Capita Kazu Kokubo Pro Snowboard 26/27

The CAPiTA Kazu Kokubo Pro is a directional big-mountain freestyle snowboard, 25.5 cm at the waist on the 157, and the rider-type row on CAPiTA's own spec page reads All-Mtn / Freeride. It does not read Powder. The brand owns that word and prints it on other decks; its absence here is a decision. The marketing page bills this as a "switchblade of powder boards", then hedges to "a powder nose and a slightly tapered tail" and to "side-country powder mornings that transition to resort riding". Read the hedge, not the headline.

The tail really is tapered: CAPiTA prints 9.9 mm at the 157, and the nose and tail figures - 30.4 against 29.5 cm - agree. But the float is a nose, not a platform. The waist is narrower than the Mercury's at the same length, CAPiTA calls the chassis compact, and the board does not appear on CAPiTA's Flat Kick list - and by the brand's own definition Flat Kick is itself a float feature. Steep and fast, the nose does the work. Low-angle and deep, you will be working to keep it up.

The hardware is the story. The base is HyperDrive ADV XT - CAPiTA's thicker sintered version, tagged on this board and not on the Mercury - finished at the factory with the Moonshot Omni-Tune race structure. The core is a Panda Hover Core with four bamboo rods, pitched on power and response where the plain Hover Core is pitched on damping. Glass is HolySheet TRI/BI with four 25 mm CarbonFlax strips. The Skinless topsheet is pure ash veneer, quantified at 220 g lighter than a standard topsheet. Flex is a Directional 6.5.

CAPiTA builds it in 151, 154, 157 and 160, with a Wide in 155W, 158W, 161W and a 164W new for 26/27. PTO stocks the four standard lengths plus two of the Wides, the 155W and the 158W. The sintered base wants regular wax; CAPiTA's own qualifier is "properly maintained". It ships as a bare deck; CAPiTA builds no bindings, and we check your boot against the waist in the shop.