came onto the market – it made every other board look outdated by comparison. Ironically, those shapes were the staple of ’90s snowboarding, but what goes around comes around, right? Nowadays, these ‘blunttipped’ decks come in a flurry of variations, some being more extreme than others, depending on the application. Either way, the goal of shaving off the tip is to ditch unnecessary length without compromising the board’s overall performance. Sure you could put on a labcoat, pick-up a laser pointer and present a PowerPoint on how the reduced length results in less rotational mass; beneficial only to those aspiring to spin into a human tornado. But for the average ‘360 is enough spins for me’ kinda’ guy, it just feels more stable and skateboard like. It’s comforting to know you don’t need a pair of binoculars to see the end of your board anymore. You’ll also find yourself grabbing fewer tail-fishes with the widened area for snatching tail and nose. Reach for the sky brother.

Asymmetrical

If Leonardo Da Vinci lived long enough to become a season pass holder, he would have designed the asymmetrical snowboard. But luckily, some stoner somewhere had a divine vision whilst waiving their hands madly in an attempt to convey how a snowboard works and struck gold with this design. The asymmetrical design is half man, half machine. Its odd shape accounts for the variation in characteristics between turning with your heels and turning with your toes. There’s an actual science behind this tech that involves the symmetry of our bodies, how we stand and how we flex. That’s not some bit of pommy street slang either. Asymmetry, just like illuminati, is real, and it works; a board which accounts for the different loading characteristics, based on how we initiate the turn, makes the snowboard handle better in comparison. Ever notice how a tight heelside turn never feels as solid as a tight toeside side turn? Well, asymmetrical boards aim
to counter this. This isn’t saying that these boards are for everyone, for many who have grown to like the ways of a symmetrical board, riding one of these boards can feel alien. It pays to try before you buy when you’re dealing with asymmetrical boards.

Rounded pin

The rounded pin, aka the ‘death dagger’ of snowboard shapes , takes the blunted tip and kicks it in the bum. “Send him on his way” the rounded tip says. This shape doesn’t add length to a board but rather tapers the nose design up to a deadly point for spearing into the gizzards of skiers who get in your way. essentially, the effective edge point, upon which the board turns on, is moved back slightly for this tapered nose design but there are no real performance gains or losses with a board of this shape – with the exception of pivoting on these tips in deep snow and possibly while buttering. If you are the self-proclaimed butterking, buy one. If you are just into straight hotdoggin’, you’ll have so much fun riding around on this shape ’cause it’s amusing to look at and you’ll be the champion of small-talk, as everyone will want to know why your board looks so damn pointy.

Swallowtail fish

Is the fish still the oddball of the snowboard world? The shape is still confronting and it immediately screams out ‘I know what I’m doing’. If you ride a fish, chances are you already do know what you’re doing. Because unless you’re solely into riding powder, a fish isn’t usually your quiver killer – as opposed to a fish’ surfboard. The fish snowboard is usually a dedicated board for slaying the deep and the steep – coming in at longer lengths than your run of the mill snow scoot. However, there are design variations in the swallowtail fish; the more dedicated hardcore fishes will have a deep swallow which allow the tail to freely flex out on a dime. These boards will be totally directional, to the point where if you do start going backwards, you’re going eat shit. Mellow swallow tail fishes are quite popular for the less radical powder hounds and have many benefits for freeriding – they are fast and loose, not ideal for an icy decent down Olympic t-bar but will float through a field of pow effortlessly and your ‘down-the-line’ speed will be unmatched. You’ll probably need a kidney belt from all the soul arching, too.

The squash tail

The squash tail isn’t a particularly new shape for snowboards, it’s been utilised on pow boards for years, particularly on the smaller fun boards aimed for those riders chasing the deep without the steep. The squash tail is straightforward; it’s like taking a conventional rounded snowboard tail shape and flattening it out for added stability and drive. It has superior float in the fluff and allows riders to really lean the board back, load it up and wiggle it around. Combine that lazy boy rear end with a sharp shooting directional nose shape and you’ll be surfing the gullies without any worries.