Last weekend was the latest edition of Boardrooms snowboard demo day at Cypress Mountain.
Like 2018, the weather turned it on again, with bright sunshine most of the day (some clouds but we can forgive that).
With other events going on, on the mountain, like the Slalom, and the Pool Party, there was a great vibe going. But more importantly (for me anyway 😉 ) was that there were some great 2020 models being demoed. I’m going to be honest, I like getting boards up there on a weekday, when I can test them in my own time and not have to wait in lift lines – but demo days like this are a great way to fill in the blanks for brands that I don’t have local contacts for (and are pretty fun too!)
Details
This year the event was held Saturday March 2nd, between 10am and 6pm.
Conditions: Mostly sunny most of the day. Great visibility. Groomers were mostly hard, with some icy patches off groomer and some untouched pockets of fresh snow. Hadn’t snowed for a while leading up – but there were still some spots that hadn’t been tracked out (some secret stashes – shhhhh!) from previous snowfalls (and that wasn’t crunchy). The groomers stayed pretty hard throughout the day, as it was quite cold – and the section of the mountain I was sessioning for the boards was a relatively unpopular part, so things didn’t get too chundery by the end of the day (combination of the hard snow and relatively few people hitting it). This lead to some really good testing conditions, being consistent throughout the day – and with variable snow.
The Testing Process
As with every time I test new gear, the first part of the day I took out all my own control gear and rode the laps that I would use to test the other boards, to get a feel for the conditions and get a fresh feel for my control gear.
Before each board that I tested, I re-tightened my boots and then performed exactly the same laps, doing the same things with each board, to get as accurate a comparison as possible.
And of course, I rode each board with my control boots and bindings.
The Brands Present
Big thanks to all the brands that showed up with 2020 gear for everyone to test including:
- Capita
- Dakine
- DC
- DWD
- Dragon
- Flux Bindings
- Lobster
- Never Summer
- Niche
- NOW
- Oakley
- Sessions
- Slash
- Smith
- Switchback Bindings
- Swix
- Union Binding Co
- Vans
- YES
Apologies if I missed anyone.
The Boards I demoed
On the day I got through the following boards.
- Niche Story
- Niche Crux
- Niche Aether
- Niche Maelstrom
- Never Summer Westbound
- Never Summer Peace Maker
- Slash Brainstorm
My reviews for each of these boards will be published sometime through the year.
Until Next Year
A big thanks to Cypress Mountain, The Boardroom and all the Brand Reps for another awesome demo day. Looking forward to next year (when I promise to get a better photographer, with a better camera to take pics!)
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