GNU Hyak

GNU Hyak 2018

The GNU Hyak is a new board for 2018, and has replaced the original Carbon Credit. For a while it was a bit confusing, with the Carbon Credit coming in two versions, the regular and an Asym version. To make things easier, the Carbon Credit is only asym now, and the Hyak is what the old Carbon Credit was.

If you are looking for your first board, whether you want you own rather than renting or just want a step up from a hand-me-down board, the Hyak is going to be a good choice, that doesn’t cost too much.

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Features of the GNU Hyak

• Soft Flex
• Original Banana Profile
• Magne-Traction
• Aspen/Colombian Gold Alloy
• Tri-Ax/Bi-Ax
• Eco Sublimated Verzuer Poly Top
• Co-Ex Base
• UHMW Sidewalls

Who is the Hyak good for?

The Hyak has a soft-to-medium flex, which is going to be good for a few things. For beginners it will have a forgiving ride, which means that you won’t have to have perfect riding skills to have fun on the board. Keeping the flex relatively soft means that you can flex and twist the board without too much effort, which helps to give it an easy to ride feel.

If you are an intermediate rider, you will be able to press and butter the board without too much effort, which is going to help make learning butters and spins easy, and the (overall) rockered profile will keep it loose enough that you won’t catch an edge if you don’t get your spins around the whole way.

Although it seems crazy to say that a board can be good for everyone, even advanced riders would be able to do a lot with this board. If you are someone who rides a lot of rails, a board like this with a soft flex, forgiving profile will make it easy to hold solid presses on rails. The cheap price is good if you end up damaging your board on rails anyway.

It has the Original Banana profile, which means that there is rockered section between your feet, that changes into mild camber under your feet and out towards the nose and tail of the board. Although they say it is mild camber, it is very close to flat in real life. The rocker sections keeps the board loose and non catchy, and will help give the board some more float when you are riding in deep snow.

The mild camber sections will help to give the board a bit more stability (much more than the older super rocker versions did), so you will have a bit more stability when you are riding fast, and it will give you a little more push back when you are loading up the tail to ollie or jump.

Once of the main benefits of boards like this (that have a rocker profile overall) are that they are loose and easy to ride, and easy to turn. The downside is that they normally wont have very good edge hold in hard packed snow or ice compared to traditional camber boards. To help try and fix this, it has Magne-Traction, which means that the edges have a different shape than most boards.

If you look down the length of the board, the sidecut will look wavy, which is the serrations or lumps in the edge of the Magne-Traction. In the same way that a serrated knife is better at cutting in than a regular knife, the Magne-Traction has extra contact points, which are made to cut in a give you grip even on really hard snow. Their slogan is “turns ice into powder” which is a bit of an exaggeration, but it does do a very good job at making hard and icy snow fun to ride.

It has a simple base material. which isn’t high end or super fast, but it doesn’t need to be waxed and keeps the cost of the board down. You won’t have to worry about waxing it all the time, just get out there and ride.

Like the old Carbon Credit, because it is such a useful and popular board that suits lots of different riding styles, it comes in a huge amount of sizes and widths. All the way from the small 148 up to 165cm. If you have bigger feet and wear a size 11 or bigger boot, you will probably want to look at one of the wide models, so that the extra width of the board will help reduce any toe or heel drag that you might get. If you are unsure what you need, ask question here.

If this description sounds good, the Hyak might be a good choice for you. If you are looking to save some money, you could have a look at getting an older Carbon Credit, which is going to be very similar, and if you are lucky you might be able to get it on sale as well.

Sizes Available:

• 148
• 151
• 154
• 154cm Wide
• 157
• 157cm Wide
• 160
• 160cm Wide
• 163
• 163cm Wide
• 165cm Wide

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