The 2009/10 season was a sensational year for the boys at YES. Dropped from the Burton International Team in 2008; with hard work, a great brand and backing from Europe’s most technologically advanced factory Nidecker; JP Solberg, Romain De Marchi and DCP have had quite a reversal of fortunes. 2011 sees YES expand their range from one board to five. Snowboard-Review managed a sneaky peek at their growing range at ISPO, Europe’s premier winter sports tradeshow.

Continue reading ISPO Preview - 2011 YES. Nowboards

Is it a Wakeboard? Is it a Surfboard? No it’s the Chewgash!

Renowned snowboard shape pioneers Mervin Manufacturing, the guys responsible for Gnu and Lib Tech snowboards are at it again. As if riding pow isn’t fun enough, rumour was rife that long term employees Dave Mounts and Steven Cobb have been working behind the scenes to create the ultimate powder riding experience. I emailed Pete Saari at Mervin to get to the bottom of the story:

Continue reading Exclusive: Lib Tech Chewgash Powder Prototype Snowboard

Some might be thinking that with the wealth of specialist snowboards filling the shelves of stores world wide, All-Mountain snowboards might be dying a death. Of course, you’d be wrong, All-Mountain boards still make up the majority of sales and still account for most of the boards you’ll see on the hill. Snowboard Review picked out some rides worth keeping an eye out for next season.

Last year’s surprise hit, the Angus sees another year in Rossignol’s snowboard line-up. Largely unchanged from last year’s Angus, the 2010/11 model will feature all-mountain Amptek (camber between the bindings and rocker after) and an even more gruesome graphic (see for your self below). The big news at Rossi is that next year’s all mountain line up sees Amptek technology used on the entire range. Rossi’s all mountain jack of all trades, the One gets another slick graphic and all-mountain Amptek matched up with Magnetraction edges… they’re calling it Magtek, if the retains it’s sub $400 price point it’s going to clear up the market. The JDub, Rossi’s beefed up big kicker charger also gets Magtek and a ton of linear carbon reinforcement, I’m told the result is a hard charging deck without the brutal stiffness the JDub is famed for.

Continue reading ISPO Preview - 2011 All-Mountain Snowboards

Technically Snowboard Review is a site for Snowboards and Snowboards only, but you need bindings to go riding so on this occasion I believe I’m justified in posting preview pictures of next years bindings. So what’s hot and what’s not? Well strap bindings are still fashionable and Switch Step-Ins won’t be making reappearance, amen. Over the years we’ve seen all sorts of reinventions of the traditional strap binding, from Flow’s original slip in binding and Apo’s rather slicker looking Expresso binding which essentially does the same job, to Beyond Snow’s fairly over engineered strap binding designed to cut down the time required to tighten your bindings from 10 seconds to 5 and only at the cost of an extra kilo…hmm.

Continue reading ISPO Preview - 2011 Bindings

Volkl is one of those brands that we’d always heard good things about and although they’re a highly regarded and popular ski brand their snowboard division has never really benefited from the same exposure and popularity. Nevertheless they’ve always supported a very core squad of European and Canadian riders and by all reports have made some quality decks over the years. Anyway, with this in mind, SB-R thought it about time our readers found-out whether the hype was justified and contacted snowboarding legend and Swiss distributor of Volkl Harry Gunz in the hope he’d send Tom a few boards…needless to say Tom wasn’t disappointed!

Continue reading Brand Test - Volkl Squad, Coal & Cashew Snowboards Reviewed

It has been eight weeks since the Contract Snowboards ‘Battle for Britain’ began. It is now the final week before the team at Contract announce the10 finalists. Selected from the ranks, the 10 riders will be asked to create a short edit video showcasing their riding skills. The rider that impresses the team at Contract the most will be awarded a place on the prestigious SYS team. For your chance to win a years sponsorship from Poland’s premier snowboard brand submit a photo of yourself laying down some skills at www.contractsnowboards.com/shredbattle . Be quick the final day for submissions is Friday the 26th of March

Continue reading Contract Battle for Britain Competition Update

Xavier de Le Rue is a guy you’ve got to admire, even after his disappointing fall in the Olympic Snowboardcross heats (I’d championed Xavier for the gold), Xavier has got back on the horse and is once again dominating the Freeride World Tour. If you missed Xavier’s line on the Tram Face in Squaw get on the Freeride World Tour website and check out the video… 360 drop in, a tight multiple drop cliff line followed by an enormous cliff that most people would want a parachute for. Insane! Now Xavier is g-ing up for the final event in Verbier, where fingers crossed, he will be taking his 3rd title. This is what Xavier had to say about the impending event:

Continue reading Xavier De Le Rue is on form for Verbier

It’s no secret that Burton has been struggling to make ends meet. The pressure of declining sales and increased material costs are causing snowboard manufacturers worldwide margins to dwindle like nobodies business, and even the biggest player in the market is having to make big cuts to stay competitive. So it’s not surprising that today Burton announced that it plans to shift premium snowboard production (think T6 and Vapor) from the BMC facility to its factory in Innsbruck Austria, where the company has been building snowboards for over 25 years. On the bright side, product design and development will still be home-grown in Vermont, where the company will relocate its snowboard prototyping resources from BMC into a new, purely R&D-driven prototype facility at its global headquarters in Burlington.

Continue reading Burton’s BMC factory Vermont, prepares to close it’s doors

Big news from Mr and Mrs Branner at Venture Snowboards. It appears the worlds first and only wind powered snowboard brand has snared itself a Scandinavian uber pro in the form of Johan Olofsson. Johan rocketed to fame in 1996 with his mind blowing part in TB5, it wasn’t just his record breaking 3000ft of vertical in 35 seconds that’s responsible for his legendary status, but Johan’s ability to mix in the smoothest freestyle tricks into terrain that most other pros wouldn’t even consider riding; 40mph backside 180s between cliff lines were standard procedure. Lets put it this way, Johan pioneered backcountry freestyle before the likes of Gigi Ruff and Travis Rice had reached High School.

Continue reading Johan Olofsson joins Venture Snowboards RnD team

Ok so I’m a season behind with the Rossignol Twilight, you’re right it was a late release in the 2008/09 season, but there are still a couple of boards floating around on the World Wide Web which can be picked up for peanuts. I bought my Twilight for a ridiculous £100 (about $160) on the internet in October as a bit of a punt. With a tight sidecut ~7m, fish shape (packing a 20mm taper) and an elliptical nose for added float I knew the Twilight would be a powder performer. Some might consider lugging a powder board around a bit of a luxury, I was interested to see if packing a powder specific board is worth the pain, effort and stress of cramming an additional board into your luggage allowance.

Continue reading Snowboard Review - Rossignol Twilight