The Rancho is one of Josh Dirksens ideas for a snowboard. It’s a total powder stick with a minimal sidecut, lots of set back, and a shape that just screams go straight down this face and slash. Being able to test this in the ideal conditions here’s how this review stacked up.
Board: Salomon Rancho
Size: 160
Camber Option: Backseat Camber. A set back camber putting the majority of it under your back foot.
Bindings: Rome 390 Boss
Stance: 22.5 Wide 18 Negative 15 Goofy
Boots: K2 Thraxis Size 10
My Weight: 175lbs
Resort: Breckenridge
Conditions: 7 inches of fresh snow most of which fell overnight. Add to that warming temps, clouds moving out of the way to bring in blue skies and you have the makings of one awesome powder morning.
Flex: This board is a plank. You get a bit of play between the bindings and under the back foot, but over all there’s just not that much give to it.
Stability: Well seeing as this board is meant to go straight and cruise over everything in its path it has to be stable. With the snow starting to get heavier I noticed that it wasn’t as much of a chore to as some other boards have been to cruise through the push mounds. I never once felt the micro vibrations that sometimes plague pow boards on hardpack.
Ollies/Pop: The tail has some snap but it’s not overly poppy. Basically enough to boost off hits and ollie over small bushes that are in your way.
Butterability: Throw the idea of pow butters out the window, it’s just not going to happen.
Carving: For having a quadratic sidecut I would have expected more from it. On hard packed cat tracks this board was all over the place and having a hell of a time digging an edge in. Ripping carves on it took a lot of work and even when center flexing the deck it wouldn’t let you lay in as hard as some other decks.
Rider in Mind: The big mountain freeride ripper that loves camber.
Personal Thoughts: In pow this board was actually super fun because you didn’t need the sidecut to lock in for carves, but on hard pack it was miserable. The flex makes you want to charge hard and fast to get where you’re going. While this will never be a board for me it has its place and I think those die hard freeride guys should look at it.
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Disclaimer: This board was loaned to us for product review from the Salomon Snowboards Rockies rep.
4 Comments
are those angled lines that you can see in the tail section of the base a texture or part of the base graffic?
That’s the structure.
Have you ridden Salomon Burner? Do you know if this board is intended to replace the Burner for 2014? I love my Burner but it got thrashed last winter so I was hoping to get a new but then I heard that Rancho was supposed to replace it?
The Burner was a better ride than this thing. Rarely do I say only ride a board in pow but this is a deck for straight pow only riding.