Snowboard Review: 08-09 Salomon Loft

Location: Keystone, Colorado

Snow Conditions: Cold with hardpacked groomers and some choppy terrain.

Setup: I rode the Salomon Loft with Salomon Absolute bindings and my Vans Omni Focus boots.

First Impression: Really…people actually spend a lot of money to ride this? I didn’t think it was anything special.

Size: 156cm

Weight: I didn’t really notice the weight of the board which means it wasn’t lightweight but it wasn’t heavy either.

Flex: Torsionally and longitudinally stiff. It could cut through the snow good, but definitely felt it wasn’t that responsive in riding, probably the most dead board I’ve rode in a while.

Turning: I liked that the loft offered really quick edge to edge, but I felt it was a lot more torsionally stiff not allowing me to really twist the board to make shorter radius carves on it. However making really long radius carves were a blast, especially with it holding speed and not feeling out of control on the board.

Stable: It held fine at higher speeds, definitely a stiffer board to ride. I took it to faster speeds on it, didn’t notice the base being any faster than any other boards I rode for the on-snow demos. I was surprised when I took it to ice, I had heard it gripped very well on harder ice and the board I rode was decent but nothing that grabbed the snow and held it.

Pop: I honestly don’t think it had any…felt too stiff and dead to get any good pop out of it.

Switch: I had no problems riding it switch.

Pipe: I didn’t get the chance to take it into the halfpipe. I really would have liked to see this board in there since it’s stiff. Hopefully another time.

Overall Impression: I wasn’t really that impressed with the loft. Definitely a board for really fast hard packed groomed runs where you just want to bomb down, making barely any turns. In fact now that I think about it…it’s the perfect board for the beginners that just point it cause they can’t turn yet.

I’m going to take this board out again since obviously it wasn’t that great for me. But I only rode it in hard packed conditions so I would like to see how it handles in softer snow, powder and choppy crud.

Shay’s Honesty Box: If I never had to ride this board again, I would be happy. I didn’t like how it rode, I thought it was a board I rode in the late 90’s and was disappointed people buy it. It was soo far off some other Salomon boards that you could have put another cheaper company name on it and I would have believed it in a heartbeat.