YES The Y Snowboard 2020

Piste and Powder Charger that won’t break the bank

If you’re one of those riders that love to blast around the mountain, love to hit up the pow on those freshies days, but who doesn’t go anywhere near the park, then WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU RIDING A FREESTYLE BOARD? Take just one run on the all-new The Y, and you might realise you’ve been riding the wrong style of board. Aimed squarely at intermediate to advanced riders, The Y shares its directional shape and profile with the highly acclaimed Optimistic. But, it’s the easy-going construction shared with the Typo that brings the Y alive. This unique blend of high-end freecarve shape combined with that more rider friendly construction creates a genuinely stunning freeride focussed board that delivers outstanding performance both on and off the piste, without ever feeling overly aggressive. This transforms The Y from what would be just another freecarve quiver board into something you’d want to ride every day. So, if you don’t ever ride the park, don’t buy a park board. You might just find it’s the best thing you’ll ever do.

Rider Style

Intermediate through to Expert riders who are looking for a freeride focussed board that delivers truly stunning performance on the piste, but will also give powder board levels of float and control off-piste.

Shape Overview

Heading up The Ys’ state of the art shape is Yes’s unique blunt nose profile. This innovative tip design has been engineered to enhance float at the front, but to also reduce swing weight. So, not only is this effortless in the pow but thanks to that low weight at the extremes of the board, it also feels utterly predictable and responsive through the turn. Next up is the tight radius sidecut, this is matched with a slightly wider riding platform to ensure that no matter how aggressive you carve, toe and heel drag isn’t going to be an issue. Finally, to enhance the on-edge response even further YES add their acclaimed UnderBite edge profile. This creates divots at the edges under the binding area reducing and disrupting the surface area of the sidecut that has contact with the snow while the board is turning. This steps up the edge pressure by distributing your weight/energy into the areas where you need it - from the binding out, and through the centre of the board where the carving arc is taking place.

Profile

Now the secret to The Y’s more compliant ride lies with its shift from the full camber of the Optimistic to the more versatile all-terrain focussed 2-4-2 CamRock profile. This combination of low profile rocker zones at the tip and tail with a more pronounced camber through the middle of the board still delivers a predictable hook-free ride, but it also allows the contact points to engage faster than the more freestyle orientated CamRock profiles. This gives The Y a more dynamic feel and lets the camber between the feet work in perfect harmony with the UnderBite edges to deliver that confidence inspiring and stable on piste feel that you only really get with a fully directional board.

Construction

The Y is the perfect example of that old saying, ‘sometimes less is more’. Reading through the spec list, what you get is a traditional snowboard construction without any of the headline-grabbing super tech many brands flag up. However, that’s no bad thing, because what YES do is use a high-quality poplar wood core wrapped with high-quality bi-ax glass fibre. These two materials are the building blocks for a great snowboard; everything else at this price point is just fluff. So, what you get is a board that gives the perfect balance of pop, control and playfulness. Everything that you could ever ask for with this kind of board.

What type of base does it have?

Sintered Spec is the term Yes use and is the grey zone that many companies play in. It’s Sintered Spec because it’s hardness and chemical properties are very close to true sintered bases, and its on-snow performance is also very close to true sintered - but it’s formed using the extrusion process. How? – Well, the raw material is actually pre-consumer recycled (meaning it never left the factory) sintered base material. So while the heating and extrusion process has softened it slightly, it’s still much harder than true Extruded.

KEY FEATURES

• Directional Twin
• Underbite Edge Profile
• CamRock 2-4-2
• Stiffness 8/10
• Twin Flex
• Poplar Core
• Bi-Ax Glass
• Sintered Spec Base