Chimera Snow|boards

Very cool, really like the designs… looking forward to seeing them out this weekend!

Some cool ideas. :thumbsup:

Maybe change the name of that one board, the unicorn chaser 😉 Makes me think of hippies. Maybe call it the Hippy Club, and have some cool graphic of a hippy getting a taste of the baton.

snow|boards ???? anyone else seeing that line? is there a reason for that? am i missing something?

well anyway – wish i could try one of these out but not going to the PNW splitfest. any chance you can send us a demo for the cali splitfest?

otherwise it looks great guys. good going pushing the envelope….always like to see innovation. keep up the good work.

Sweet – looks like you are bringing some well thought out split-specific innovations driven by experience. I especially like the no-stick topsheet. Good luck.

Awesome to see another grassroot, rider-driven company! Designs and concepts look sick! Good luck guys!!! :thatrocks:

the unicorn chaser levitates too….
that is, if you can find the unicorn.

@fullers2oh wrote:

snow|boards ???? anyone else seeing that line? is there a reason for that? am i missing something?

“Split Snowboards” or “Snow Splitboards” or “Snowboards Split” I’m guessing.

Cool site guys. It looks ok to me on Chrome. Its cool to see more innovation from the Wasatch. I’d be interested to see some specs such as sidecut radius, running length, etc.

Well, I guess I lied in my last post about withholding my enthusiasm. Yesterday I had the opportunity to ride, compare, and contrast two new prototype splits from the Chimera stable. They represent two distinctly different approaches to the task of riding powder. I found the two boards to behave so differently, yet effectively in their own way, that I thought I’d share. Here’s a photo:

On the left is a 161cm Unicorn Chaser. It has traditional camber, with a mild early-rise rocker nose, aggressive taper from front to back (about 30 mm), inserts that are set back a couple inches from center (so your stance is shifted back to the tail), and a semi-swallow tail.

The purple bottom board on the right is more experimental, hot off the press: a true twin, flat underfoot (no camber), aggressive early-rise rocker front and back, blunted-off nose and tail, and centered stance from front to back. The effective edge is REALLY short, with hardly any sidecut. It’s about 160cm long. The working title for this beast is “The Chubby Chaser.” It looks like a cigar.

It was very instructive to ride one board, then switch out halfway down, and ride the other one. We had about a foot deep of settled powder yesterday, prime conditions for testing out the pow-worthiness of the two boards. Since I’ve been riding a 154 Unicorn Chaser a bunch, the 161 Unichaser was expectedly familiar feeling, faster and perhaps a bit less poppy. It’s fairly stiff between the binders and through the tail, with the nose feeling soft. It rode pretty straightforward, for someone like me used to traditional camber, traditional sidecut, tapered boards (like the Prior Khyber, which I’ve ridden and like a lot). If you don’t care about going backwards much, and want to carve your turns in the deep fluff, this board does the trick, well.

Now, strapping into the purple Chubby Chaser and pointing it down the hill was a whole nother ballgame. I felt like a newborn calf trying to find its legs. I have not ridden severely rockered or reverse cambered boards before, and I really had to think about how to ride this guy. Long, smooth carving turns, which feel instinctive on a board like the Uni Chaser, were illusive to me. There’s hardly any sidecut to carve on. I found myself skidding/pivoting my turns much more. The thing still floated great though, no nosedive, it’s really wide between your feet, and it landed off some small drops just fine. On the Unichaser, it feels like the nose is up and the tail is down, and the float happens because of that. On the Chubby Chaser, it felt like the float was happening right between your feet, and the tail feels up out of the snow more, not down in it. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to link some turns switch in the terrain we were in (kinda steep with trees and rocks), but I really would like to ride this deck switch on some more obstacle-free terrain. One thing I miss about riding an aggro-tapered, set-back-stance board, is that I typically don’t consider 180s or going switch in deep snow; a board like the Chubby Chaser would really be fun for that.

Bullshit, that tattoo is full of win.