I found myself in the middle of one of the larger storm systems, peaking at 100cms in one 24 hour period. That's a lot of snow, most of it 3%. You could walk to breakfast, and by the time you walked back your tracks would be gone. Luckily this was the time when someone offered me the loan of a Burton Stella, a board I'd never heard of before. The Stellar immediately looked like the business - a little like a Dupraz and those other big powder boards.

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It's a weird name for a snowboard from a ski company, but it's owned by Adidas these days so there you go.

I rode the 160 Sick Stick in heli-accessed Monashee powder. There was some Alpine stuff, but as usual it was mostly top-to-bottom trees. After the first few runs I rapidly forgot it was a new board. It just rides, and rides well.

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There was nothing significantly new in Alpine snowboard design since the switch from asymmetrical to symmetrical race boards in the mid 1990s. My 1994 Nitro Scorpion is broadly the same as my 06/07 F2 slalom, at least from the rider's perspective.

Meanwhile on the race circuit, board design started to win races. In a segment of the market largely free from the attention of marketing people, something important was happening.

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"...there's no action left in this keyboard."

Almost all modern computer keyboards start out with no action.

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