The three boards we got to ride, L-R: Tree Surfer BC, Shorty BC, and the Descender Fjäderlätt - all up on the Isfallsglaciären, near the Tarfala mountain hut, in the Kebnekaise region of Swedish Lapland. Looks like we’re going that way then, eh?

The Setting

March, in the arctic circle, and the local anemometers were saying was a literal hurricane outside – 132kph, more in gusts. Good weather for staying indoors, you might think, but we were there, in the Kebnekaise region in Swedish Lapland, with Mats Drougge, Stranda’s founder and chief shaper, on Stranda’s first backcountry touring trip, to show us a super interesting part of the world to go touring and riding in and also to give us a chance to ride some of Stranda’s splitboards. So yeah, we had to go out in it.

That big storm had brought lots of snow before we arrived, but most of that had been melted with some crazy high temps (only just below zero, in the valley floors), or simply blown away. Any slope that wasn’t directly in the lee of something was hard crust turning to bullet-proof rain-crust lower down. But, as we were to find out, some especially sheltered lee slopes could have around 40cm of still-good snow on them. And later in the week, we were blessed with a single blue-sky no-wind day, then more snow and dropping temps. A bit of everything then!

It’s an impressive landscape too – a mix of big old glacier-rounded mountains, jagged peaks and even some properly volcanic-cone -looking mountains in there too, threaded through with some wide valley floors, and plenty of glaciers. The peaks top out with Kebnekaise itself, it’s north and south peaks hitting around 2,100m and swapping the claim for Sweden’s tallest peak depending on how good the snow is that year.

The Boards

Not really the conditions for a scientific comparison then; we just had to grab breaks in the weather and head on out with the board that was set up that day - but more than enough to get a feel for the back-country credentials of three of the four splits in Stranda’s line-up:

The Shorty BC – A short-tailed, long-nosed, directional, low-cambered board dialed-in for massive powder float, edge grip and carving ability – aiming to be a one-board quiver. (the BC stands for Back Country)
The Descender Fjäderlätt – The ‘feather-light’ ultra-lightweight full carbon version of the multi editors-choice -winning Descender BC freeride splitboard. Built for long, high-mountain touring days where every gram counts, with edge-hold and high-speed stability. We didn’t get to ride the regular Descender during this trip.
The Tree Surfer BC – A fish-tailed, directional board built to float on pow, carve hard, and cut through the crud that even pow-surfers often need to deal with, when getting back from the good stuff.

So let’s dive in and look at each one…

Shorty BC Split

Shape / Construction - A fairly radical shape with long shovel-like nose and shorter tail but where the side-cut is maintained until late in the tail, giving a relatively long effective edge, with low camber. Combine that with side-cuts ranging from 8.2m (in the 159cm) to 9m (in the 169cm) and the board does look like it’s meant for both piste and pow.

Riding - My very first turns on this board were jump-turns in the 50° couloir from the top of almost cartoon-like conic mountain of Tuolpagorni, to get us down into to its wide-open ‘crater’. That roughly 2m wide couloir is flanked by a towering rock wall muscling in claustrophobically on one side, and a slightly less-daunting but still ominously jagged rock band on the other. Not ideal for a very first ride on a board with a radically different shape than my normal rides! I needn’t have worried - that short tail helped me get the rear of the board clear of the steep slope behind, letting jump be more smaller, more precise. Good pop from that tail too.

Float - I’m over 6” and have always ridden 168cm+ boards, usually with about a 26cm waist. I’d wanted to try a 27cm waist to reduce heel and toe drag, and this 164W had it. Shorter but wider, probably a similar overall surface area, and maybe more effective at keeping me on top as that extra area is mainly right under me where it’s doing the most good. My bindings were central in the inserts but that long, wide nose popped up by default at even moderate speeds. The set-back, short tail again helping there. No leg burn, beautifully poised: glorious.

Manoeuverability - Slashing up snow-banks against rock walls, making turns just where you had to make them to get around obstacles, and surfy turns in natural half-pipes, the board proved super maneuverable and well-balanced. That incredible float again. A real joy. It absorbed changeable snow textures nicely and gave me time to adjust my riding to suit.

Speed / Control - On a final wide-open fan down to the valley floor I let her rip and it felt beautifully stable. The snow firmed up more and seemed to suddenly change into something like a bullet-proof rain-crust and I opted to kill speed with a big, wide turn on its edge and it just… held. On a rail. It kind of rescued me there.

