For more than a decade, setting up a splitboard was a huge hassle that involved a serious investment of time and compromises in stance. Translating the plastic pucks to existing insert patterns with strange plastic templates was a process that not only took a ton of time to sort out, but also restricted stance widths, setbacks, and angles to a narrow range of possibilities. The result was an often less than ideal and a total reluctance to ever lend out your board or set your stance back for super deep days.
“It’s super fast and easy to mount the pucks, and get your stance dialed,” says Dave Downing, who has worked with Burton on splitboard development since 1995. “Getting your stance dialed in on a splitboard is huge, and it makes it super easy. And now you can let a friend use your board, or you can demo it out if you’re a retailer, and it’s easy to mount it back again to your stance.”
The thought behind integrating The Channel technology into a split set-up was a logical fusion of two existing technologies grown out of a decade-long partnership with Voilé. “Burton has been in production with The Channel since 2007. It is our specialty and the technology is something we continuously improve upon,” Burton engineer Matt Diem says. “Bringing The Channel to our splitboards was a natural evolution. Once we did that, it became obvious that we could redesign the binding interface to work with The Channel. The result was a simpler system that eased binding set-up and adjustment and allowed the rider to achieve their exact stance.”
The key to the slickness of the solution is that the Burton team built on two proven technologies—the field-tested Voile interface and the holding power of The Channel. “The action that provides the holding power is a pinching force between the mounting insert and the disk,” Seward stresses. “In order for us to go to market with The Channel in splitboards, we needed to pass the same strength specs for binding slip and spin testing that our EST and Re:Flex bindings need to pass. Pullout strength of our splitboards is also equal to the strength of The Channel in our solid boards.”
“I believe that in the backcountry the simplest solution that meets the functional requirements is the best solution,” Diem summarizes. In this case, Burton’s quiver of splits with The Channel interface passes that ultimate backcountry test.
