NITRO Snowboards / Re-Visited

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Throw back Thursday?

I had the great pleasure of having a long conversation with the founder of Nitro Snowboards today.

He shared the "Back Story" on the development of the "Diablo" and the "Scorpian" , both boards he

considers "His". He was responsible for much of the graphics and design of these boards.

I have invited him to join us here at Bomber Online and hope he will pay us a visit.

The "Pow-Pow" is one of my all time favorites and I loved the Diablo too.

Please share your experience/s with Nitro Snowboards. Bryan

Edited September 18, 2014 by www.oldsnowboards.com

[John E]

I like the graphics.

Seems like a lot of board range from the unimaginative (solid color) to the ugly - something that would appeal to only to a teenager. These are nice.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Hey John, yes!! He explained that in the early 90s the shift was to blank boards with sort of a "Grunge" theme. The photo above is of the graphics they wanted to put on the next years boards in 92. Ended up they had to tone down the graphics to make the sales. I think it was only the Scorpian graphic that went through with only small changes.

These are samples or examples in a smaller scale to show potential buyers and production folks.

[Corey]

I had a blue/grey/gold Nitro Fusion with Elfgen bindings with the white tongues some time around 1990. The board was like this:

Sorry, best picture I could find on the internet.

I didn't know what I was doing or what it was called but I knew if I tipped it up on edge it turned so hard I could touch the snow without bending over. Sadly, I sold it for some crappy Crazy Banana twin-tip thing for the jib/bonk phase after just a couple of years. It took me a while to figure out that I missed the Nitro, but I was too entrenched in the Transworld mindset and didn't think about carving for 15+ years.

[philw]

I had two Scorpions - the first I broke the nose off, but that one had the same style graphics you're showing there, except they were predominantly red. Went well with the Fritschi bindings for them. The second was plain black/ orange, from a later season. That was my first symmetrical "new race method" board - a close cousin of my current Kessler in a lot of ways.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

I had two Scorpions - the first I broke the nose off, but that one had the same style graphics you're showing there, except they were predominantly red. Went well with the Fritschi bindings for them. The second was plain black/ orange, from a later season. That was my first symmetrical "new race method" board - a close cousin of my current Kessler in a lot of ways.

Yes, he told me a story about his initial visit with the Swiss, Fritschi was building mainly tele or rando bindings at the time. He said that their location in the hills was one of the most beautiful locations ever!! He said they were really good to work with on the plate bindings he wanted.

He also mentioned he attempted to blend the Celtic Weave patterns with modern graphics and deep tone colors for a "high end" look. I think he was successful. I always loved the graphics, especially the Diablo!

Edited September 18, 2014 by www.oldsnowboards.com

[philw]

Yeah, those are the boards I would keep. I did it like the early Burton boards (too crude engineering), and asym also looked ugly and badly engineered. These were the first of the future. And pretty.

[tex1230]

The big Diablo (176) came out the first year I was living in Tahoe...1991 i think? I was up at Donner Summit with John Treman and a couple of others...John held the record for the biggest cliff jump on skis at the time. John hucks off a nice 40 footer and stomps it. My roommate Alan says something about ski world records and proceeds to launch himself and his Diablo 60'+, and John didn't talk the rest of the day...

My other nitro story would be racing 2 seasons on the nitro/fritschi bindings. Those things were bulletproof in he early 90s

Great collection of art, Bryan!

[pogokoenig]

Scorpion - The godfather of symmetrical raceboards. Phantastic boards. Loved the orange 95/ 976 version the most. Way more fun than the GT which came out in that year.

Also liked the 94/95 Epic and even more the Cam which came out 96. This one felt a bit like a premature Virus Lightning.

It's a shame that Nitro stopped making these beauties.

[philw]

I still have that orange scorp : they can burn it with my body. I vaguely remember nitro imploding, can't remember why. For me, Burton was never relevant, stuff for skateboarders, which I'm not.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Great posts!! Love to see the Scorpion Phil. Photos?

Matt, yep , big fan of the Diablo. I still have my 186cm.

