burton malolo review

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.

compromise?

Burton describe the Malolo as "bridging the gap between freeride and freestyle". I think "freestyle" is "aerial ballet", and "freeride" is sideslipping on the piste, at least to judge from what most people who buy gear labeled "freeride" actually do. Neither's interesting to me. I think they're trying to say that the Malolo is less dedicated than the Fish. That sounds an awful lot like a compromise, and I don't need to compromise. If I'm riding piste then I'll be racing past on my race board; in bottomless powder I want to ride a board which delivers the same dedicated performance. I do not take prisoners. The marketing persuaded me not to waste a single helicopter/ cat day on a Malolo for a couple of years.

After some peer pressure from large assertive Canadians I was persuaded to take second look at the Malolo as a dedicated powder board. Here's the result...

first impressions

Try not to look at the graphics. Ok, it could be worse: they don't have wanker pictures of naked ladies on them. But the 2006/7 graphics look like they were drawn by a four year old on dope. Well at least they're sufficiently random to hide surface scratches.

Graphics aside, the boards are well built and the finish is good. I rode some Malolos which had been thrown in and out of board carriers every day for a season at Powder Mountain and they were in better condition than most boards would be after a week of normal abuse. The boards are well made.

In the past I have had some trouble with boards designed for cowboys and which seemed to want to enforce the bandy-legged toilet-sitting stance favoured by some of the world's best paid riders. That's not a problem with the Malolo: the inserts are close enough together to be used with hard bindings and boots and my legs. Just. Checking the specifications, Burton agree: for the 06/07 models the Malolo's standard stance width is 50.5cm versus the 53.0cm on the 156 Fish.

The insert pattern is unfortunately Burton's proprietary 3-hole¹. Thanks to that I've got to carry a second set of expensive titanium plates around the world. Ah well, the board better be good to compensate...

At 62kgs and agressive I rode the 162 Malolo: these ride longer than Fish. Burton's recommended weight range for this is 68-91kgs. My "trad" powder board length was 168 and my Fish is 156.

	Fish 156	Malolo 162
stance width	53.0	50.5
nose width	31.25	30.82
tail width	28.25	28.82
sidecut	7.86m	8.22m
stance	7.5 back	5.0 back
rider weight	64-86kgs	68-91kgs

Comparing the 06/07 Fish with the 06/07 Malolo in more detail (units are centimeters except where indicated), the boards look more different than the statistics suggest: the Fish looks to be hugely more tapered, but it isn't. I would have thought that side cut isn't as important here as with a piste board - these are very short radii for boards intended to be ridden at speed. However perhaps the sidecut plus the taper is really what matters.

in practice: more slash?

I rode the Malolo in a variety of heli and cat accessed back-country terrain in all sorts of weather and snow conditions. I absolutely didn't ride the thing on powder with a base, or piste (the very thought!). I did ride over-the-head champagne powder, crust, upside down snow, chopped up crud, and deep snow which had been wasted by the rain.

The boards have little stickers on them which witter about "more slash", and for once that's about right: the board does feel slashy somehow. The impression is more "traditional" and a little less "back foot oriented" than the Fish. Overall the board feels fast to accelerate and a little happier at high speed than the Fish.

I didn't actually notice a huge difference in shifting from the Fish to the Malolo. I kind of forgot about it once I'd started riding. The Malolo obviously has more tail than the Fish and it clearly makes a difference to the ride, but it's easy to adjust to it. That makes senese, as the Malolo's kind of half-a-Fish.

I rode the Malolo through a lot of the finest Monashees top to bottom dense trees, plus Whistler trees including some previously unridden. These last included the tightest trees anyone's likely to try to ride. Overall it's no hassle driving the Malolo through a forest: I forgot I was using it. It is different from the Fish, but adjusting to the tail length is easy. One negative about the Malolo for my weight is that if the fresh snow isn't deep enough, you can get kicked around by the tail a little. That's easy to deal with once you're aware of it, but in those conditions a Fish would be a better ride. Conversley the Malolo would be a better bet for standard glacier riding.

summary

A great powder board for back country use. Bigger than the Fish and rides accordingly.

[1] Although I have seen a prototype finished in a pleasant black with Burton's 2007/8 "EST" binding mounts.