CAPiTA Dark Horse Snowboard 26/27

Start with the thing a shop is supposed to tell you and usually does not. This is not a carryover year. CAPiTA cut the Carbon Aramid Boosters from 2 x 30 mm to 2 x 20 mm and left the price at $499.95. Those strips are what put snap and torsional stiffness into the board, and each one is now 10 mm narrower. That is the fact, and it is where the fact stops: nobody has ridden the 26/27 build. Not one review of it exists. What anyone knows about this board on snow was learned on last season's version, and we are not going to dress that up as knowledge of the board in the rack. What we do know is where the $499.95 goes, because CAPiTA told us by building it. The Dark Horse replaced the Outsiders, a $600 board, and the camber profile came across untouched. The core, the glass and the base all stepped down - and the base is the big one, from a sintered Hyperdrive to a sintruded Superdrive. Sintered bases run faster and drink wax; sintruded ones are harder-wearing and ask for almost nothing. That trade is the likely reason the two riders we can read both land on the same complaint: it is not fast. One of them had ridden the Outsiders too, and put the difference honestly - the old board felt quicker, but outside genuinely flat sections he did not notice much. On last season's build those two agreed on more than they disagreed. Switch riding and spins were the standout, named independently by each of them, and one specifically noticed it did not over-spin. Pop off small and medium jumps was real. Powder sat at the bottom of both their scales, and the mechanism is not in dispute: a centered true twin with zero taper has nothing to float on. Above roughly a foot of fresh, this is the wrong tool. On hard snow at speed, that build got loose. On one point they split, and we will not pick a side - one found it shines on jibs, the other found it decent but not ideal. They weighed 144 lb and 180 lb, both on a 154 - which may be the whole story. Inside the line, the price tag lies to you. The D.O.A. costs $100 more and is softer - Twin 5.5 against this board's Twin 6. The extra money does not buy a stiffer plank; it buys a different board. Hybrid camber instead of traditional. A sintered Quantum Drive base instead of this sintruded one - which is to say the $100 buys back the glide this board gives up. It also buys a Blended Radial sidecut, a carbon-hybrid laminate and a different core. If you ride aggressively, that $100 is the right $100. If you are still building a trick list, it is not. Sizes run 148 to 158, even only. The Wide overlaps at 154, 156, 158. Pick width off your boot.