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With a long-standing fascination of the powder boards with big noses and swallowtails created in the US and Europe in the 70s and 80s— including winterstick, Simms, Apocalypse Snow, and more recently Gentemstick and Moss out of Japan— I was fueled with inspiration to design a snowboard that achieved the snowsurf style and flow I desired.
Returning to the US after a trip in deep Japanese powder, in which I had attempted to use directional, full, rocker, reverse sidecut snowboards that were available around 2014 to handle the depth of the snow, and re-discovered the effect of more nose and less tail, including a swallowtail and a tapered nose, and staying afloat in the powder.
My Thesis at the University of Montana was researching and exploring adaptive attunement, and flow psychology. The idea circled around active participation in everything that we do, and all the parts and processes for a greater degree of awareness and mental presence. The project started based around the activity of snowboarding, then evolved into the creation of the craft for the act, and thus the artful lines made through the dance of the ride.
A friend in Missoula and I had been experimenting with making snowboards and had built a press and had connections to raw materials. Together we designed a board using a basic twin snowboard computer program by drying out the nose and widening it, and pulling in the tail.
The next element was finding materials, which was surprisingly difficult due to the standardization of width in traditional snowboards. After communication with a variety of craft snowboard makers, I was able to find something just wide enough for the initial experiment.
The original idea was that the local snowboard maker would craft the shape I designed, but due to scheduling and availability, he ended up just showing me the basics and left me to figure out the rest.
Building a snowboard is very similar to making a panini sandwich, the base is cut to shape from a template, and the edges are applied, it is laid down first, like the bottom piece of bread, then resin is smeared like mayonnaise, followed by a layer of triaxial Fiberglass added like a leaf of lettuce, then the core which had been milled to taper thinner on the ends with plastic tip and tail fill, as well as plastic sidewalls— this layer is added next like to meat. Then, another layer of resin like mustard, more fiberglass like the tomato, more resin then the topsheet as the top bread then the entire assembly is placed inside, a mold, which is heated and pressurized through pneumatic tubes. It toast in there until the resin has cured.
After it has been removed and cooled, the perimeter crust is cut off, and the inserts are drilled open— and now you have a suitable plank for sliding on snow.
I brought the blank white board to a local artist friend and together we designed and applied the SoulMotion logo to the topsheet with a sharpie marker.
Due to the length of the process, the first board was finally ready for the last day of the season at lost Trail powder mountain in Montana. The infamous low angle chair 4 had 12 inches of fresh hot pow and I had the opportunity to take something that I had created with my own hands and imagination to the top of the mountain, and experience the value and shortcomings of my design. There was definitely something weird about it, which gave me a slight hesitation in believing that I would make it down in one piece, but then I realized the purpose of more nose and less tail in effortless float in maneuverability.
That was the only day I had to ride that board, but within five runs, I had generated an entire notebook of feedback, and possible alterations.
That summer I worked as a fiberglass laminator in the local river surfboard, shaping shop to dial in my skills, and by the fall, I had re-envisioned the design, sourced appropriate materials, it was already shaping version two before November snows fell.
Learn about more Elevated Surf Craft History like the Evolution of the 4'10 GoldFish Snnowboard.
