Stephan Maurer handplants in Park City. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi.

It has begun. Once again we kick off our winter 2011/12 season of snowboard mags with our gear-intensive Product Guide. Featuring all the boards, boots bindings outerwear and accessories you want to see, this is the definitive expose on the new season’s kit. If you’re after new gear this season, this should be your starting point. Check what’s inside…

MEN’S AND WOMEN’S BOARDS TESTED

Back in January the Onboard crew headed to the Austrian resort of Venet to hook up with the guys running Shops First Try. These dudes put on an expansive industry board test every year giving shops a chance to try before they buy, and we piggy backed that bad boy to put a whole host of 2011/12 snowboards through their paces and communicate our opinions to you guys.

MORE PRODUCT INFO THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT

We have all the info you need about shred brands’ new kit to allow you to make an informed, educated use of your hard earned greenbacks this winter… before you end up going for the one you like the design of. Boards, boots, bindings, outerwear, protection…

TECH INFO EXPLAINED

We cut through the waffle and PR doublespeak to break down how all that stuff the brands are shouting about affects you and your riding. The myriad of cambers? Binding features? Waterproofness? How to get the best board for you? We got your back.

PLUS

We present you with the newest shred brands on the block, get some expert insight from the core shop dudes at X-Double, offer you up the chance to win yourself some brand spanking gear, and more… Get yourself a copy at your local shred store, newsagent, or subscribe to get some free shit and never miss an issue.

Rusty have teched the hell out of the humble hoody so you can pump tuns through the earphones worked into the drawstrings. And we’ve got three of these Rusty Wired hoodies to give away, so get involved!

Rusty made its welcome return to snowboarding recently (anyone remember the Rusty Battle in Falun from years back?), and with a team including Romain De Marchi and Stian Solberg at the forefront the kit’s gonna be legit – the tech outerwear we’ve seen for next year is looking proper tasty.

But these fleece Wired hoodys are more for wearing beneath the or wearing stone cold chilling in. The Wired series features HB3 Technology which integrates headphones into the draw cords and a jack in the pocket through which you can connect your music player to pipe your tunes into your brain box, and they’re fully machine washable, too, which makes it sound like there’s some voodoo juju going on.

And we’ve got three up for grabs to be won. If you’re a dude, you’ll get the guy’s one and if you’re a girl you’ll get the women’s.

All you need to do is answer this question and have a bit of luck with the RNG. Get involved!

www.rusty.com

[competition_39]

Ride were so surprised to discover this constipated bird on their ISPO tradeshow booth that they called in a filmer.

Another day, another dollar. Another week, another This Week in Snowboarding, our link fest where we wipe the web for snowboard cleg nuts. Here’s what we tugged off this week…

SATURDAY

Mark McMorris wins the Air&Style in Innsbruck. Wojtek and Ludde are among Europe’s finest. Gypsy Mob is a fairly good movie from Winnipeg. Crewzin’ episode 8 is all about Givin. Brandon Hobush owns a million different rail tricks. Waterville knows how to throw some bait out at snowboarders.

SUNDAY

First of all, we attended Ispo and basically stopped posting anything but product previews (here, here, here, here and here). Jamie Anderson and Sam Hulbert win the slopestyle and Kelly Clark and Kohei Kudo win the halfpipe at the Canadian Open. TWSnow releases Sunday in the Park Episode 9, Yobeat releases The Runs Episode 10, and Snowboarder Mag does Seven Deadly Edits Pt. 2. Then there’s some Working for the City B-footage from Minnesota.

The Ballbag Hookup Slide. So hot in 2011. Robbed from The Runs.

MONDAY

Nick Poohachoff’s videopart looks solid. Carlos Blanchard launches his own website. Nick Visconti is down with Meningitis (and here’s the video). Loonatics episode 7 features Chris Grenier and many others. The House of 1817 presents the Critters. Westbound Boarder is looking for the best yard sale shot.

