Snowboard Review Features

Living in the Alps last winter, staring up at all the unridden lines that clutter Austria’s Salzburgerland, the idea of building a splitboard during the summer seemed like a great way to occupy myself during the snowless months. After a bit of research I’d decided that the Voile Split Decision kit was the best way to go with an outlay of $160 for the kit and $170 for the Voile Tractor skins. Around mid-May I was contacted by a fellow Brit named Dave who offered to sell me an Option 174 Freeplus for £50 (~$80). Dave had been on the site and seen from the forums that I was after a longer board for touring. Sure it’s a good ten years old now but it was in perfect condition. In June when I was back in the UK visiting my folks, my Dad and I set to work building the split, turning Dave’s unwanted gun into a fresh-line seeking powder missile.

Continue reading Volie Split Decision Review - The Build

If you’re a regular on the site you’ve probably browsed-by this week and noticed that Snowboard-Review.com has been replaced with a much slicker looking imposter calling itself SB-RV.

Continue reading Welcome to Snowboard-Review 2.0

For some unknown reason women love Christmas shopping and men loathe it. For me, there is nothing worse than being dragged around a department store, book shop, jewellers and endless clothing stores to find the perfect gift only to find that within three weeks the gift that took blood, sweat and tears to find has been returned for credit or lost in the attic/local charity shop never to be seen again.  This year to help SB-RV readers find the perfect gift for their snowboard addicted loved ones we’ve created a list of 10 items with varying price tags that will have them jumping for joy instead of checking the wrapping for a receipt.

Continue reading Christmas Snowboard Gift Guide

Bonkers Boards is SB-RV’s salute to the mad scientists behind some of snowboarding’s most radical designs. To launch this feature we’ve chosen the Unity Whale, a powder hungry beast with a nose that would make Gerard Depardieu’s look proportionate and a cheeky little swallow tail to make it easier to prop up outside your post shred watering hole. We asked Unity owner Pete Wurster to give us the lowdown on one of the 2011/12 season’s craziest shapes.

Continue reading Bonkers Boards - The Unity Whale

Last February I finally got a date in the diary to go riding with Peter Bauer of Amplid Snowboards. For those of you who don’t know of Peter, he’s a certified snowboard legend. From World Slalom Champion to AK veteran Peter has ridden it all; he’s even had a pro model at Burton, the PJ, which he shared with French carving extraordinaire Jean Nerva around 1990.

Continue reading Brand Test - 2012 Amplid Snowboards

Sometimes you just don’t see what’s sat right in front of you; this is true of Apex Custom Snowboards. I’d been talking to a friend about wanting to film in a snowboard factory over a couple of Radlers (Shandy to non-Euros), he suggested that I drop local snowboard manufacturers Apex Snowboards an email. I’ve been hunting down small independent snowboard brands for the site for the last three years and despite being less than an hour drive from my front door Apex has not once appeared on my Radar.

Continue reading Brand Focus - Apex Custom Snowboards

Every year around this time we select a number of innovative technologies that we believe are at the forefront of snowboard design and that really impact the feel and performance of the snowboard they’re applied to. Innovation is something that drives our sport forward and we feel it’s our duty to showcase the biggest contributions of the season.

Continue reading The Best Snowboard Technology of 2012

Freestyle is where snowboarding is at right now. Sure Jeremy Jones is making Backcountry Split boarding look pretty exciting and there are some pretty radical carving videos from the Japanese circulating around the internet, but there’s nothing like the feeling of stomping a new trick. So it’s no surprise that Freestyle Snowboards are by far the biggest board category, by a country mile. Tobi and I spent a day at ISPO looking through next season’s offering, but by the end of it we’d hardly scratched the surface. Here are our picks of some of next year’s park and jib boards.

Continue reading 2012 Freestyle Snowboard Preview

Anybody interested in finding-out how next seasons Lib Tech Skate Banana rides? No? Didn’t think so…

Little more than a week ago a strange yellow tent appeared outside Sierra at Tahoe’s main building; the resort where I work as an instructor. As I was busy instructing that morning I only managed to stick my head around the corner in the afternoon and ask the guys whether they were demoing next season’s boards. Much to my surprise the decks were next season’s offerings so without delay I ran over to my supervisor and booked the afternoon off work…..I then grabbed next seasons Skate Banana, and headed for the park.

My afternoon was spent riding perfect mid-season snow in Sierra’s ‘The Alley’ park and even managed to get a couple of cheeky laps in the newly-shaped 20ft Super Pipe. Anyway, below is what I thought of Lib’s best seller.

Continue reading Tested - 2012 Lib Tech Skate Banana 156

The Wooden was my second board of the day at the Good Boards test in Hochkonig, Austria. In many respects it got a bit of a bum deal. The previous board I’d taken out was the Flash 185cm an enormous oil tanker of a snowboard that had vice like edge hold and unmatched stability. Switching down to a more conventionally sized 162cm snowboard after that is always going to be a little under whelming.

Continue reading Tested - 2011 Good Boards Wooden 162