If you were around in the late-ish 80s, you probably rode a snowboard with your SOREL’s. Maybe not even at a resort, but at your local sledding hill. It wasn’t until after that time that legitimate snowboard boot options began to proliferate. It’s a statement of fact that snowboarding took an already iconic winter stomper and made it indispensable. The SOREL Caribou was already undeniably one of the most enduring styles of the century, even moreso within the outdoor industry itself.
Perhaps it’s not shocking then that someone took this step, as SOREL and Nidecker announced a collaboration Tuesday that includes a snowboard boot built on the Caribou, and an accompanying Nidecker snowboard featuring a lone caribou on the topsheet. The Caribou Snow-G boot and the SOREL Surfer board launched with a short documentary-style video on the two brands’ shared history on the mountain.
SOREL introduced the Caribou in 1962, built for Canadian winters, and the Kaufman Rubber Factory in Ontario built the first prototype. Columbia Sportswear acquired the brand in 2000 and has since transformed it into an even more legendary fashion-inspired footwear brand while maintaining its core quality and iconic appeal.
Nidecker is a fifth-generation family-owned company based in Rolle, Switzerland. It began as a maker of wooden wheels in 1887, introduced its first snow-sliding products in 1912, and became a dedicated snowboard company in 1984, when dedicated snowboard boots did not even yet exist. The Caribou’s partial flex let riders tweak grabs, dig in with the ankles and feet, and try tricks borrowed from skateboarding.
Early riders including Jake Burton and Tom Sims wore them, and Scott Downey is often credited with helping create the SOREL Pro Flex 1, the first purpose-built snowboard boot, which paired the Caribou’s leather upper with a Koflach plastic bottom.
The Caribou Snow-G keeps the original’s waterproof nubuck leather upper and natural rubber lower shell and rebuilds the interior. It uses Nidecker’s wider last to fit modern binding geometry, a heat-moldable Silver Liner, and a BOA H5 Internal Heel Lock system built into the tongue. The soft flex stays, so riders can still throw the boned-out grabs and old-school tweaks that made the Caribou legendary. Maurizio Molin, the Italian designer who leads Nidecker’s boot program, headed the redesign.
“The Caribou is an icon, so we knew we had to respect what made it special,” Molin said. The boot are retailing for $499.95 ($599.99 Canadian).
The SOREL Surfer snowboard was shaped by Nidecker’s Thierry Kunz and uses a retro directional outline. Its Surfy CamRock profile is meant to give float and smooth, connected turns, and the core combines poplar and paulownia. The board costs $679.95 ($799.99 Canadian).
Kunz, who has ridden since the early 1980s and leads the Nidecker brand, said the idea had been on his mind for years. A first attempt in 2017 never came to life, and a 2024 conversation with SOREL’s Cory Long got it moving. “The name SOREL is entwined with the history of snowboarding; when I started, their boots were the benchmark,” Kunz said.
“Outside of snowboarders themselves, people might not know that SOREL’s Caribou was considered one of the first snowboarding boots,” said Joe Vernachio, president of SOREL. “This collaboration is based in snowboard history, while bringing new energy to a new generation, and bringing SOREL back into mountain culture in 2026.”
The video features interviews with some of the original Caribou-wearing snowboarders alongside archival footage. SOREL and Nidecker said the project goes beyond nostalgia. They want to reconnect today’s riders with the creativity and style of those early riders and inspire people to try the sport for the first time.
