Splittie Prowder Interface

As the splittie season started, it was time to do a little fine tuning on equipment...First up was a quick swap of the climbing heels...time to upgrade from the single height to the dual height option.  It was a straight forward swap from Voile to Voile.  

I saw a Prowder interface too that looked interesting.  It was aluminum and it piqued my curiosity.  I figured I would swap out the Voile interface with the Prowder on the old 'rock mojo' and see if it felt any different.

The installation was fairly straight forward too.  On the surface, it looked like the interface would keep the boots/bindings closer to the board which seems like a good thing.

After installation, I noticed that the interface was almost too low.  When sliding the bindings on, it scraped the topsheet up.  If this was the new board, I might have shed a tear but fortunately it was the rock board so it was more of a lesson learned than anything else.

A couple of quick observations upon installation...the machining of the parts was not top notch with screws and plates not working seamlessly.  It took a little wiggling and wrangling to get everything on and secure.  It does make me wonder about the quality control and more importantly the long term prognosis with wear and tear in the backcountry.  It is nice to have a guinea pig board to test it on before committing to the 'A' split...

The ride proper seemed about the same.  I need more time on the board to come to a conclusive opinion but so far, so good...some pix of the upgrades/changes below:

random artistic snow stoke

You can't do that on skinny tires....

Splitboarding - Todd Lake

I decided to rally for a quick trip up to Tumalo on Saturday for a hot lap...I was unsure how heavy the recent snowfall was going to be and there is not better way than to get out and find out for yourself.  The skin up was like going up the snowshoe highway!  There were lots of folks plodding along uphill.

As I ascended, I poked the snow with my ski pole and the snow felt 'light' so I was hopeful I would not have to skin back out downhill!  That has happened to me before on Tumalo, especially with the NW wet concrete we get!

I transitioned into split mode and was able to maintain enough momentum to make it all the way back down.  There were a couple of spots where I had to use my poles to push myself along but I just opened up and let er rip!  I had to lean way back on the board and try to keep the nose up.  It was almost more work going downhill than it was to climb up!

It was still great to be out and getting an understanding of the snowpack.

On Sunday, a small crew of us went up to Todd Lake to explore what was new terrain for us.  Dutchman Sno Park was full so we had to backtrack back down to the new Sno Park by Kiwol Butte. It meant it was going to be a little bit of a sled ride in to the Todd Lake area but it sure beats skinning all the way in and back out!  All good!!

We got up to Todd Lake it was turning into a bluebird and perfect day.  The recent 14 inches of snow was enough to cover the terrain enough so you would not have to worry too much about downed trees, etc.  It was our collective first time up there and we were all surprised by how good the terrain was.  The snowpack was solid, the snow was perfect, and the weather was hard to beat too.

The runs are not very long but there is tons of terrain to carve turns on.  We ended up doing three laps and even managed to ride back to the sleds without having to skin up!  Good day indeed!
Todd will definitely go into the rotation of local play spots.