Matt, did yours have a dragon graphic?

[Shred Gruumer]

What about the nitro ceramic top Amero slalom. ..I know where one is...

[philw]

Great posts!! Love to see the Scorpion Phil. Photos? ...

Here you go. They simplified the graphics for this year. I think this was probably two seasons after the original red Scorpion design, can't remember what they did the season in between. In that period they switched from drilled mounts to 4x4 inserts, I moved from the Fritschi to... I can't quite remember.

The board's actually in great condition although I rode it a fair bit on snow and plastic. The marks on the topsheet are just reflections from other book cases plus the markings where the bindings: it's clean.

[mbedle]

Here you go. They simplified the graphics for this year. I think this was probably two seasons after the original red Scorpion design, can't remember what they did the season in between. In that period they switched from drilled mounts to 4x4 inserts, I moved from the Fritschi to... I can't quite remember.

The board's actually in great condition although I rode it a fair bit on snow and plastic. The marks on the topsheet are just reflections from other book cases plus the markings where the bindings: it's clean.

What year was that board made? I have an old Nitro Scorpion 60 and just wondering what year it was made. Was a fun board to ride on, but the bindings finally broke.

[b0ardski]

Great thread Bryan, would have loved to to be the fly on the wall for that conversation.

hmm...where to start

I love big boards and I can not lie...just thought I'd stick that in your head, bwaahaahaa

Saw my 1st "euro" carves by the guy who ran the hyak board shop (bomber member "Hyak" I think) who was riding a scopion back then.

I'd been on the 170 TX a couple years by then and boards for 6' tall adults were almost as hard to find as they are today, the 180 kemper bullet felt like a 2x12 plank. I wanted more float in the deep PNW snow.

Bought my 186 diablo from a skate shop in fall '92 at bellevue wa. the owner of which I'd met years earlier ('87?) when he was riding the steep bumps at Ski Acres on an original Avalanche w/lofo plates and old lace up ski boots. My 1st encounter with hardshells that prompted me to use my merrel super comps on the '83 performer.

Loved the 186 for the steep & deep and the twintip for learning fakie. Always thought the deeper heel sidecut on the diablo (186 was 10.??m heel/11.??m toe) was a silly concept, what they call "asym" today, even though I embraced the shifted sidecut of the prime&alp a few years later.

He made me a deal on the sims rotocant plate binders,(all plastic :() since I bought Becki's pre-4x4 sims fakie at the same time. I drilled mounted the diablo myself. In hind sight I wish I'd waited for the next model year when Nitro went from aluminum retention plates under the topsheet to inserts.

Those plates bent after too many cliff drops into the deep mank of Alpental's backcountry, creating an ahead of it's time twintip rockered pow board but the carvability went right out the window. Not a total loss as I traded it for an old polaris 440 in '98.

Demoed and kept a lib grocer in spring '93, way lighter weight, better carve, and the biggest floatiest tips ever created, but that's for a different thread.

Saw a split powpow at Marmot Mountain ski shop back then with a fritschi plate binding ride/ski interface that was way beyond anything else ever available until John created the Phantoms. Think I have a pic somewhere, I'll try to dig it up.

Aahh, the memories

Edited September 21, 2014 by b0ardski
date correction

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Good stuff folks!! Cool to see the photos of the later models. I have not seen either of those. He said that Nitro was bigger in Europe and continues to this day?

I did write him another email and I can hope that he will visit the thread, perhaps offering up some additional cool historic tid bits.

He said that there were three guys that went together to create Nitro. One of the perks was that each owner would get the option to create a board of his choice.

When it was his turn, the result was the Diablo and the Scorpian.

I recall one of the other owners/creators was Tommy Delago , one of his boards was the Nitro "Retro" swallowtail , which quickly became the "Pow-Pow" the next season.

Google search of "Tommy Delago Snowboarder" will give you plenty of info.

