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Advice on soft boot carving boards?


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I'm looking for a new carving board. My current pick would maybe be a Donek Saber SBX, but I am just starting to research options and would love to hear people's thoughts/recommendations.

Overall, I'd say I want a board that can cruise steep blue groomers, while carving. I have an Arbor Element Camber, which I like as an all mountain board, but as a carving board I find it doesn't have enough stiffness or edge hold. My Jones W Solution is a surprisingly good carver (w/ AT boots and plate bindings), which makes me kind of want a W Flagship as an all mountain board, but I'm still leaning towards a dedicated carving board for, well, carving. Also, I am leaning towards getting a rather damp board for all-day carving, even over choppy snow. The Saber SBX seems to check all those boxes, but I do wonder if it might be venturing a bit further into marginal carving gains territory than necessary.

On a side note, are there any good AT boot compatible solid board plate bindings out there? I love how my Phantom M6s ride, and I do have a set of solid board cleats for them, but I am concerned about wear and tear from resort riding, and they are a bit of a pain to swap between boards. Yeah, I know, softboot forum, but I tend to think of AT boots as closer to soft boots than alpine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had similar desires (softboot carving on hard blues/easy blacks, regardless of conditions) and ended up with a custom Donek Flux (per Sean Martin's guidance). With the caveat that I didn't shop around or try other boards, I absolutely love it. The board just wants to carve and it handles varying conditions really well. I have an 8.5-10m sidecut radius and I do find my carves fall apart a bit on steeper slopes (headwalls on blacks mainly), but I'm pretty sure that's somewhat to be expected with a relatively small sidecut radius and my technique could almost certainly be improved. Also, I wear 30.5 MP (13 US) boots and found going with a custom width to be a game changer. I don't need riser plates and I no longer boot out with the 29.7 cm width I ordered.

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