Capita Aeronaut Snowboard 26/27

The CAPiTA Aeronaut is a directional all-mountain snowboard - 25.3 cm at the waist on the 157 - designed by Arthur Longo to charge the resort and boost natural features, not to hunt powder. The freeride-looking outline fools people; the actual job is pop and clean edging on hard and variable snow.

Underfoot it is old-school camber. CAPiTA's Alpine V3 keeps a cambered platform under the board and eases off at the contact points, which is where the spring off a lip and the grip through a turn both come from. Three 25 mm CarbonFlax Amplifiers firm up the response, and a Progressive two-radius sidecut keeps it nimble from edge to edge. The flex is a Directional 6 - medium, not planky - so the pop stays reachable without a stiff, punishing board.

The $679.95 goes into the build. A Panda Hover Core of paulownia, poplar and bamboo, HolySheet TRI/BI glass, and a sintered HyperDrive ADV XT base - the top tier CAPiTA makes, one rung up from the sintruded Quantum Drive under the D.O.A. It is a premium directional deck finished at CAPiTA's own Austrian factory, and that sintered base needs regular wax to stay quick.

It rewards advanced riders who drive their turns and seek out features to launch off; skidders, powder-first buyers, park and switch riders, and anyone who will not wax should look at other boards. Lengths are odd only, 153 to 161; the Wide is a separate even-numbered style, 156W to 162W, at the same price - so check whether a board is the standard or the Wide before you read anything into the number. Decks ship without bindings; we mount them and size the board and its width with you in the shop.