Snowskating With Kahuna Big Stick

A couple years, Kahuna Creations company, the brainchild of land paddling, and the innovator of land paddles, came out with their new game changing tool for snowboarding - Kahuna Creations Snow Stick !

If you've been following my blog, you remember my blog post about the snow stick when it was just introduced, and my skepticism whether it was an awesome invention, or just another useless toy.

While the sport of land paddling has grown in popularity since 2009 ( when Kahuna Creations launched their first Big Stick ), and nowadays, there are numerous companies that sell land paddles, personally, I haven't seen anybody using the snow stick ( at least in Washington state ).

I read that the company's designers spent two years working on the patent-pending Snow Grip, the polycarbonate head that has seven snow fins designed to propel you through all types of snow.  The grip is designed to work in everything from powder to packing snow to hardpack.

According to the company : " the stick transforms your snowboard into snow-slashing paddleboard, changing the game of downhill snowboarding and increasing the things you can do on the snow."

Kahuna's marketing manager Cory McBride describes the attraction: "It's the whole paddleboard wave mentality. With the Kahuna Snow Stick, you get seriously deep carves. The stick lets you really crank on your turns till you're almost laying flat in the snow - it emphasizes your carving power by letting you push harder on your turns without losing control."

Another selling point that the company makes is "the Snow Stick also gives you the possibility of "cross country snowboarding " so you can use the stick to travel across flat, snow-covered terrain.

Don't know about you, but I'm more of a traditional type of guy, so I'll just stick to cross country skiing.

Kahuna Creations also had other ideas for the use of the paddle, such as head-to-head racing, endurance events, and using the snow stick for tricks in the park or halfpipe.

For me, snowboarding is already a pretty stoked sport. So, the question is : " Do you really need a paddle for snowboarding ? "

Years later, I still believe it's useless for snowboarding...

But...

We recently took our favorite Kahuna's Haka and our favorite snowskate to play in the snow, and that was a complete game changer !

You see, comparing to snowboarding, snowskating requires more balance, more upper and lower body strength, and more skills !

As a matter of fact, the skills required for snowskating are more like the skills one might need for longboarding. And since, originally, Kahuna Big Stick was designed for longboarding, it would be more applicable to use the Snow Stick with a snowskate rather than a snowboard. And because the snowskate's blade is more like a mono-ski, it IS fun to paddle it on flat terrain !

Also, because bi-deck snowskate construction  is different from a snowboard, it makes more sense to lean on the stick to carve deep turns.

As  for that hi-tech designed Snow Grip, Kahuna's Haka with its  Kahuna Blade II worked just fine on both, packed and relatively deep snow.

So if you do decide to try snowboarding or snowskating with a paddle, go with just a Snow Grip that you can purchase separately, and it can be used with any Kahuna Stick