Imagine this: cross-country skiing through undisturbed, snow-filled terrain and then creating fresh tracks as you snowboard your way back down the mountain. Sounds much more serene than waiting in crowd-filled lines to get onto a chairlift.
“It’s a beautiful way to spend some time in the woods, one of the coolest experiences you’ll ever have,” Kyle Jones says of splitboarding. Splitboards are ultimately snowboards that detach down the middle to become a set of cross-country skis. They can be easily separated or reattached, depending on what the rider is planning on the mountain.
With Jones’ Cold Smoke Splitboards, based in Gunnison, you have two options: buy one of the company’s factory-made boards or bring in your own used solid snowboard to get a custom built splitboard. The differences are price and material. The factory-made boards are designed specifically as splitboards with inside edges and cost $850, while custom-built boards are previously used (yet usable) solid decks and start around $415. Check them out at coldsmokesplitboards.com.