Silence Goes Graphite

Trent Smith and a proto- type graphite board.

Silence Snowboards, one of the few major snowboard companies to show at the ASR fall show had a super top-secret graphite model in the booth. It was light and springy.

"The board is light, but that's not why we did it," says Trent Smith, president of Silence. "This is really just a prototype for the composite boards that we're working on for next year. But flex this thing and feel it."

The board has a nice snappy flex. And the construction looks pretty smooth. That can be a problem when using composites, according to Smith. "People think using graphite is easy, but it's pretty difficult to get everything right. But we've figured it out."