All of our testing is conducted in the backcountry on wild, ungroomed snow. This may seem like an obvious requirement of a splitboard test, but it is not uncommon for splitboard tests to occur at the ski resort for the sake of convenience. But we are in it for the real deal. All of our testers are dedicated splitboarders who spend more days each season earning their turns than they do riding lifts. Our tests span months, rather than hours or days. All of this time allows us to actually get the boards into the varied terrain and conditions that you may encounter in the backcountry. Testing in these conditions allows us to parse out a board's strengths and weaknesses as a splitboard, rather than a snowboard.
All of our testers have backgrounds as guides or instructors and understand snowboard mechanics. Despite this commonality, our team of testers enjoys riding in a wide range of styles and disciplines. Where one instructor may really enjoy minimally tapered traditional snowboards, another may love tapered and unique shapes. Their combined preferences help us better parse out strengths and weaknesses.
Powder
The best test to evaluate powder flotation is to actually ride powder, and that's what we did. We rode through many snow densities, slope angles, and terrain types to obtain as much subjective data as possible. Oftentimes, this looks like walking up, riding down, and changing boards to walk up again.
When it comes to powder riding, the steeper the slope angle is, the easier the riding gets. We made it a point to not only go shred the gnarliest lines but to ride as much low angle and flat terrain as possible, boards that maximize fun in this realm really highlight powder performance.
Firm Snow
To test a board's ability in firm snow, we rode anything and everything that wasn't powder. It ranged from perfect corn snow to boilerplate spring melt-freeze crusts. We did our best to collect anecdotal information from our experience to analyze how the board performed and how it assessed security when traversing, carving, and sideslipping.
Our home testing ground in Estes Park, CO, is the bona fide land of firm windboard snow conditions. Our daily mid-winter ride often includes a lot of firm, wind-buffed snow, and we are connoisseurs of which boards make good firm-snow boards.
Variable Snow
In some regards, this is the easiest category for us to test. Finding good snow conditions days after a storm is an art form developed meticulously over time. Finding bad snow is as easy as walking uphill at the top of a mountain pass any day it hasn't snowed. So that's what we did, we went where no one else was riding anymore and dropped in, seeing how the boards reacted.
Variable snow conditions are usually endured to reach good snow, so we understand they will often be avoided at all costs. Our time spent purposefully seeking this terrain out has given us a deep understanding of what lets you get from point A to B the easiest.
Stability and Maneuverability
These two metrics often live in antithesis to each other. A board that is both stable and easy to turn is a rare find, and worth paying full price for on the spot, maybe get two. To test them, we could often get information from long runs across different elevation bands. Where the terrain was open, we would let the boards run fall line and go as fast as our risk tolerance allowed. Once we hit treeline, we would find the tightest lines we could and see if the same board that went straight fast could also turn fast.
This metric is also dictated by snow conditions; some boards can race downhill in powder, but the minute the snow is chopped up, they require dialing the speed back. Some boards are fast on firm slopes but struggle to hold speed in powder. To test this, we would run the same test as before, but days after the storm. Ideally, we would do this at the most popular touring areas near us to ensure the runs were good and well-tracked.
Uphill Performance
In addition to thoroughly testing all models across a wide range of snow conditions, we examined them in the garage and dissected them in a spreadsheet. We weighed every competitor on the same scale. We removed pucks but left on whale clips and hooks. For the channel boards, we left the slider screws in place. Weight is tremendously important for equipment that will spend the vast majority of its existence ascending mountains, and yet it is rarely listed by manufacturers.
We climbed in all conditions on these boards and took the harder route for stress testing. Guides tend to set some pretty monotonous low-angle skin tracks, so we made sure to get out of our own habits and follow the public skin tracks to get a real sense of how boards performed.
Conclusion
We climbed high and surfed the earth to provide you with our findings. Ultimately, most of the metrics have more subjective evaluation than objective; this is just the nature of the category. Purchasing the boards ourselves is the best way to provide non-bias objective findings. We hope our expertise, findings, and reviews can help you find the perfect splitboard.