2011 Arbor Coda

While everyone else has only recently hopped on the "eco" bandwagon, Arbor has been building snowboards of green materials like bamboo since the very beginning. After trying out the 2011 Arbor Coda, being eco-friendly isn't the only reason to consider Arbor.

I got my hands on the 157, a slightly bigger ride than I'm used to.  If you factor in that the Coda is also a stiffer deck than I normally ride and reverse camber to boot, I was expecting things to take some getting used to.

Though the Arbor Coda is officially classified as an all-mountain deck, I felt it best to mount my softer Union Contact binders considering Bear Mountain is 95% park.  Since the Coda is a directional twin with a 1" setback (nose 1" longer than tail), I also pulled the back binder up to give me a centered true twin stance.

Arbor re-designed the 2011 Coda in some pretty significant ways: First, they decided to go with true reverse camber throughout the deck, and second, they implemented their new grip-tech technology.  Grip-tech is basically an added contact point underneath each foot, which makes this reverse camber board steer like magic.

Bear Mountain held together fairly well today,  so I had a firmer snow surface to test this deck on.  The Coda gripped edge to edge remarkably well for being a full reverse camber board; possibly due to Grip-tech, the edges have just enough bite to keep you from sideslipping your way down the hill but not so much that the board controls you. Speed wasn't an issue for me on this board; even as Bear softened up into deeper slush, the Coda kept on charging regardless.

One area you won't see this board excel is on jibs, which is OK because that isn't what this deck was made for.  This doesn't mean the Coda can't do jibs at all; the core is bamboo, and pretty playful.  With reverse camber as well, it isn't hard to get a press out of it.  There were two areas I felt sketchy, and this in my opinion is all on the board being full reverse camber, 50-50s on rails and any feature thin enough you would need to lock on to boardslide.  I still threw several boardslides on it, all successfully, but don't expect a stellar performance from this deck when it comes to rails etc.

Jumping was where I expected this board to excel, and I wasn't disappointed.  I'm usually skeptical about hitting jumps on a full reverse, especially in the beginning of the day, but I really didn't notice on the Coda.  The bamboo core made this deck super light with awesome pop, and since the board handled well at speed it was game on as far as jumps were concerned.  Because of how light it is, you can really throw this deck around for some tweaked out grabs and killer spins.  I also noticed that the deck was very forgiving during sketchy landings; not a lot of reverting happening with this board.

The 2011 Arbor Coda is a solid all-mountain deck. It can go fast, rail turns, launch booters, slide the occasional jib, and thanks to its full reverse camber you can even take it into the pipe or powder.  I've ridden some really funky full reverse camber decks in my day, and I'm stoked the Coda wasn't one of them.

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