TUESDAY

Zak Hale, Alex Andrews, Bode Merrill and Harrison Gordon show five tricks. Kyle Mack is such a good rider. This edit is called Beers and Spliffs. Whitelines sells sex. Wisconsin had its best week ever. The Arctic Challenge publishes the list of confirmed riders. Here’s Victor Simko’s part from Poachers X. We really like this Analog flask.

WEDNESDAY

Mammoth’s main park looks dynamite. This is what our Knowledge regular would look like if you fimed it (and Scott Stevens and Sean Black). Kazuhiro Kokubo talks to ESPN.

This is like some time travel shizz. Here's this shot of the Air&Style riders draw above Thursday, but it wasn't taken till Friday. If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious shit.

THURSDAY

Now that Ispo is over we post the highlights of the Canadian Open and the Air&Style Innsbruck. And some unseen Storming footage from Sammy Luebke. Jamie Nicholls runs home (and does 35 tricks on his way). Iikka Backstrom is still gnarly. The Nike Stairset Battle is over and we have the last highlight video and the teaser for the finals.The Illicit Snowboarder gives us a fabulous lowdown on rider polls. Yobeat shows how long it should take to put out an awesome edit. These two clips campaign heavily for the Timberline resort. Austria now has its own superpipe. Torstein breaks down the Snowbasin Dew Tour slopestyle course. The Roxy girls do Superpark. In the excellent Siberia Teaches trailer our print mag makes a brief appearance (wooooo!). And the Gremlinz are as filthy as it gets.

FRIDAY

Jamie Lynn is still the bomb. Everyone in our office, save this sad and lonely internerd, bugger off to the riders draw for the Nike 6.0 Air&Style in Munich and we make our predictions of how round 1 will pan out. Seb Toutant apparently did 6 different doubles in training. Wowzers. We finally post out behind the scenes edit from the Burton European Open, which is great. Whitelines ask the question ‘Where is snowboarding headed?’ TheMustachio show what happens when tourist skiers tackle kickers, and finally: watch the Sumo hockey fight Ettala posted. Just do it.

As a wise man once said: That’s It, That’s All. Off to send it at the Air&Style. Cheerio!

Though their website ain’t set to go live for a while, some smartass cyberspy has picked the lock to Euro glove brand Transform’s 2010/11 catalogue. Some slickness in there for sure. Don’t shoot the messanger, Kingsnorth…
Check ‘em out.

Sneak a peek at next winter’s gear

Onboard are on the ground at the snowboard industry trade show, ISPO, where all the brands in the sport are showcasing their product for the 2010-2011 winter season.

After we peppered big mountain legend Jeremy Jones with your questions (look out for his answers in the video at the end of this week), we ambled around checking stuff out. Here’s a bunch of snowboards, boots, bindings, accessories and outerwear that grabbed our eyes…

The Triple Basers at Bataleon have gone all irie, not brushed their hair in months and are all mad stoked on that Haile Selassie dude for this limited edition Batazion.

Yep, they even collaborated with reggae legend Yellowman to cut some exclusive reggae tracks that can be downloaded for free from the Bataleon LTD page.

Here’s but a taste of the lyrical wizardry…

“Di shape born badda dan dem, an go jibbiger dan dem
All dem boards flat u kno ah mi set di tbt trend
Mi ride quicker dan dem, mi no catch edge like dem
mi ah di tbt, mi ah di woodcore dem, mi ah di brand, mi ah di stem”

Erm, selecta. The shape is based on next year’s Evil Twin which is a totally new version of the already kick ass TWIN TBT shape. This new shape features a new lower nose shape, multiple radius, extra TBT kick after the effective edge, new sizes and the width is sitting in between the goliath/jam and classic ET/Riot shapes. Feedback from their riders like Tyler Chorlton, DBK and Tore Holvik has been killer, with those three claiming it to be their favourite twin.

Here’s some tech skinny…

NEW ET Shape
Available in 151 – 154 – 157
Sintered Base with Hand Die-Cut in 3 colors
Full Color Sidewall + Printing
High Gloss Lacquered Topsheet with Goldflake effect
Full HD digital print

Retailprice:
€529.95

As they say, Jah For It!