The Burton Pile Driver, or its full name – the Family Tree Pile Driver is a combination pow surfer/no board.
It only comes in one size – 140cm. It has a couple of uses, as a regular powder board, or use the rubber pads ride it as a noboard with no bindings.
Mounting bindings is just like on a normal Burton board, they use the Channel and just mount over the rubber pads.
My Review of the Burton Pile Driver
I was lucky enough to be able to ride this board on a powder day. I rode it with Burton Malavita bindings and ThirtyTwo TM-Two boots.
It took a little while to get used to such a short board, and cat tracks were a challenge to start with. Much different than riding a regular twin board. The biggest thing to get used to was the lack of tail. By the end my front leg was tired from keeping weight on it, because putting your weight to the back without a tail there causes a few problems.
Once you get into the deep snow is where it really shows how it rides. As you would guess, the float is crazy. The tail wants to sink and the nose always keeps itself up. It has an amazing light and surfy feel, which is a much nicer ride in the deep snow, even compared to the Salomon Sick Stick. Even at high speed flying through powder, it is super easy to almost turn on the spot, you can get through the tightest trees with no problem.
But for something so good in the powder, you have to have some tradeoffs. If you are willing to have a tougher time on groomed runs, it more than makes up for it in powder.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to ride it as a no board, but judging from how it rides with bindings, I think it would be lots of fun.
Tech in the Burton Family Tree Pile Driver
- S-Rocker camber profile
- Directional Shape, with a 12mm taper
- Swallow Tail
- Directional Flex
- FSC Super Fly II Core
- Sintered WFO base
- Triax Fiberglass
- Squeezebox Low
- Carbon I Beam
- The Channel
- Infinite Ride
- Recycled PET Topsheet
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