Skip to main content

Trekking: Igneous boards look as terrific as they ride

Man isn’t meant to stay indoors — our weekly “Trekking” column can attest to that. It’s a column dedicated to the adventurer inside of all of us, the one pining to ditch the office humdrum for a quick surf session or seven-week jaunt in the Grand Tetons. One day we may highlight an ultra-light stove and the next a set of handmade canoe paddles. Life doesn’t just happen inside the workplace, so get outside and live it.

Snowboards have come a long way since Michigan engineer Sherman Poppen first crafted the “snurfer” for his daughters in ’65. There’s been an onslaught of notable pioneers since then — Tom Sims, Dimitrije Milovich, Jake Burton, etc. — all of which have shaped both the way we snowboard and the medium on which we do it. Still, when it comes to the subtle art of crafting boards, it’s rare we see the kind of precision and dedication showcased by the folks behind Igneous Skis and Snowboards.

Recommended Videos

timthumbBased out of Jackson, Wyoming, the small company has been handcrafting custom boards for more than 30 years. The small team builds the high-performance wares layer-by-layer, without the additional aid of computers or even a pneumatic press, sourcing materials from local vendors and the nearby region. The exact design of the board is more-or-less based on your specifications, taking into account your desired shape, camber profile, and a flex pattern to match your riding style. You then choose the hardwood topsheet, each of which is combined with a high-performance epoxy and designed to capitalize on the responsiveness of the hard maple and white ash cores. Black sintered graphic bases and hand-filed, hardened steel edges add to the appeal, providing speed and tuning longevity on the slopes, while multiple layers of stitched triaxial fiberglass and bulletproof Kevlar endow the boards with enhanced rigidity and elemental protection.

Related: This board + backcountry powder = pure joy

Igneous boards don’t come cheap, though. A standard offering, whether you opt for the Wolfman, Straightline, or Dark Star design, will set you back a cool $1,200. Moreover, each board takes anywhere between two and four weeks to properly build and ship, so plan ahead lest you want to be left out in the cold with no board on which to rip. Few things in life can taunt you more than fresh powder and a little bit of time to spare.

Check out Igneous Ski and Snowboards online to place an order or for more info. The company also provides tuning services and instruction, if requested.

Brandon Widder
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brandon Widder is a journalist and a staff writer for the Manual and its brother site, Digital Trends, where he covers tech…
Tony Soprano vs. Walter White: Who is the ultimate antihero?
TV's biggest heavyweights duke it out for the antihero crown
Breaking bad season 4 screen shot

Sports fans often debate between two heavyweight legends. For basketball, it's LeBron James and Michael Jordan. Switching to tennis, you have Roger Federer fans and Rafael Nadal diehards. Debates like these are ingrained in the culture of athletics, but TV fans have their own version of this sparring match.

Tony Soprano from The Sopranos and Walter White from Breaking Bad are the two characters who still send shockwaves through every drama in the 21st century. These men were the perfect mix of good and evil. They navigated family life and the criminal underworld with cunning intelligence and ruthless risk-taking. Every show with morally gray characters at the center owes its storyboard to Walter and Tony, but which character deserves the antihero crown? This is Tony Soprano vs. Walter White for all the marbles.
Who was the more complex character?

Read more
Learn how to smoke a pipe the proper way with our guide for beginners
Let us show you the classy way to smoke a pipe
Packing a pipe

Pipe smoking is the most aesthetically distinguished way to enjoy tobacco, but you lose the classy effect if you don’t know how to smoke a pipe properly. Smoking a pipe has become a lost art, and these days, most people who engage in pipe smoking do so to achieve a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps your grandfather enjoyed a puff now and again paired with a good stiff whiskey, or maybe your goal is to emulate a pipe-smoking artist.

I know that I enjoy a good puff on a pipe now and then, and knowing the right way to enjoy a pipe has made the experience much more pleasurable for for me. Whatever the case, if you intend to take up the time-honored tradition of unwinding with a pipe like me, you should learn how to smoke a pipe the right way. And smoking a pipe is very different than smoking a cigar (except you shouldn't be inhaling either).

Read more
Don’t ruin your cigars: here’s how to properly season a new humidor
Seasoning secrets every cigar lover could use
faceless man presenting a cigar humidor with cigars inside with gloved hands

If you're a newcomer to the world of cigars or just bought a brand-new humidor, you'll need to season it. And no, I'm not saying to add salt and pepper to it. If you've never heard of it, you might ask, "What is seasoning for a humidor?"

Don't think you need to flavor the box or anything — seasoning is really about getting the wood inside your humidor so as not to rob your cigars of precious moisture. Easy to understand, and getting it done is relatively straightforward as well. The trick is figuring out the "why," and we'll get into that in a bit. But let's first discuss seasoning a humidor.

Read more