I saw my first snowboard in 1983, on Regis's film "Apocalypse Snow". At the time the only snowboards I could find didn't seem to have edges, and I wasn't too impressed with that as I could afford only piste riding back then. The solution was obvious: I copied the guys in the film on Monoskis, and learnt how to ride moguls on one ski. I didn't start riding sideways until '89, so I can't remember what board designs were like in 1986. Certainly they didn't have inserts; they did have loud graphics though. So I'm not sure what the 1986 is all about, but the "Mullet" bit may be a reference to the Burton Fish, or it may not be.

Anyway, this is a review of the Lib Tech Snow Mullet 1986 for riding powder. By "powder" I mean specifically cat and heli back-country powder, not resort fluff.

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The graphics don't do it for me, but who's looking down there anyway?

It took me about a year to figure out how to even spell "Malolo". The first production models were a cool black, produced in the same year as Prior's first Khyber. At that point I rode the Khyber, then dumped it for the Fish, which worked better in the sort of terrain I like (bottomless powder with trees in it). Prior subsequently detuned their Khyber design considerably (I wonder if Burton's legal people had anything to do with that), but the Malolo continued, apparently with a design unchanged aside from the graphics.

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I've ridden a lot of helicopter accessed terrain on a range of boards for years. Like everyone else in the early days I rode a “traditional” shaped powder board of about 1.68m; I didn't have any trouble turning boards or riding in any conditions found on the hill.

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