Touring - One great feature are the holes through the deck near the front of each ski, and the notch in the rear – both on the centre-line of each ski. Strandas pre-cut skins have a simple hook attachment for the hole and another small hook for the notch at the back. The front holes mean the skins can be slightly shorter overall – having skin right at the board tip doesn’t add much grip on the trail anyway and having shorter skins saves a few grams and moves the centre-of-gravity fractionally backwards. What these centralised attachment points also allow is actually a bit of genius - it means that you can put skins on or off a fully assembled board – ‘Huh?’, you say? Well, this means you only have to handle one object (the fully-assembled board) when dealing with skins in high-winds and cold, and are always holding onto it, instead of juggling two separate skis, one of which you are not in contact with. Doing this felt faster, more efficient and less hassle than dealing with one ski at a time. Marginal gains maybe; but very welcome especially if the conditions are less-than-ideal.

It's got camber under the board – good for grip on the skin track (pressing down into it). And balance-wise, in kick turns, despite all that real-estate up front, I don’t recall the the nose dropping forward when I lifted my foot. Maybe it needed a little kick to help it on it’s way, but they are ‘kick-turns’, after all…

Overall – Gotta say, this board really did it for me – coming down, it handled variable snow conditions with everything from deep snow through to shiny rain crust. It’s float, manoeuverability, edge-hold and composure - it all gave me confidence to just let me do my thing, knowing it would help me handle whatever I aimed it at. And going up, it’s very competent.

Clearly, I didn’t get to test it’s piste cred, but with it’s side-cut on the deeper side and relatively long effective edge with that tail shape, the fact that carving is a big focus of Stranda design, and the edge-hold I got introduced to here, I suspect it will be very good indeed.

Lengths and pricing (2021-22): Men’s 169cm (260mm waist), 164W (270 waist); 164; 159. Women’s 159cm, 153. All €890.

Descender Fjäderlätt

As noted in the Shorty BC section above, I normally ride way longer boards than the 161 Fjäderlätt that was available to test, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ride this extreme light-weight carbon concoction – a carbon version of their multi- Editors-Choice -winning Descender BC.

Shape/Construction – More symmetrical than the Shorty, still directional though with enough tail to ride it switch (even if that tail has a hint of the fish about it).

It’s carbon/wood/aluminium internals make it one of the lightest boards around – at just 2,790 grams for the 161cm model. About the same as the 158 Amplid Milligram Split but longer and wider. Seriously light. There is a 162cm model, with a pretty much 27cm waist, for us big feet, but the 161 I rode here had a close to 26cm waist, like most boards I’ve ridden in the past. It’s got “power bumps” – slightly wavy edges, a little like a serrated knife, along the length of each edge, giving a few ‘contact points’, to help grip on high-mountain icy patches. The construction puts it toward the stiffer end of the spectrum, to help with big-mountain high-speed riding. It’s got the same rear skin hooks as the Shorty but the skins attach on the nose in the more ‘traditional’ manner (no putting skins on with this board assembled).

Riding – Two overriding impressions here – Firstly, that despite it’s shortness (for me), lightness and relatively high stiffness, it didn’t feel at all skittish, and we were spending a lot of time riding some pretty crappy crusty/icy surfaces, which I expected to really kick me around. Some great work has gone into balancing the construction here, to damp down the carbon while still making it feel lively when you want that liveliness, in manoeuvering.

Float - My second biggest impression was the decent float for a board that I felt should have been a few centimetres too short for me. I did have my front foot just back from the centre of the inserts to lift the nose more but, to be fair, I didn’t really get to ride it the depth of snow that needs that - mainly in firmer snow, with the odd patch of deeper windblown - but still I didn’t feel my back leg working hard at all – a very pleasant surprise, and partly due I’m sure to the lightness, and the nose shape keeping the front end up.

Speed / Control - I did get to blast down some fast slopes, harder-packed but variable too and it felt really composed. Again, the lack of nervousness in something so light.

Edge grip - Did the Power Bumps help? Hard to say without doing a side-by-side test on the same patch of ice with a board with no Power Bumps, but certainly I felt no lack of edge grip when riding or touring.

Touring – Camber underfoot for grip and control, check; Well-balanced with the nose lifting for ‘kick-turns’, reducing the need to actually kick it, check; Edge hold on ice? Definitely good, though whether that was the Power Bumps, the construction, or hard-boot set up, I can’t conclusively say (all three probably);

But, did I mention light? This is its superpower - lift your foot and feel the benefit of 250g less per ski than the other two boards described here – not they feel like heavyweights at all. And that lightness counts not just for lifting your foot hundreds of times, but swinging each ski around in kick-turns too. For long days touring, and/or high, steep tours, it’s going to make a big difference to your energy levels, with all the benefits that that brings.

