Snowboarding is not a cheap hobby, especially for an aspiring degenerate living in the flatlands of Illinois. For that and a myriad of other equally limp excuses I managed a 15 year hiatus between our daily hill bombings after school at 4 Lakes in Lisle and when my wife finally inspired me enough to get back into boarding in 2005. A lot changes happen in a guy’s body between the ages of 16 and 31 – especially in the areas above the balls and below the neck – but what didn’t change in that time was the resounding pitch my neurons hit as I shuttle down a mountainside with a piece of plied fiberglass bound around my hooves.

Getting back into riding at an age just on the ripe side of young I wanted a board that was competant without getting ahead of me, reasonably priced, but well built and had some grounding in my roots as a rider having learned what passed as my skill on an 1988 Burton Air. After some research and demos I picked up a 2005 Burton Triumph.

Burton’s answer to an all mountain board fit the bill, but also came with some of the drawbacks lower priced Burton’s are known for: it was a bit stiff, a little too heavy, and didn’t have a whole lot of pop to it. This was fine for the first season or two as I was getting my sea legs back, but by last year my skills had progressed well beyond where I left them in the early ’90s and I was longing for a board that had better action and response, something that felt like an extension of me and not simply an addition.

After some research I settled on the 2009 Ride Prophet 164. I wasn’t doing any park riding and prefer mostly nice long runs hitting walls and kickers so I wanted something a little bit longer than the 160 I was riding on the Burton. I also wanted something that was going to edge a bit better as I was getting more comfortable at higher speeds. The Prophet and most of Ride’s boards are known for their great edging due to the high angle steeps on the edge as well as the material used – the same as is used in skateboard wheels – that help dampen vibrations on rougher, tighter snow. This has proved pretty beneficial in this year’s pretty underwhelming snow accumulation. What further put the Ride Prophet as my top contender was that it’s lines were a bit more severe than the very conservative Burton Triumph with a more spooned out nose and thinner mid-body, this combination would help it perform better in powder as well as packed stuff on groomers.

I picked the deck up for dirt cheap from The House Board Shop last spring when they had a 50% off sale. At $250 there was literally no better board that could come even close to suiting my specific needs for the mountain and then when you add in the wicked, magic dork graphics that bespeckled the board with wizardy sigils and all-seeing eyes laid in a gorgeous multi-layer transparency with a minimal color scheme, you had a snowboard cocktail that wooed all my little buttons into a seriously focused spending frenzy.

So she looked pretty and was hyped appropriately, but how did she ride?

Pretty good, I must say. I’ve tried her on the crummy packed shit at Devil’s Head, the crummy packed shit at the Canyons, the fluffier shit at the Canyons, some pretty decent stuff in Reno, Tahoe and also at Solitude and in every condition the response has been fantastic; the action is super live, the edging has been like a race car, and the weight distributes very well across the board making the board seem almost invisible or at least not in need of any conscious negotiating.

The one downside I’ve come up against so far is that it doesn’t seem to take a beating quite as well as the admittedly more brutish Burton Triumph. I’ve had my Prophet out for about 8 outtings this season and I’ve already pierced through every layer of my base and have begun chipping down through multiple layers on the top of my board. I do have a tendancey to go harder on my stuff than most, though I still can’t figure out how the hell I tore up the bottom the way I did as I haven’t been doing too much crazy stuff on rocks that I can remember. But the damages aren only disconcerting in relation to the time spent on the board, they are nothing some epoxy and TLC won’t fix.

All in all the Ride Prophet 164 is head and shoulders above the also very competant though clumsier 2005 Burton Triumph. It was the perfect progression for me with more aggressive handling and more taught action, the Ride Prophet certainly stands up as one of the more enjoyable all mountain boards available.