Burton, Noboard team up to create NoFish

By Matt Boxler

There are about 40 years of snowboarding history in the making of this season’s newest ride. And now that it’s finally here, there’s no looking back.

Noboard developer and co-owner Cholo Burns surfs in the Selkirk Wilderness. (Credit: Jenna Low)Vermont-based Burton Snowboards has teamed up with the innovative Canadian company, Noboard, to create the NoFish – the industry’s first board designed exclusively for bindingless riding. Bindingless riding, you may recall, was the 1960s precursor to snowboarding itself. It was Jake Burton who affixed the first binding to an old Snurfer a decade later, forever revolutionizing the sport.

The quest to replicate that true feeling of surfing on the snow, however, never disappeared. In the late 1990s out in the powdery depths of British Columbia, Greg Todds and Cholo Burns took matters into their own hands ... and feet. They removed the bindings from their favorite deep powder rides – boards like Burton’s classic Fish, Malolo and Piranha – and surfed them.

They developed the noboard, a rubber pad they could affix to the snowboard decks, along with a leash and fastening hardware. The company incorporated as Noboard in 2001 and started selling noboards by 2002. While Todds’ life was tragically cut short in an avalanche in 2005, the Noboard crew that was there from the start has carried on – Burns, Scott Penner, Skye Sheele, Gary “Tuttle” Hall and “Young Dave.”

“When we sat down to talk about where we wanted to see noboarding go, we decided that we would pursue it until everyone had the chance to try the sport,” Burns said. “This is our main reason for working with Burton Snowboards; they have the distribution globally that we would never be able to achieve. We are also so true to what the sport of noboarding is. So we weren’t worried about losing who we are as a group by joining Burton. If anything, we will be able to help keep the soul of the sport alive.”

While the noboard is certainly at home out West, Burns assures that this is a sport to be enjoyed everywhere. “The great thing about noboarding in general is that you don’t need a big slope or a lot of snow to have a good time with it,” he said. “Obviously, riding a noboard in the West is the goal for anyone that really gets into it – long runs and deep snow – but you will still have a good time in the woods with your friends and a couple of noboards. Think of how snowboarding grew from the East Coast with what Jake was doing into a global sport. The idea behind it is fun, which can be had anywhere. Snowboarding used to be about hiking around the woods and has changed to be included into ski hill culture. I believe that we/noboarding are at the stage of where snowboarding was 25 years ago.”

One Fish, Two FishThrough its collaboration with Noboard, the 2009 NoFish has been modified for bindingless powder surfing. (Credit: Jenna Low)

The unique shape of Burton’s original Fish (first developed eight years ago) allowed the smaller board to be ridden in deep powder. The new NoFish is a softer-flexing Fish hybrid that comes with the Noboard pad built-in, and a nylon bungee cord used to pull the board closer to the feet for control, then “dropped” (the goal of all noboarders) for true surf style riding.

“The NoFish is a Noboard shape that has never been used as a snowboard shape,” explained John “JG” Gerndt, Burton’s Testing Supervisor who helped design the original Fish eight years ago as well as the new NoFish. “It is different from the original Burton Fish in that it only has 25mm of taper versus 30 in the Fish.It is softer, does not have inserts of a channel, it has a convex base versus a flat base and it comes with the Noboard pad.”

Known worldwide in the sport simply as JG, Gerndt has ridden for Burton for more than 20 years. He credited the re-examination of the Fish design to the Noboard guys making history out west. “We trusted the riders as we always do and tested out some new shapes and ideas, which all panned out. It also comes from Cholo and Penner and the rest of the riders having hundreds of days riding without bindings.The shape, the recessed topsheet, the convex base, the soft flex, and the rein all contribute to how it rides so well.”

New England inspiration

The engineering wheels in JG’s head have always gotten their grease in the East. “It really started with the comeback of the Fish craze in surfing and that got me thinking about how that could translate to the snow,” JG said. “We surf as much as we can in New England and a Fish-style surfboard works really well around here during the summer months.We have been trying to surf the snow for decades now and the Burton Fish helped that pursuit. There are plenty of places around the East that someone can hike up and ride down a powder line. Of course, there are plenty of places around world like this where there is snow.

“Hiking and riding has always been a part of winter sports no matter where you live,” he said. “We just happened to do a lot of it here in Vermont.I started riding Snurfers back in the ’70s by hiking hills and I still do that now with a NoFish.But now with the NoFish we really are surfing the snow. It feels more like surfing and skateboarding than it does snowboarding.”

The partnership

The collaboration between Burton and Noboard is one that both companies agreed makes perfect sense. “Burton is all about product development and working with the best riders in the world,” JG said. “By teaming up with Noboard we have brought two like-minded forces together. It feels good to spread the shape out to even more riders who want to open their minds to riding mountains of snow without bindings.I know it works, and so do others, so it only makes sense to have a shape like this to ride powder.”

Noboard crew member Scott Penner holds the leash while catching air in British Columbia. (Credit: Jenna Low)From the Noboard perspective, it has never really been about the business. It was only about the sport.

“People loved that we were small and trying to do something different,” Burns said. “With that said, it is always hard to get people to support something new, let alone try it. So, I would say that it has been a struggle at times. This movement has had nothing to do with a traditional business, it’s more a true love of what we are doing. So sales have not mattered as much. We will do this anyway. We have been growing every year by about 500 percent, so that’s a positive.

“We have yet to see the effects of what the Nofish will do to noboarding, however, I imagine that it will be a big boost,” Burns said. “Anything that JG designs works well and last season the level of riding went way up because of what he built for us to test. So, once the consumer can get one ... we will see.”