We’re back from the Snowboard Test 2009

Last month Snowboard-Review.com travelled to the UK snowboard test in Kaunertal Austria. The mission? To cram as many snowboard reviews into one week as humanly possible, and meet some peeps in the industry.

Tom throws a Mute into the piste bashing session

Every morning consisted of a 45 minute drive up to the top car park at about 2800 meters - if only our hire car had been more powerful than the 1.2 litres we’d paid for. The drive up was like driving the mountain stage at Sega Rally, an empty 30 mile road with a perfect tarmac surface and more hairpins than a week driving Monaco. Absolutely amazing! By the end of the week we were pretty envious of Pat from K2’s Ford Lightening pick up with its’ 400+ hp! After a quick Mars bar we were off on a days testing.

The Spring Sessions park and the Kaunertal runs were perfect for testing boards. Wide open pistes for carving, 10-18 meter tables, a perfect pipe (which had the sun on both sides about 2pm), a cool little mini-shred and the remnants of Travis Rice’s invitational the week before, involving a rocket rail and tree bonk with a 4 meter drop down with a 10 meter table to clear, and an oversize butter pad with a high speed 3 meter gap on and a 4 by 6 meter drop off on the other end. So…perfect for putting boards through their paces.

Between the industry parties and epic drives we managed to test about 80 boards for your reading pleasure. On day 3 we even had had 10 inches of Powder, in May! I headed straight for the powder guns, but I saw tons of testers riding the Burton No Fish which involved lots of comedy crashes!

Thanks go to Ian Sanson and his crew who organised the test and all the brand distributors we met out there who hooked us up with boards to test and spent time explaining the products. Our sympathies go out to the Family and friends of Keith Mackintosh, who was tragically buried in a massive avalanche whilst venturing off-piste at the test. Keith was an extremely experienced rider who mountain guided for years in Chamonix for McNab Snowboarding. He was equipped with all the essential avalanche equipment.

There is a tribute for Keith at the following website: http://mcnabsnowboarding.blogspot.com/2009/05/in-loving-memroy-of-our-great-friend.html

The old tricks are always the best UK dryslope legend and K2 big wig Pat liked Tom's mute so much he did his own The Travis Rice butter pad had an enjoyable drop off Did I mention the drive up to the glacier was beautiful

Posted by Rich Ewbank in Blog & News.

Next entry: Kale Stephens joins Endeavor and Airhole in artwork collaboration Previous entry: YES. Now boards release 100 limited edition snowboards

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