09 Rome Snowboard Artifact 1985 150

In 1985, Terry Kidwell revolutionized snowboarding with a super-flexible, horizontally laminated board with a rounded tail—the world’s first pro model.That historic deck also featured a reverse-camber side profile that made it super playful.If you shredded back then, you probably remember the footage of Kidwell doing the first flat-ground riding—butters and all.It revolutionized and forever influenced what we all do on snowboards.   Back in the winter of 2007, Bjorn, Jonaven, Marius and Casey started talking to us about making boards with reverse camber.For urban nights on rails and ledges, and backcountry days on powder lines and jumps, they wanted a ton of playfulness in a board—easy pressing, effortless buttering, and buoyant floating.We prototyped a few designs on the Design and Artifact shapes and got the riders testing them out.The playfulness came quickly as we altered and reversed the camber line.Since reverse camber profiles naturally decrease pop, the design challenge proved to be how to load these geometric profiles with strategic technologies to deliver the pop and dynamic feel riders expect from a Rome board. In our 1985 Reverse Camber designs, we control for the nose and tail pop that our riders want.We’ve taken the geometric concept inspired by Kidwell and infused it with 2009 SDS technology.Whether you’re getting off the lip of a park jump, looking to ollie a slow sign, or gapping some rocks in the backcountry, pop off the tail and nose is critical. To counterbalance the natural decrease in pop that comes from reverse camber profiles, we design pop back in with our Carbon Mapping and PowerAmp Technology: strategically placed carbon in the Artifact and bamboo in the Notch.   The result is Rome’s family of 1985 RC boards—designs that combine park-to-powder playfulness with pop off the lip and a snappy feel from edge to edge.

  Enlarge Image