The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 21.3
A CASCADIAN ASCENT
Words and Photo: Colin Wiseman 2023-12-06 10:58:44
The first splitboard I ever rode first belonged to Craig Kelly. It was an orange 170 cm Burton prototype stamped number 0002, from the year 2000ish, with a proprietary spring-loaded binding plate interface that made my knuckles bleed. Handwritten in Sharpie on the board was “Ascent – Cascade,” presumably the forthcoming model name. It was big, heavy, fully cambered and stiff as it gets, but it served as a gateway to long walks in the mountains, which have been a big part of my snowboard experience since.
My first day on it was a spring mission in the Mt. Baker, WA, backcountry in 2008, after the lifts had stopped turning for the year. Learning to skin uphill was a labor-intensive process and wrestling that thing downslope wasn’t a whole lot easier. Responsive it was not—as Burton testing-coordinator-turned-board-designer (and current proprietor of ShredEye snowsurfers) John “JG” Gerndt says, “I remember testing these boards in Utah with Dave Downing in perfect snow conditions and was wondering why we were doing it—they had no feeling really, heavy, stiff, long, bulky, not like any snowboard I had ever ridden.”
Nascent splitboard technology around the year 2000 was indeed a far cry from the reliable production splits we’re lucky to ride today. But Craig, inspired by the handful of early splitboard pioneers, was ahead of the curve, as usual. According to JG, Paul Maravetz was responsible for the board design, and Stefan Reues from Austria was behind the binding interface.
The board itself didn’t come directly to me from Craig, of course. I wasn’t lucky enough to meet the man prior to his death in an avalanche in 2003. Rather, the board was a loaner from our publisher, Jeff Galbraith, who grew up riding with Craig at Baker in the late ’80s and shared many adventures with him thereafter. Jeff had received the board after Craig’s passing from a friend named Chris Mask, who had helped with the R&D. “I was in Vermont for the US Open in 2003, and Chris saw me walking through the Burton offices,” Galbraith says. “He handed me the board and said, ‘Craig said he wanted you to have this.’”
Following that emotional exchange, Galbraith brought the board home to Washington state. He rode it a few times, but as he says, “It was an antiquated design within 24 months—and I’m more into riding chairlifts anyway.” Galbraith held onto it as a keepsake, and that’s how it wound up under my feet as the newly anointed senior editor of this title at the time.
About 15 years have passed since that first day of splitboarding on Craig’s former ride. A lot has changed since then. As JG says, “Almost every board brand, big or small, has numerous splitboards to choose from.” But back then, very few companies were making production splits. Although the Ascent was short-lived as a production model, Burton has had a split in production pretty much ever since. And I can say from experience that they ride a heck of a lot nicer than that 170 cm beast.
As with anything game-changing, you’ve gotta start somewhere, and for this hand-me-down relic, I am thankful. It may feel antiquated now, but twenty years ago, that board was ahead of its time.
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A CASCADIAN ASCENT
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