Camber Lovers Unite!

the power, support, and liveliness of camber cannot be matched by rocker of any design, period.  there's just nothing like it.  getting back on it reminded me what real snowboarding is like.  fast, aggressive, powerful, stable, locked down, and trustworthy.

 

-b

I'm not quite sure where I stand.  I don't think I've been riding long enough to be able to choose one.  My first board was flat, but was way too short so I wasn't able to really appreciate it... plus I was also just starting.

Now I have a rocker, camber, and a hybrid.  I've only been out twice this season and both times have been with my new hybrid.  I like the ride a lot, very playful but with those added camber zones and contact points really do make a difference.  Improved traction and pop over rocker too and definitely feels more playful than camber.  But I do find I miss the solid aggressive feel of camber when I'm not riding it.

I wish I could just spend a whole week at a hill with all my boards and just compare them all one after the other.   I think eventually I will end up with one board and it will probably be my Vapor (directional camber) or my Renegade (twin hybrid).  I'm starting to question keeping the Stunt now as I get that same playful feel with the hybrid.

I wish my Vapor was twin.

So far this season, i've used 1/2 a stick of clear and over a 1/4 stick of black p-tex on mine. 

Yeah, weve done this a million times, but lets open the minds here. The blanket statements that nothing can reproduce the effect of camber is open to a challenge and is far more interesting anyways.

We know what the qualities camber brings to our ride: springy, energetic, locked, on point, reliable, consistent, and responsive. 

Take those adjectives, have a wee wander around the world of tech and youll start seeing a lot of those being mimicked. And mimicked rather well. 

Two techs i fell in love with from Ride for example:

Carbon Array

Pop walls.

Carbon array is one of those things you look at and think "ah, marketing... im not going to feel it, its just under the hood doing stuff, and in computer models its likely knocking it out of the park, but again, to me, the person with limited experience who rides under 30 days a year... im not really going to care nor realise its even there..."

And it takes a while to piece the puzzle. You get on the board, you ride it, you enjoy it and then you try and explain it. You look at the camber, the sidecut, and everything else, and its all good, but theres this nagging feeling that your missing the wood for the trees. And then it dawns on you. The reason you feel so tight on your edge, the reason it feels like youre railing on your edge, and the reason you feel like your weight is perfectly balanced and centered throughot the length of the edge is carbon array. Its awesome stuff. 

Its really hard to explicate without riding it, but think back to a time when you had alright technique. Not great, not awful, but alight. Sometimes you felt a little like you were riding a bit ruddery on the tail, sometimes a bit digging in, and often you had to genuinely concentrate to keep that feeling of being centered with your weight. Kinda like an edge sweet spot. You hit it, youre perfectly poised. Your weight is distributed across the entire length of the edge and you dont feel like its in any one place but throughout the entire edge. The thing is though, its still taking a bit of work. Youre still having to fight sometimes to keep it there and more often tan not you slip back to old habits and slack off a bit.

Well that feeling of your weight being distributed throughout your entire edge is how carbon array felt ALL the time. You feel on your edge, completely on point and utterly stable. Its like youre on rails, or better yet a maglev (since it feels kinda weightless in a way). 

To be honest, i might be overplaying it. I havent been on my zerker since last year (though i had a couple of runs in november before the lifts shut down when i swapped out the riot for a play on it). So i dont genuinely know where the abstract is colliding with the actual reality of the situation. But i do know its having a definite affect in the ride. Its just that maybe the explanation is downplaying technique a bit is all. 

What this is providing though is really solid stability without having to dick around with the sidecut and create extra contacts. Its making a board with a rocker nose, one contact point and a shorter effective edge for it feel a lot longer and a lot more in control than youd really expect. As i said in the review at the time, the idea of washing just didnt even occur to me until the train home when i realised the idea of washing didnt occur to me. It was just so on point. Youre railing, but its not hooky or catchy. Its just a normal edge. Youre not digging in because the sidecut and rocker nose are working together to make that turn initiation flawless. But youre not feeling like youre riding a shorter edge. And despite the fact the board is directional in every way (flex, length, sidecut and camber profile) at no point do you feel like youre steering with your bag leg. Youre riding centered on that edge. You feel like youre in control and have your weight over every part of that edge.  Its genuinely astonishing. Maybe not so much at the time because it feels like a camber ride in many ways, but certainly after a good think about it and you realise youre on a shorter effective edge, one less contact, and youre still railing (only youre not digging in). 

The second tech is pop walls.

I think ive mentioned my love for pop walls before. I got to demo this years highlife UL and the board was abit much for the conditions (May waterpark slush), so it felt way too beefy for the conditions, but man alive, if one thing stood out it was how energetic and lively that board felt. Now i ride plenty of stiff boards. I always think i want stiff boards and always buy them and try desperately to enjoy them. Theyre zippy, lively and really aggressive. But they dont work for me. Im too lazy, theyre too tiring, and they en up feeling like im just charging down yet another line like im in a race to ride the lifts! THe pop on them, when you hit it though is PHENOMENAL. When you hit that spot, its effortless. Its that perfect still feeling of total weightlessness. Id liken it to what im talking about with centering your weight over the boards edge. When it happens, the response goes through the roof, and its like youre in perfect harmony with your ride. Well, same is true when those boards pop. Far from feeling like you had to work for it, or you had to load that board, it feels like it just snapped in all by itself leaving you hanging in the stars. If you love camber, you love pop, and if you love pop its because you know exactly what im talking about (even if my description might be a little more colorful) :p 

So whats this got to do with pop walls... im getting to it!

