Snowboards for Resort and Backcountry

Even in the earliest days of snowboarding, riders began carrying their boards up into the snow covered mountains to ride down. Of course, there's no way to ride a snowboard uphill, so these early backcountry snowboarders strapped their boards to their backpacks and either booted up or donned snowshoes for the climb. This would create a problem where snowboarders in snowshoes had to share uptracks with skiers on climbing skins. There had to be a better way...

Sometime in the late 1980s, folks like Will Ritter out in the western US and Nicolo Manaresi in Italy came up with an idea that became known as the 'splitboard'.

The idea is deceptively simple, but is hard to implement well. The snowboard is cut into two halves along its long axis. The bindings are made so they can swivel, from the downhill riding position in which the rider has his/her feet securely locked to the board with his/her back to the left side of the board and front to the right side of the board, to the bindings swiveled so the rider is facing the front of the board, as a skier would be, with the heels free. It's basically like cutting the snowboard into two strangely shaped skis. Add climbing skins to the splitboard's bases and you can 'uphill ski' to earn some turns.

In 1991, Voilé — the company that's brought us so many great products for telemark skiing — offered the first commercially available splitboard allowing snowboarders to earn their turns, with convertible bindings installed.

• Voilé splitboards: https://www.voile.com/voile-splitboards.html

• Voilé splitboard bindings: https://www.voile.com/voile-splitboard-bindings.html

History of splitboarding:

• https://www.splitboardreviews.com/splitboard-the-beginners-guide-to-splitboarding/the-history-of-splitboarding/

• http://neverboredinc.com/the-rise-of-splitboarding-where-it-started-and-where-it-is-now/

You won't see as many splitboarders in the Northeast backcountry as you will telemark and alpine touring skiers, but they're around.

The final frontier is Cross Country Snowboarding. 'Skooch leg' is a persistent problem, though. They're still working on that...