Wednesday morning at five am I began to pack all of my snow gear. Now those of you that know me well may be wondering why in the world I would get up that early.... I had good reason. Soon I would be on my way to Afton Alps to enjoy an absolutely beautiful, sunny day on the hill! Another element of my excitement was that there were going to be winter reps from the Midwest with their 2013 lines and I was going to be able to demo them!!!! So needless to say, there was not much sleep the night before. We arrived around ten and as soon as we pulled in you could see all of the tents filled with next years skis, and snowboards. I got changed in the chalet, and headed out to see what I wanted to ride first. There were tales of the Rossignol Krypto-Mag being one of the most epic boards out there, so naturally that was going to be the first ride! It was awesome!!! Super responsive, yet rigid, and boy howdy was it fast!!! It was set up with the Experience Bindings, the bindings got a facelift since last year, with canted footbeds and a new highback. At the same time as I was out trying the new snowboards for the year, Craig was over checking out the new skis. At lunch we all convened and got a lil grub, shared our likes and dislikes, then headed back out to try some more.
Snowboard brands out repping were Rossignol, Flow, K2, Ride, and that one other company...
Craig talking with a rep
Some of the 2013 Volkl line
Getting ready to tear it up on the 2013 One Mag from Rossi
After riding all of the Brands I would say I really was quite happy with the two brands we already carry, that being Rossignol and Flow, I did however find the Ride and K2 boards to be pretty damn nice! On the Ski side of things, the general consensus of our group was that the Rossignols were consistent as always with their high end offerings, and who wants to ride low end?!!? That being said I am sure their price point skis are still higher quality than most in the industry. The dark horse in the race here was Volkl though. Everyone was raving about the way that their upper end was just dialed in. So, you may just see some of those Volkls gracing the floor of Paramount next season!
