Never Summer Proto Splitboard Review

Never Summer has been making boards and experimenting with cambers for, like, forever, and thee Never Summer Proto Splitboard shows how all that research has landed them with a high-performance shape that will blow your damn mind. I’ve played on some camber blends, some reverse cambers, fusion rocker, some directionals, many of them on Never Summers, and few have driven performance like the Proto FR’s camber twin shape which shy away from Never Summers past rocker camber profiles.

This Never Summer Splitboard rips. A topsheet design ripped out of Northern Lights dreams, a shape that pops forwards and backwards, and a camber that blends techy grip and freestyle performance with power through the float. Yeah, Never Summer has built the best split I’ve ridden in years in the Proto FR. And this is the story of how I fell in love.

Never Summer Proto Splitboard Full Camber

The Never Summer Proto Splitboard has a traditional camber so when you’re shredding those backcountry variable conditions you can actually bite into the ice; when you’re spinning you can pop off the lip of the kicker; and when you’re skinning on that icy skin track you get stronger grip with that shape pushing down in front of and behind the bindings in splitmode.

The core’s Never Summer’s Wooboo core, combining Paulownia and Bamboo into a poppy powerful center, like an M&M that doesn’t ever melt. Then wrap it with carbon, with fiberglass, and with bi-laminate fiberglass, layered and rolled together to amp up beefiness, response, and precision.

Shape

As for the shape, again, yes, there’s the camber. And the shape is a twin tip so you can ride switch through the pow. But it’s also set back slightly so that it can float for days, ensuring those deepest dumps won’t destroy your back leg. As I saw rocking it during our first real pow cycle of the season.

How’s the Never Summer Proto Splitboard Ride?

The first day I mounted up the Never Summer Proto Splitboard was a tour into a little-traveled corner of the Tetons. It pushed up the track smoothly. Side-edged on a few hills, where necessary. Then when I had to break trail, this little bit of magic dove and rose like few boards I’ve ever tried.

Then I changed over my Proto FR from split to downhill, Karakoram bindings now dialed in, and sent it. After a couple smaller turns to check the pack, I opened it up. It sliced through the hero pow like a hot knife through butter, pointing it down at top speed, then into arcing turns, responding like a samurai sword with each cut. When I dropped a 6-foot rock over a bush it landed like it was a 2-foot drop off a roller. The Proto FR didn’t ever waiver.

The next day I took my Never Summer Proto Splitboard to Grand Targhee because the best way to test out a split’s performance is a day of hot laps from groomers to side-hits to deep powder and everything in between. The Proto FR performed like my favorite solids, spinning and jumping at full speed, landing smoothly and grinding out even on the hardpack. While maybe the camber doesn’t float as easily as reverse camber powder board, the trade-off for something that can handle those tough, icey moments, without getting too complex with hybrids, is more than worth that trade-off.

I took the Never Summer Proto Splitboard out on a mini-shred session and even popping off mini-cornices in the Big Holes. Big powder to hard pops; hard-packed rollers to long hard corduroy trenches; landings in bottomless and landings onto debris with a foot of cream. Yeah, I tested the Proto FR and it killed it.

Never Summer Proto Splitboard Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Traditional camber for biting into ice
• High-performance shape for freestyle performance
• Poppy powerful Wooboo core with carbon

Cons:

• Camber may not float easily in powder.
• Price is on the higher end.
• Not as versatile in all conditions.

Overall Impression

The Never Summer Proto Splitboard: A High-performance OG big mountain splitboard machine. Yeah, Never Summer’s Proto FR brings an OG camber back to the forefront, without a splashy base design or an over-the-top topsheet (though its Northern Lights and sunset topsheet is super sick). The Proto FR rips, from hardpack to bottomless pow and everything in between.

Never Summer’s split ripper rips pow, drops everything with a landing like a cat into a pillow, and tours so smoothly and firmly on everything from slick skin-tracks to putting in the skin on deep steep slopes. Never Summer’s Proto FR is the prototype that all splitboard aspire to be.

For the shred machine that rips everything and can handle anything, there’s no splitboard that hits as hard as Never Summer’s Proto FR ($1,199).

Related Splitboards

1. Never Summer Swift Splitboard
2. CAPiTA Neo Slasher Splitboard
3. Jones Stratos Splitboard