Ride DH2 2013 - 2010 Review by The Good Ride

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The Ride DH2 is the last remaining offspring of the DH line. started out as a great camber board that we really liked.  It won a few awards but then kept multiplying into other boards with the variation of the same name like the DH 2, DH 2.1 and so on.  It’s hard to keep track of it all.

Ethics Statement: We don’t get paid by the manufacturer to write these reviews.  We do make money from the “Where To Buy” links, but this is our best attempt at an honest and objective review from an average riders’ perspective.

Size: 157
Days:  3
Conditions:
Riders: James, Peter, Kyle
Boots: Burton Ion, Burton SLX, Burton Imperial, Nike Kaiju
Bindings: Burton Cartel, Burton Diode
Set Up:

The image that shows what the hybrid camber is like doesn’t look like that when you see it in person.  When we looked at the board it mainly looked flat. When we looked closer you can see a very small camber between the feet and when you push down the tip/tail rise up a bit more than a standard camber board.

On Snow Feel– Even though this is a twin we were pleasantly surprised with it’s ability to move around the mountain on any type of groomer or stop in the line of jumps or pipe. It’s got a nice almost camber feel to it.  It feels like the aggressive DH but it just doesn’t have the same consequence attached to it if you screw up.

Powder: We didn’t have any powder this day but we can tell this would be better than the Camber DH but still not as good as many of the other hybrid rocker or mostly rocker hybrid camber twins out there.

Turn Initiation and Carving– We liked the Turn initiation because it wasn’t terribly easy to transition from edge to edge.  It will take a little work and could be challenging for Beginners and Intermediates. We found short radius turns to be pretty fun and wider radius turns to be a bit more fun than the short radius turns. When we layed into a carve it felt almost like the DH Camber and it was fun for a twin.

Speed: This is a ultra damp twin with a good base that can handle speed very well for a freestyle board.  You can have fun on the mountain with this and straight line regular and switch if you have the balls.  We had no issues going fast on the DH2. This ultra damp feeling also causes the board to feel dull at lower speeds. It doesn’t have reverse chatter like some boards do but it makes the board feel like it’s 1.5 times thicker than it is.  Some people will love this and others might not.

Uneven Terrain: Very easy to handle bumpy terrain.  Ride does a great job shielding the rider from slow or high speed chatter

Approximate Weight– It’s no light weight board but its not heavy either.  It’s more in the middle of the scale. If you are sensitive to heavy boards riding on the chair this might be border line. On the hill it won’t feel terrible.

Edge Hold: We were a little disappointed with the edge hold. We really want more when it comes to edge hold for this type of board. It held and edge on a carve in firm conditions but it didn’t have that confidence inspiring grip when it came to hard pack turns. We both held back on laying into the edge and really leaning into the turn.  This would not be a board we would recommend for anyone who rides in hard to icy conditions. We aren’t saying put magnetraction on it but just put something extra in there instead of something that feels like a traditional side cut that rides similar to the old school camber boards.

Flex: This is on the stiff side of medium and wasn’t really very playful if you want to butter around the mountain.  It’s more catch free than the Camber DH but this isn’t what this board is made for.

Switch: To us there was no difference riding switch vs. riding regular.

Jibbing– You can go to the jib park with this but you would be happier in the pipe or hitting jumps.

Pipe: If you ride mainly in good conditions in the pipe this will be a very fun board.  However it lacks the ultra grippy edge that will make riding an icy pipe fun.  Still we liked the feeling of the DH in the pipe and if you like a stiffer pipe board then you will be pretty happy.

Jumps: We liked the spring of the DH camber better than the DH2 but also felt this had a bit more spring than many of the flat/rocker ride boards we tried. Still this is really fun to lap the roller coaster park and hit kickers of any size.

Overall this isn’t a bad board and we felt this was more fun than the Machete we tried but not quite as lively and responsive as the Arcade UL. We would like to see Ride take their UL tech to the DH series and the Machete because we feel it would make these boards a lot better.  Still the DH2 can be a very fun board for the rider who gets good snow and likes to spend most of their time pulling freestyle manuvers at higher speeds all over the mountain.