Here is one to get you started :)

Edited September 20, 2014 by www.oldsnowboards.com

[b0ardski]

this board isn't the powpow I saw but the binders are the same.

from and older splitboard.com thead http://splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11622&p=85279#p85279

the one I coveted 20+yrs ago was shaped like this with graphics like that snowhow.

here's a great source for pics http://www.snowboardmuseum.de/brand/show/id/22

Edited September 21, 2014 by b0ardski

[philw]

What year was that board made? I have an old Nitro Scorpion 60 and just wondering what year it was made. Was a fun board to ride on, but the bindings finally broke.

The Snowboard Museum guys have images (see below for an extract) which state it's the 1993/4 season. I thought it was 1992/3 though, and they are showing a later board than the one I rode. The graphics are the same, but my board had a proper black sintered base, and this one has inserts, which mine did not. Plus the original Fritschi bindings were white not grey.

I think that I bought my original Scorpion in Grenoble in November 1992, the first year of that board. I'd seen a review of it in Snowboard UK (which I have somewhere still), and it was the first board which looked like it would do what I wanted. At that time the American gangster skate thing had not yet colonised the UK: there weren't many riders here, but we were at least as influenced by Europe as the US, and US boards were prohibitively expensive.

I had already tried and rejected asym boards, which to me were and are way too ugly from an engineering perspective. Similarly "skateboard" designs never worked for me: I didn't want to perform "tricks" to for an audience of 13 year old males. So the "new race method" and symmetrical designs were to me the obvious way to go, although in that review in 1992 this was probably the only board in that category.

I picked the board out of a rack of them in Grenoble in early November 1992. I rode it in powder at Les Deux Alpes on November 5. I made the mistake of staying in the resort, where they fed me what was apparently last season's chocolate mousse... if you've never had food poisoning at 3,000m, then trust me that you don't want to get it. I can easily see how food poisoning kills people.

I rode it as my piste board through 1992/3, 1993/4, 1994/5... and in December 1996 I drove the nose into a submerged log at Big White in waist deep powder (yes, a powder board would have been a better idea, but I rode what I had).

So, looking at that, and bearing in mind that I may be off by one here and there..

1992/3 - First none-inserted Scorpion, red snazzy graphics, black base.

1993/4 - Snowboard museum Scorpion, graphic base.

1994/5 - I think there was a Yellow/black graphics year. They modified the nose plan shape also.

1996/7 - Orange/black graphics.

.. I don't recall seeing the black/ red graphic, but it is certainly later than those years. You may find the serial number has the year coded in it somewhere.

Edited September 21, 2014 by philw
Remove black/red graphic repeated

[Keenan]

My favorite Nitro was the EFT (Earth Freedom Tranquility) Asym 169, until I took it in the bumps and dislocated my shoulder. Then I switched to the Amero 164 which broke when I landed an accidental 180, 4 days before the warranty expired. Nitro let me come to the distributor in Seattle and pick out a replacement. I think in the early 90's they had the carving boards dialed while Burton was focusing more on racing sticks.

[slopetool]

When I graduated from college I thought I deserved a brand new board. I bought a 92' Nitro Diablo 176 with the Fritchi plate bindings. What a great board. Remember that one, Bryan?

Then a few years later I sold it and then got the 178 and swapped the bindings over. I still have it and will not get rid of it. I wish I could put a bigger stance on it but it is set at 19 inches after I had the back inserts redone 2 additional inches. Got to love the boards with hardly any stance options!

I have it leaning against the wall in my living room so I can reminisce on the good ol' days of the Diablo! Great thread, Bryan!

[Jon Dahl]

Had a 178 Nitro pow swallowtail, the 4x4 inserted foam core blue one. Had one of my absolute best pow days on it at Stevens pass. Regret selling it, it was the definitive pow stick for me. When I dream of pow, the Nitro is always there...

[P06781]

When I graduated from college I thought I deserved a brand new board. I bought a 92' Nitro Diablo 176 with the Fritchi plate bindings. What a great board. Remember that one, Bryan?

