Snowboard Review: 09-10 Arbor Push

Location: Loveland, CO

Snow Conditions: Hardpacked to icy conditions on the mountain.

Setup: I rode the Arbor Push with Union Force bindings and Bonfire Geo boots.

Size: 156cm.

First Impression: Camber is like coming home, you know it’s good for you and you know exactly how it will react to you.

Weight: tad heavier than average

Flex: The push is one of the stiffer women’s freeride boards and meant for an aggressive female rider.  Longitudinally stiffer with a softer nose and stiffer tail, torsionally a tad softer so you can get the board quickly from edge to edge and engage the turn easier than expected.  But still not an easy women’s board, overall a stiffer board and compares to some other stiffer women’s freeride boards for the mountain.

Turning: I hadn’t been on camber in a while but I found the push not too difficult to engage the edge and get into a turn quickly.  Once in the turn, you feel stable and no problem engaging the edge and when you come out of the turn you’re increasing speed than when you went into the turn.  It’s a fast board and carves on a dime, but also no room for error and I found that out when I was being lazy in a turn, almost caught my edge.

Stable: Hands down the most stable board of the demo’s for women’s and for mens (but also one of two camber boards I rode).  Going back to camber is always going to be the best for stability and charging, maybe because I’ve spent the majority of my riding career on camber or maybe because it’s just better for it…regardless the push really excelled the most for stable riding.

Pop: Other than a small roller, I didn’t test the push on the pop factor.  I found myself being able to easily pop off the tail and get some good snap from the camber when ollie’ing but I didn’t take it through the paces.  In the park, I rode the box without feeling it catch and I think my riding is feeling more comfortable on boxes so that helps.

Switch: The push is a directional board and rides like a directional board so when you go to switch riding, it’ll feel a little off and some adjustment to get used to the handling.

Overall Impression: The Push is that board for women to charge on, it excels at freeriding and with a softer nose it can be taken to powder.  The Push was a really stable, charging board that you could just carve up the mountain with.

Shay’s Honesty Box: Camber won’t die and while I really love reverse camber/rocker options on boards there are times when going back to camber is like coming home.  You won’t need adjustment, you know it’ll be stable and you know it can charge down the mountain.  The Push was ideal for freeriding and I enjoyed riding it after some assortments of reverse camber/rocker options.

Ready to buy? Head over to evo for the 2011 version of the Arbor Push or shop their full line of Arbor snowboards

On Snow Photo

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Arbor Push description

Review Disclosure: I rode this board at a demo day.