The coolest project in the snow sports world surely must be Every Third Thursday from Signal Snowboards, in which the boys from Signal challenge themselves to invent some crazy mad Frankenboard mashup between a snow toy and…something else. Not long ago, we shared the iPad board with you, in which Signal mounted a working tablet. This month, though, Every Third Thursday is bloody genius: a board that you can surf or snowboard.

The fact that Rob Machado actually surfs the board is what roped me in, but from the very beginning of the video I was hooked. The production process is fascinating, as they take a surfboard and carve out a snowboard shape in the bottom, drop in a binding plate in the top, figure out the fin boxes, and more. It helps to be a gear geek, but isn’t completely necessary. The whole funhog-meets-MacGuyver vibe is plenty.

And then they take it surfing in Encinitas, California, where the board draws a crowd, including ESPN host Sal Masekela. Machado paddles out and shreds with it on a pretty glassy morning bump. You can tell it’s not exactly a contest board, but that isn’t the point — he’s able to cut back, slide up and down, and go wherever he wants.

Then Signal takes the board north, to Baldface Lodge in Nelson, B.C., throws on snowboard bindings, and drops into a tiny fraction of the 32,000 acres of pow overseen by snow caretakers Jeff and Paula Pensiero. In contrast to the Encinitas surf, where the hybrid seemed a little boggy, in the snow it’s anything but: With all that surface area and flotation, it takes off like a rocket. The fine directional control, maybe not so much, but for a board that was built as an experiment, wow.

Photos by Chris Wellhausen

Tagged as: snowboarding, surfing