Overall – Expensive, yes, at €1390 a pop, but if you are considering a mega-light board for putting in long hours on the skin track, and/or doing technical high-alpine skinning, and still wanting to bomb it in serious terrain, then the Fjäderlätt should be up for your consideration.

Lengths and pricing (2021-22): Men’s only for now, 162cm (269mm waist), 161 (259mm waist). Both €1390.

Check out the shape and fittings differences between the Shorty BC and the Descender Fjäderlätt. And the contract of old-school cool and high-tech graphics!

tree surfer BC

Shape/Construction – This is a fish-tailed board, the rear ‘flukes’ being a bit stubbier than for a full-on swallow-tail, and only comes in a 162cm length for now. It’s got quite a nose: the so-called “hammerhead-shark” nose, even more width at the front than the Shorty (at similar board lengths), meant to really cut through the crud that you inevitably have to deal with at some point in a split tour, even if you your main goal was to ride pow. More side-cut than the Shorty (7.8m) too, for even tighter carves on piste. Like the Shorty BC Split it has the same front holes for skin-hooks, and like the other two the same rear skin clip-notch (so you can put skins on/off with the board assembled).

Riding – So again a board that is some 5-6 cm shorter than I’m used to, even if the waist was what I’m used to (26cm), so I really expected to have to work to keep the nose up, even with it’s set back . But no, the big nose really kept on top, that fluked tail helping there.

The extra flex you can dial in in the tail was notable. Stable at speed in super changeable pack, it gave me a bunch of confidence to bomb it. Surfy in the knee-deep snow we were blessed with on our last day, it dealt with the crud and sat on the crust that awaited at the bottom, and also held a solid edge on the icy rain-crust even lower down, despite it’s more flexy tail. I’m not sure how that works, but it seems to.

Touring – Yep, it’s got all the same features as the Shorty BC (camber, front skin hook-holes, rear skin clip notches) so toured up well for me.

Overall – I’m still getting used to the idea that boards can be designed to excel in so many ways - in pow, in the crap you often need to deal with to get to and from the pow; and carving up the pistes. A fish-tail that could be your quiver of one? (ok, so long as you don’t include park). That seems a possibility with this board. Again, testing it’s piste credentials will need another ride, but with that tighter side-cut and Stranda carving heritage it should rock. For me, at 6 foot plus and big footed, the shorter length and narrower waist than the 164W Shorty meant the Shorty got my pick here, but if you are a bit more, ahem, ‘compact’ in your own dimensions, this board would be a great option for you to rock a wide variety of terrain.

Lengths and pricing (2021-22): Men’s only for now, 162cm (260mm waist), €890.

Wrap up

Some other cool things about these Stranda splits:

Clips – Stranda have made a great choice to use Phantom Hercules clips on all these splits. Incredibly simple, no moving parts, and precise, locking the boards strongly. They are also infinitely adjustable (within their overall min/max adjustment range), which is a big improvement on several other systems which only allow adjustment in fixed, tiny increments where you can find that one increment is too loose but the next won’t let you re-assemble your board.

Warranty – You get a whopping 4 years on Stranda’s boards – I just did a quick check of a bunch of different brands and 2 years seems to be the norm. Snowboards and skis aren’t recyclable (yet) but a warrantied long life is a great start.

Good wood – Stranda use high quality durable wood, lots of Ash and Popular, contribute to that longer life-span (and performance too) and use less epoxy and composites.

Environmental awareness – Along with their wood selection, Stranda make a lot of use topsheet materials like bamboo and castor bean -derived materials, and are a carbon-neutral company (certified by climateneutral.org)

So there we have it - first impressions of three very different boards, assessed in challenging conditions and not in any sort of scientific manner! The hugely variable conditions didn’t really lend themselves to repeat test runs to fully compare like-for-like or check subtle stuff, and the long-term performance of each couldn’t be verified of course.

Having said that, all three boards strongly impressed in their own ways, those impressions being overwhelmingly positive, given the limited riding time and the conditions. I can vouch that the float and surfy feel that is Stranda’s DNA is here in each of these splits. So, go read some other reviews and definitely try them out if you get a chance - and a brilliant way to do that is to check out Stranda’s backcountry hut trip, which I was on for this test week, or watch out for Stranda testing events next winter.

You can find out more about their splits and solid boards on the Stranda website.

Disclaimer: So yeah, I enjoyed riding the Shorty so much that I actually went and bought one after the trip. I’ve been looking for a one-board quiver (useful when you live in the UK and are limited to just one board, weight-wise, if flying…) which excels in pow but is also a great carver on piste - something I want to work on more. I’ll let you know how that works out in a follow-up review next year!