Snowgo

No Sno mountain board test

This article was originally published on Snowserve in May 2000.

A friend and I rented a pair of No Sno mountain boards for the bank holiday weekend from Urban Chaos in Earl's Court. The boards retail for £250, but renting was a modest £20 for the weekend.

First of all we took them to a local park for a warm up. Although it was a good opportunity to get a feel for the boards, we found the gentle grassy slopes in the park too shallow to really get going and the long grass and muddy conditions made it even harder. The best riding was on the footpath.

Our second venue was Devil's Dyke on the South Downs and this turned out to be an excellent spot for mountainboarding. There is a car park at the top and plenty of rolling hills that can be ridden without losing too much height.

The short sheep-sheared grass and gentle gradient (there were steeper slopes available too) quickly got us into the swing of things.

The chalky paths on the Downs were great for speed, but hard to fall on, luckily there were plenty of slopes with short grass which were ideal and the long grass at the edges of some of the paths made good braking zones.

We both suffered problems with the second rate bindings and Nick had to implement some running repairs (hard to imagine using one of the MBS boards with just toe straps - regular snowboard bindings are definitely the way to go).

So could this be a snowboard replacement therapy? Well not quite. Fun for a day or two but it just does not recreate the exhilaration of snowboarding. Although it is certainly the ultimate skateboard!

The No Sno site has full details on the boards. We found them to be well up to the task, but a good pair of snowboard bindings are essential.