Indeed it is a board I had with me in Zinal. I rode it the whole week in Zinal so I good a pretty good picture about the board.
Goltes had been making boards for quite a while now, and I sort of follow their development from my first curves on snowboard back in early 90's. I learned how to ride on their board, my first board was Goltes, then I switched from Goltes but kept an eye on them all the time.
Their board I've tried were OK, but Procarve, this years model and at the moment their best board is in my opinion very very good. It is torsionally very stiff (even Jacques confirmed this in Zinal when he tried it with the hand), has radius of 12m, which is in my opinion also very good because it offers a bit more manouvrability than bigger radiuses on marrower and more crowded slopes and 175cm is perfect for my hight (183cm) and my weight (89kg) as it is quite stiff. I must say that I was very confident on it in every condition, the edge hold well on the harder part (the steep part) on the piste down in Zinal (those who have been there know it), I didn't have a problem with nose diving and as far as I've seen and tried it the quality of production is very good. I had some fallovers too in which the board dangerously bent but it never showed any signs of tiredness.
That's it. In my opinion it is a very good board that can easily compete with F2 speedster, Hot Blast (although probably not that stiff) and also with the boards that came from Burtons production. Wouldn't want to compare it with Swoard, because as said many times it is a very different board, although there is no question of being able to EC with Goltes. No problem.
I wouldn't want to advertise, but I hope this short review helps.
Bye,
Jakob
Element - water.
