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Snowboard Theory

By

Barry Wicks

Does the math playout? A pair of Noctas may be the surface area equivalent of a snowboard. But are they as fun?

Does the math playout? A pair of Noctas may be the surface area equivalent of a snowboard. But are they as fun?

  Ok, hear me out. This all started because Jason got a free pair of skis from the Teton boys, the Black Crows Nocta. Jason was skeptical. Not only are the Nocta Doodle Doos, as he calls them, 122 cm wide, the ones he was gifted are the shortest length (177 cm—he’s keen on longer…

Responses

  1. Gard Nelson

    Cool idea! Although I’m biased cause I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing with some old powder skis. Any thoughts on bindings?

    1. Barry Wicks

      Hey Gard, I always recommend going as light on bindings as you are comfortable skiing. I am using the Salomon MTN, which is about 350 grams. Jason has Plum 170 race bindings on his Noctas. I find that for the type of skiing I do on skis like this, light bindings work great, plus since the skis are a bit heavy, a light binding helps reduce total package weight. Same thing with skins. I have a hard time using anything but pink Pomoca skins these days as the glide and weight/packability are un-rivaled. I used a different set of skins on these because they were cheap, but dang are they miserably slow compared to the pinkys.

      1. Jason Albert

        Close…Plum Oazo 8s for bindings.

      2. Gard Nelson

        That’s what I was hoping to hear, thanks! The skis are fairly light for how big they are but are currently weighed down by marker dukes and old full-width BD nylon skins. Was fine when I was young and spry… less appealing now for many reasons.

  2. Alex Palombo

    Barry, being one who also snowboards primarily and is a very mediocre skier, i find it easier to ski my board split than on my voile skis. The idea of short and fat skis has been a thought rattling around in my head for a while and it’s cool to see someone reporting out on this concept.

    Also, as a bad skier, I find the voile objective skis to be very light, easy to ski and have plenty of side cut. If I can ski them and have fun, than anyone can.

    1. Barry Wicks

      Hey Alex! I haven’t tried hard boots on my split board yet, but can imagine a hard boot split board with a heel lock would probably ski pretty well. I use the Karkoram split-board bindings, which you can lock the heel down on for split skiing, but i haven’t experimented too much with it yet. Speaking of Voile, at some point in the past they made a combo split-board/set of skis that were interchangeable based of you binding setup. Maybe a relic I should hunt for! The Objective is a nice easy ski. The soft flex makes them very approachable.

  3. Whit

    Sounds like there needs to be a go-fund-me for Barry’s next test subject, and a survey on which ski to choose!

  4. Slim

    I might try this. And being the same height as you Barry, it’s good to know what “short” actually means.

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