I demo'd this board in Dec 1999, and loved it. I bought one late in the 2000 season and it felt like a different board--in a bad way. It felt stiff. Alot stiffer than the one I demo'd. People love Salomon boards--they're fanatical about them. But I've had at least 15 days on this 350 and it just isn't that great.

I'd like to challenge what seems to be about 90% of the 'advanced' snowboarders out there and declare that stiffer is NOT better. Stiffness, it seems, is the latest fad in snowboards. If you get a stiff board, you're an advanced rider. And if you're an advanced rider, you'd want a stiffer board, right? All that I can say is that I've been snowboarding since 1987 and I'm as strong as ever... I raced bicycles for a few years and did the Markleeville Death Ride a few times. Basically, I don't think I need to make excuses--stiff boards aren't for me. You can't drive your leading edge in and force short-radius turns on stiff boards. This board just doesn't respond to me the way I want it to--and the 350 is supposedly less stiff than the 450 and 550. I just don't get it. Maybe it's just my style of riding, but maybe no one is going to stand up and say that stiff boards suck because that'll mark them as a 'beginner'...

So now I have two boards, a Morrow Lithium that is too soft (but insanely light) and this Salomon 350, which is too stiff. I bought the Salomon because I wasn't completely happy with the Morrow, but now I prefer the Morrow--with good strap bindings I can do just about anything on that board. It's relatively soft, but it holds an edge and is stable at (relatively) high speed (I mean, come on, how fast can you go at a ski resort?).

In any case, the 350 does have a very fast base--incredible. And it's very well made. It's a board that seems like it'll last forever. But try a Salomon before you buy one--they are stiff boards, and just not very fun to ride, in my opinion. I'm still trying to figure out why the demo board I tried was so much different--and it was. Maybe that board had be ridden alot, or maybe it was the variation between individual boards. This is what I wrote back in Dec 1999:

In mid-December I was at Sugar Bowl in Lake Tahoe, California for a snowboard demo event. I was able to try four different boards that day: a Burton Supermodel 163, a Salomon 350 163, a Sims Descender 162, and a Morrow Lithium 161 (I actually own the Morrow, but this was my first day on it, so it was first impressions on all these boards).

The 2000 Salomon "350" turned out to be my favorite ride. The board simply did what I wanted it to do. It was automatic. For me that's the ultimate: not having to think about the board, just looking ahead at the terrain and picking your lines as you go with no worries about whether your board will respond correctly. The carving was just perfect. It never did anything unpredictable. I can't think of anything bad to say. It's just got that perfect balance of characteristics that few boards have. It's probably on the heavy side when you compare it against other high-end boards, but I can probably write a whole article on how weight is an over-rated characteristic. My only question to the rep when I returned it was, "So how much does this board cost?" I learned that the 350 is Salomon's midrange model, below the 500, 550 and W4 models.

------=( For more info on this board feel free to E-mail me @ AlanGRaetz@cs.com)=------

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