Salomon Sick Stick

It's a weird name for a snowboard from a ski company, but it's owned by Adidas these days so there you go.

I rode the 160 Sick Stick in heli-accessed Monashee powder. There was some Alpine stuff, but as usual it was mostly top-to-bottom trees. After the first few runs I rapidly forgot it was a new board. It just rides, and rides well.

sick graphics, but not in the right way

Riding, the board feels a bit lacking in life.
Someone asked me what I meant by that; I think it's just that the board doesn't have much "rebound"/ "pop", which is useful even in powder.

After a few days I found that the board responded best to being pushed hard - it feels more lively if you thrash it.

That may be a consequence of the "twin" aspirations of the designers. It's hard to make something which is inherently directional if you're trying to make a park board at the same time.

Broadly the Salomon is a bit like a Fish with a slightly narrower nose and slightly more tail. The graphics are, well, some of the least pretty I've seen for a long time, but that's probably a good thing as boards should be ridden not looked at.

I was wary of Salomon generally, not because they're a ski company, but because their boards used to have huge wide stances, presumably in an attempt to get down with the kids in the park. The "Sick Stick" marketing is a little weird too - they talk about it being a "directional twin tip", which is something marketing people can write, but snowboarders may find hard to swallow. Apparently it's "eco friendly", something which made me feel lots better about myself as we burned Jet-A as fast as we could.

Here are the published specifications (with some corrections for their typos!). If I'd read these before riding the board I'd have worried if the stance would need set-back, but it didn't: I rode it centered. I ran with the narrowest stance the board would support, which was perfect for me. If you're especially short then that would probably be a problem, assuming you're not a toilet-sitting rider.

Here's a video of the Salomon in action in the Monashees. Note that I only rode in back country powder: I've no idea how this would ride on anything with a base under it.

In summary I'd say what I normally say: buy nowt until you've ridden it yourself. This one's certainly worth a try, and it made a nice change to ride it for a few days.