Construction and Materials
Rarely will you find a snowboard that’s been put together with this much love. The brains behind Nidecker’s Snow Surf Quiver, Thierry ‘TK’ Kunz, has clearly been inspired by hand-crafted surf shapes. The topsheet is a stunning mix of tinted resin and matt black glassing that deploys both triax and biax fibres in different zones. Overall it delivers a stiff, responsive flex, and by wrapping the topsheet over the side to meet a narrow 2mm sidewall you get more direct power transfer into the edge as well as a beautiful, neat finish. Although it’s short, this is no easy-going jib stick – you really want good turning technique and some power in your legs to harness its potential.
The core is made from three different woods: poplar for springiness, paulownia for its lightweight properties and beech for added strength near the edges. It would be a shame to cheap out on the base at this point, so the Mosquito duly rounds things off with a piece of N-9000 sintered P-tex. Yes, that’s a lot of thousands. Yes, it’s black. And yes, it’s beyond quick.
“Rarely will you find a snowboard that’s been put together with this much love”
Roundup
Maybe someone, somewhere, is working on a surfboard that borrows shamelessly from snowboard design. Good luck to them if they are. In our world, brands like Nidecker continue to find inspiration in the original sideways culture and the idea of riding the mountain like a wave. The Mosquito has executed that brief brilliantly, seamlessly merging the aesthetic of the shaping bay with hard-nosed carving technology. Bring on the 50 year storm.
