Words: Scott Yorko

Testers agreed, this split is a full-fledged jump seeker. A backcountry badass that likes to get after some big natural features and throw down tricks, it was fast and playful and wanted to be in the air. Not your top choice for long spring tours, where some testers found it lacking float in the hot pow and a bit noodley through the crud. Bigger, advanced riders will appreciate this board for getting up high in sled-access backcountry zones to session booters, hit windlips, and drop pillows.

Length (cm) — Sidecut Radius (m) — Waist Width (cm)

161.5 — 8.4 — 26
164.5 — 8.5 — 26.2

Flex: Stiff

Camber: Hyrbrid (reverse between inserts, regular camber to tips)

(Flex is not standardized and differs by brand. The rating here is the best estimate of the board’s flex.)

(Sidecut Radius: The measure of how deep or shallow the arc of a board’s edge is from the tips to the middle, in meters. A smaller radius, around six to seven meters means a board will generally turn tighter. As the radius number increases, a board can be expected to make wider turns. Multiple numbers on the same length board means the radius is blended.)

Tested And Approved 2016 Presented by evo.com

Best snowboard gear of 2015-2016? We’ve got you covered. Testing over 250 boots, bindings, goggles, gloves, helmets, and other accessories in every snowy corner of the country was a massive undertaking that the TransWorld staff couldn’t handle alone. To help shoulder the delightful burden of riding the latest and most premium snowboard gear day after day, we enlisted the help of experienced gear testers and writers to translate the nuances of new technologies into critical, thoughtful reviews. Much like our Good Wood awards, the new Tested + Approved section only features the top performing gear in each category. We know that even the best products have perks and quirks, so we pulled those out to highlight in our “Rad and Bad” lines. This is our most comprehensive test to date and we hope you’ll find the honest feedback useful.

Meet Our Testers:

Scott Yorko

As TransWorld’s designated Gear Editor, Yorko lived out of his board bag last year, testing gear all season long at the Good Wood board test in Winter Park, the Backcountry test in Crested Butte, the Jackson Hole Pow Wow in Wyoming, and on assignment in Kamchatka, Russia. He wrote up backcountry boots, bindings, and accessories, as well as splitboards, powder boards, layers and gloves.

Mike Horn

As a veteran snowboard journalist and former Editor of Kronicle magazine, Horn had his testing system dialed, schlepping several backpacks around Crested Butte with goggles, helmets, and bindings jangling like a hobo cart. He also swapped goggle lenses while typing reviews in his man cave.

Alex Showerman

The lone splitboarder in the Vermont Backcountry Alliance, Showerman tested Men’s Freeride Boots on everything from ice to pow days in the Green Mountains, cruising park laps at Stowe and bootpacking gladed sidecountry. He also put each foot through hours of Killington après to test their off-hill performance.

Billy Brown

When he’s not writing for Wired, Popular Science, and Transworld, Brown’s life is a permanent vacation of press trips, which gave him ample time to test our tech gear in Utah and Colorado. A lifelong California park rat, he even ventured out to Mt. Shasta’s Avalanche Gulch to play with gadgets in the backcountry.Heather Hendricks

Hendricks has made her rounds writing for GrindTV, TGR, and now holds post as our Contributing Editor. She has sample size feet, a borderline boot fetish, and was stoked to test Women’s Park and Freeride boots all over the Front Range as well as on her home turf in Aspen. She may have lost three toe nails in the process.

Alex Ryden

Ryden’s SoCal Big Bear roots run strong in his park prowess, which he flexed all season in Breckenridge while testing Men’s Freestyle Boots and Bindings down Park Lane. A writer for ESPN and Transworld Surf (R.I.P.), he lost many bindings screws and even rode one lap without a baseplate, somehow.

Rian Rhoe

Rhoe’s 20-year snowboard career has meandered from couch-surfing, park-shredding shop rat to High Cascade Snowboard Camp digger to National Boardercross Champion and, most recently, badass mama shredder. She put her one-year-old son in Brighton’s daycare center while testing Women’s Freestyle and Freeride Bindings.