Then a few years later I sold it and then got the 178 and swapped the bindings over. I still have it and will not get rid of it. I wish I could put a bigger stance on it but it is set at 19 inches after I had the back inserts redone 2 additional inches. Got to love the boards with hardly any stance options!

I have it leaning against the wall in my living room so I can reminisce on the good ol' days of the Diablo! Great thread, Bryan!

I bought a nitro diablo 176 at the portland ski show for $99 and rode it with burton raceplates for years as my go-to powder board. It was only after Bryan introduced me to the world of radair tankers that i sold it to a friend.

My very first real carving board after my burton safari 165 was a Nitro epic 173 asym until i broke it carving on texas trail at MHM.

Jim

[mbedle]

Thanks for the info philw. I'll have to check and see if it has a date code on it. Later than 97 doesn't seem possible (bought my house that year and that pretty much put an end to buying new equipment!!!). I think it had Oxygen bindings on it, which I think were yellow and black. They had big front bails on them, that were spring loaded.

[kipstar]

I was a big nitro fan.....

The original line up of Nitro came out in 1990/91 and they had a sym board even then called a Nitro EFT (the alpine range were all EFT meaning Earth Freedom Tranquility) the asyms were 154?/16X/169 and the sym was a 162 Amero. The first year they came with Elfgen rear entry hardplates. Boards came without inserts and were mounted by drilling.

Then the following year 1991/92 they kept the sym board but detuned it a bit from memory, the EFTs became Epics and were slightly worse boards but a little more manageable to ride (the small EFT I had would throw up a continuous snow stream off the toe side nose right into your face) on some level. The 2nd year I think they went to a Fritschi binding, but can't remember what they looked like. There was a marked difference in the top sheet between the first year and this year; the first year the top sheet was matt and painted (I suspect in layers); the 2nd year all the boards were glossy and must have been made using a different process. Now Nitro had a 5 hole pattern but you could still order no inserts.

The year following 1992/93 the Epics all took a major step forward in terms of graphics were very very slick, tribal as someone mentioned, and the bindings were definitely now the white Fritschi binding which had the ability to have the purple pads where the boots sat floating (to allow lateral flex) while the entire binding was on a semi track system, a bit of a precursor to the modern plate; the binding was attached to the board via a single central pin and the toe and heel floated on tracks. 5 hole or inserts.

The 1993/94 year was from memory the first year of the Scorpions, the Fritshis became grey at some point during that season and the float element for lateral flex was removed, but the system of the central pin remained. Surprisingly the Fritschis looked almost the same but for some reason were not compatible with eachother. From memory the Scorpion this year was mostly red fading into the black in the tail. I remember seeing Thedo Remmelink who was sponsored by Nitro racing during early 1994 back when Alpine racing was shown on TV in USA, and he was one of the earlier guys who had the closest technique to what we see now for racing, as opposed to the quite common heavily rotational technique that Peter Bauer was still using at this point riding the asym boards. Obviously Thedo was not riding an actual scorpion but at the time we thought he was :-) Still 5 hole.

The 1994/95 year the 4 hole pattern had become prevalent so the scorpion now as a red board with a black stripe up the centre, bindings from memory started to look more like the F2 style binding and I think at this point Fritschi was replaced, although they were still selling similar looking bindings to Oxygen and other companies.

Thereafter the more automotive theme started to come through and the scorpions hung around a bit longer although didn't seem too much different from previous years in profile (not sure about flex), and the Cam which had the amorphous lump made in a 3D mould of some sort on the deck was around 1997, by which time Nitro was not really doing alpine any more.

I kept riding my scorpion for a while longer, and what I could remember is for a 163 it rode pretty well, although the nose would push a bit of snow compared to the modern low nose boards.

Lovely boards. I still have an unridden Nitro Epic 154, a heavily worn out EFT, 2 Scorpions (154 edge blown and 163 here with me in BKK). Very sad when I saw Nitro stop making boards.

Edited September 30, 2014 by kipstar

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

That is some sweet memory you have there Kipstar!! Thanks for posting such detail. Do you have any photos handy of your Nitro boards? Bryan