Why i bring it up is because often times, again, if youve got alright technique, for every time when you pop like that, theres plenty more times when you try and pop, dont really load it right and just kinda get a damp little bobble. When these boards are on point and when youre good enough to get that ride out of them, theyre unbeatable. Theyre phenomenal. You cannot be bored or tired with a board like that if youve got the technique and skill to make it work. You cant because it delivers all the explosion of that release making your whole run feel lively and the stuff of pure joy. 

But when you cant make it work... when you spend your time trying to recapture it by trying to load it, you get knackered. Absolutely worn the hell out. It runs away from you and you spend your time chasing rainbows. Loading this type of board is physically and mentally draining. And whats left when you dont have the energy to attack the board? a dull lifeless, one dimensional (though stable), quick ride from the top to the bottom with a few bouncy side hits and the occasional bit of life to it. Fun for a while, but after a few runs it gets old and you start wishing you could maybe tone it down, or work a little less for it. 

So whats this got to do with pop walls?... IM GETTING TO IT!!! the highlife UL is a tank. Its less nimble than my berzerker, its slower to build into speed than my berzerker, it feels slower edge to edge and less fun to throw around and spin about like my berzerker, but my god is that board a tank. It destroys everything in front of it. Its slower out the gates, but in a race id not be betting against it. I tried letting it run for a bit, but it scares the crap out of me at speed. Not because its unstable, but because it doesnt seem to reach its top speed. It just goes faster and faster until you really think you have to reign it in or youll be zipping through time. I liked that about the board. Its a tank. Its utterly uncompromising.

But its stiff and its got no real give to it, so you aint really going to butter it unless yorue a powerlifter with legs like tree trunks. Thus youd think "i know you! standard ripper. Point down, charge! Im sure if i could load you, youd be great fun, but theres..." BOING!!!

The board is springy as hell. Its not really pop so much as it is energy (if i could try and make a space between the two words often used interchangeably, id say its more snappy than poppy). You spring your turns, you spring your hits, you spring off everything. It takes what would be a one dimensional hulk smash style board (well... not entirely true, loads going on in that board, but see the description above on actually being able to ride and control it), and gives you something else that you shouldnt really have in it. A cheat, a way of making a board that should take years to master feel instantly full of life ad ready to use. This might seem like a negative in a way, and it is. But what pop walls bring to the table isnt just enhanced pop. What they bring is easier pop. They bring effortless pop making loading and solid technique less important. They make it fun and approachable.  

The board feels super lively and energetic despite your skill level and technical ability/stamina to control it. And it simply has to be the effect of the pop walls. Its just too stiff to cheat like that and get that kind of performance from it. As a lazy slacker in all spheres of my life, i have to say, that kind of tech, in the sidewalls of all places and having no effect on the boards flex (long/torsional) or weight like stringers can is game changing. I cant see ride keeping this to their high tech line. This is going through their softer reverse cambers over the next few years and really delivering something thats going to threaten the idea that only with camber can you really have an explosive energetic ride. Its a small tweak, theyre both small tweaks but theyre making stiffer boards malleable and more accessible and softer boards more responsive and packed with energy and response. 

Its radical stuff, but it seems so small and unnoticeable when you compare it to things like camber profiles or reverse sidecuts.  But their impact is huge. Its not sci-fi tech of course, im not going to pretend that its THE grand solution here when im hearing about crazy shit like swisscore http://www.nidecker.com/Swiss-Core.html

...or that head board that DTJ once showed me with computer controlled stringers stiffening and softening the board as it will. But its giving you a board thats got all the edge hold and consistency of riding on camber, with the potential for the pop and energy and release youd get out of a loaded, decent flex (with enough resistance) camber stick. Its interesting because despite the fact it doesnt need to be camber, what you have is the reproduction of camber, with the advantages of reverse without as sharp a drawback as maybe just hybridising the board and sticking MTX all through the edge to make it "stable". 

Will camber be replaced, does reverse camber reproduce the effects of camber? No. If youre a solid rider, if you spend 100 days plus in a year pressing the shit out of your NAS or your riot or your custom X or your anthem or your highlife, then this isnt really going to affect you (though pop walls might make it feel a little snappier and i bet youd rather have them than not have them). But for someone else, who wants a nice damp stable ripper, but feels it might be too much board or too restrictive or a little beyond them, these techs are going to completely overhaul this idea and bring even more diversity and choice to the point that the camber profile wont matter anywhere near as much as it appears to right now (or rather wont define the boards ultimate limitations). Thats the real punchline. The next few years will see the REAL hybrids and crossovers hitting production and we will really stop giving a shit about the camber profile or the idea of massive trade offs by switching away from X camber style.

Then again, i might just be over exaggerating it all a bit :)

 

-b

Occam's Razor.