ISLAND SNOWBOARDS VOLUME ELEVEN SPLITBOARD 2025/2026

A wise woman once said “All good things come to those who wait”…she may have thought it while meditating in nature on a beautiful splitboard tour, far from the crowds of her local resort, dreaming of the epic descent to come…or maybe not…anyway, for the many of you who’ve been asking when we’ll drop a splitboard into the Island line the wait is over!

Everything we do at Island is meticulously designed and crafted so the making of our first splitboard was no different. We love a challenge and the crafting of the perfect splitboard certainly offered us that!

Having ridden a number of splits by various brands over the years both here in Japan and in Europe we had seen what worked, and what didn’t. We knew our flagship Volume One geometry would be perfect as it’s the go to for so many of us, our customers and team in any conditions from the lightest Hokkaido powder to technical Alpine steeps, just the types of conditions and terrain you’d ideally want to access and ride with a splitboard.

One important initial change was to replace the iconic “moon” tail shape with a squared off profile to allow for perfect touring skin and tail clip attachments. The new Volume Eleven squared off tail shape is perfect for this and also looks great.The main challenge then was to totally re-design the core construction…unlike the first splitboards ridden by the pioneers back in the day, any good splitboard is obviously way more than a solid core cut down the middle. Core construction, stringer wood selection and thickness have to be tweaked, carbon and glass placement altered. The goal is to create the perfect riding experience just like our solid shapes, while allowing for the addition of the split binding insert pattern, clips and tip/tail attachments.

During our R&D and construction period Summer and Autumn 2024 the redesigned V.11 split core was created.

As with all our boards, the great benefit of handmaking each one individually in the Island factory is that we can experiment and test ride everything immediately. A number of unique prototypes with slight variations in flex patterns and core profile combinations were created so we could hone in on the perfect construction for the final board.

From January 2025 onward the prototypes were tested in Japan, Europe and Scandinavia by our team of riders and guides. From resort accessed sidecountry and the remoter peaks of Hokkaido to the high Alps of France, the Caucuses of Georgia and Lofoten in the Norwegian Arctic. Feedback from these sessions allowed us to fine tune and create the perfectly balanced split - stable and agile on the ascent - all terrain powder slayer on the descent.

All the while the important details and split specific additions were being planned and created, and as always at Island this involved collaborating and working with our extended family of riders, designers and artists…

New artwork and graphics for the Volume One were in the works already, with our friend from the UK Owen Tozer back to follow up his first series (more details on this process to come in a future post) Once again Owen was combining his photographic and graphic design work, along with hand drawn graphic hits, to create another epic series across the 4 sizes of the regular Vol:1. The added brief of a splitboard version inspired him to go further and create a whole bespoke typeface for the series along with the new graphic icons seen on the Volume Eleven. The design layout of icons and typeface elements were laid out to fit the unique character of the splitboard, working with and around the new binding and clip insert patterns when in split mode and when ridden as a solid deck.

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Every little detail is important to us at Island, and important to the performance of each of our snowboards…the clips and carbon reinforcement on the new Volume Eleven are a perfect example of this and our collaboration with like-minded powder lovers from across the world.

We've been fortunate to have a relationship with Nandina REM, a company that has supplied us with aviation-grade recycled carbon fiber. We're using this cutting-edge material as reinforcement for all inserts in each of our boards which not only allows us to create stronger, more durable products but also a step further towards improving our impact on resources.

Another example is the story of the clips on the new Volume Eleven…One January afternoon earlier this year Tyler Jarosz dropped by the factory to say hi and check out our operation and board building process. Visiting Hokkaido from his home in Montana on a powsurfing mission, Tyler had bought a selection of his handmade one-off powsurf and split-surf hybrid boards with him for us to check out…he ended up getting involved with some splitboard construction, talking shop and sharing ideas for hours.

Turns out Tyler is an engineer and master machinist back in the US, he designed and made clips for one of the major splitboard hardware manufactures as well as for his own powsurf and splitboard projects. It’s fair to say we were very impressed with the quality and design. After a few more visits in between his powsurf missions around Hokkaido Tyler was part of the extended Island crew and was off on a mission to make us some of the best quality bespoke clips exclusively available on the Volume Eleven.