The full circle

[BlueB]

Well, almost...

I recently got into possession of few old school Priors, from late 90'. Doug, the Tenorman, came earlier today for some boot repairs and looked at the boards. Suddenly, he declared: "This was my board!", looking at the 175 WCR. Apparently, it was one of the 1st 175s ever made. He did a big scrape (see the pic) on his first day out and then a tail delam on the 2nd day. Prior replaced the board on warranty, then it got fixed and re-sold... We don't know how many hands it changed before it ended up with me, but is still in good condition, tons of camber and the delam fix holding well, 13 years later... I offered it to Doug, to complete the circle, but he's still got the replacement twin.

Few other things we noticed:

Some of these oldies have significant nose decamber (not like Kessler, but it's there);

One of the SLs has really low and gradual nose rise + decamber. Not the hammerhead, though.

.

[Chris Houghton]

That would be the brown/maroon coloured topsheet? Nice boards, especially the 167 but Prior was making 175's before that. I rode a 12/13.5 blended sidecut 175 with a white topsheet in 1996. Don't know if the nose was decambered though haha. I also remember Prior in the "Snowboard Report" magazine that came out in '95 I think, all the boards were white topsheets at that time. Good memories!

[tenorman]

i believe that was the first year prior's were commercially available on a mass scale. it was also the first year you could buy them at northshore ski and sail in north van. prior (pun intended) to that priors were made to order on a small scale in chris' garage before he set up a proper large scale manufacturing facility at the first location near the dog pound in north van.

CHRIS HOUGHTON is correct, priors originally had white topsheets. the first one i saw was 3 years older than CHRIS HOUGHTON'S which was a 1993 freestyle board owned by mt. seymour snowrat and part time lifty (while working on his masters in chemistry at SFU) GEOFF WINTERS.

i have been mistaken before in the past so if there are any discrepancies go with CHRIS HOUGHTON'S information. based on his previous posts this guy knows his stuff. CHRIS if you are reading this could you please confirm for BORIS that you posted on bomberonline about 10 years ago that your favorite board was the nidecker extreme 169cm?

btw BORIS it was may 20th not may 18th as the closing date for cypress in 1998--sorry memory is slipping in my old age.