Never Summer Valhalla Snowboard Review

The Never Summer Valhalla presents itself as a destroyer of mountains, take no prisoners, beast of a snowboard. 

And it is that. 

But what it doesn't reveal on the face of it, is it's more sensitive side....

The Valhalla manages to provide unexpected versatility in the way it handles itself when not being ridden hell-for-leather. 

In this review, I will take a look at the Valhalla as a freeride snowboard.

As per tradition here at SnowboardingProfiles.com I will give the Valhalla a score out of 100 (based on several factors) and see how it compares with other freeride snowboards.

Overall Rating

Board: Never Summer Valhalla 2025

Price: $699

Style: Freeride/Aggressive All-Mountain

Flex Rating: Stiff (8.5/10)

Flex Feel on Snow: Mid-Stiff (7/10)

Rating Score: 90.8/100

Compared to other Men’s Freeride Boards

Overview of the Valhalla’ Specs

Check out the tables for the Valhalla’s specs and available sizes.

Who is the Valhalla Most Suited To?

The Valhalla is best suited to those who want to primarily optimize speed, carving and powder performance but still want the bonus of something that can tackle straight air side-hits, jumps and cliff hucks and doesn't feel like a tank at slower speeds. 

It's a stiffer, more technical board with a semi-locked in feel, so this is best for advanced to expert riders and you want to be relatively physically strong/well conditioned for snowboarding as well. 

Valhalla DetailS

O.k. let’s take a more detailed look at what the Valhalla is capable of.

Demo Info

Board: Never Summer Valhalla 2025, 156cm (259mm waist width)

Date: February 26, 2024

Powder

Only had shallow powder to test in on the day, but it felt good in there. And based on specs and shallow powder feel, it should do really well in deeper powder.

In it's favor for powder, it has a reference setback of 25mm (1") and with the nose being longer than the tail, the total setback over the length of the board is 65mm (2.6"), 7mm of taper and rocker in the profile. 

Carving

This board was sick to carve on! Locked in well, even in hard/icy conditions and could adapt well to carving at higher speeds, moderate speeds and low speeds. I would say it has it's limit as to the highest speed carves, but you can still lay a nice deep carve at high speeds and it holds on and rips around like a dream. 

Turning

Ease of Turning/Slashing: With how good this board is at speed and for carving, you'd be forgiven to assume it would be hard to initiate turns on or to slash out, but it's actually not bad at all. A bit more effort than the easiest turning boards, but really nothing that requires too much effort. 

Maneuverability at slow speeds: Like how easy it was to initiate turns, it was surprisingly quick edge-to-edge at slower speeds. Not top tier, but still really good and given how it rides at speed, this makes it a very versatile turner. 

Catchiness: There was a hint of catch in the tail when performing quick tight turns at slow speeds. But nothing major and nothing that I noticed when riding with at least moderate speeds under it.

Speed

This board felt fast and, more importantly, stable at speed. Felt confident opening this thing out, even in the harder conditions. 

Uneven Terrain

Crud/Chunder: The Valhalla felt really good in messy snow. Even though I found this board had good snap in it, it was also decently damp and gave very little chatter and was not easy to get bucked around. Stayed nice and stable. 

Trees/Bumps: Since it's pretty agile and decent at tight turns, it felt good in the trees both in the harder sections and the shallow powder we had that day. I suspect it would feel even better in trees in deeper powder. 

Jumps

While jumps may not be this board's forte, it was still fun to perform jumps on. Not primarily why you'd get this board, but if you're all about speed, carving and pow but like to throw in the odd cliff huck, side-hit or jump in the park, it can definitely accommodate it. 

Pop: Was fairly easy to access the pop in this board. Some effort required but nothing too difficult extract. And the total pop, when you really wind it up, was pretty good too. Not epic, but really decent. 

Approach: It felt really good on the approach. Nice and stable, even for larger jumps, but at the same time pretty easy to adjust/speed check when needed. 

Landing: It felt good when you got it right and didn't land too tail heavy. But tail heavy landings weren't ideal.  

Side-hits: For a stiffer freeride board, I really enjoyed this for side-hits. It's not ideal, but if you really want to optimize that pow/speed/carving trio but still want decent side-hit performance, this is right up there. 

Small jumps/Big jumps: It has the stability to handle big jumps - it's just with tail heavy landings being not-so-great, I felt it was best for medium jumps, where the consequences of a tail heavy landing gone wrong were on the more minor side. The tail has enough stiffness to help stabilize you but there's just not enough of it for me to feel fully comfortable on larger jumps.

Switch

Doable, like pretty much any board is but still didn't feel great riding switch. Tail felt a little sketchy when leading. Transitions were ok in terms of not feeling overly catchy or anything, but transitioning from nose first to tail first wasn't great. Transitioning from tail to nose felt good. 

Spins

Landing switch was a little sketchy on that tail. But it did rotate well and had decent pop that wasn't too hard to access. Doesn't overspin after landing and was relatively easy to finish an under-rotation on the ground when needed. Definitely more of a straight air kind of board for me, but spins doable. I'd just prefer to keep them to rotations in multiples of 360 to avoid having to land (or take off) on that tail. 

Butters

It wasn't actually overly demanding to press the tip/tail. It wasn't super flexy or anything, don't get me wrong, but didn't take a heap of weight over them to get them to bend. I'd say 3.5/5 for ease of pressing. But the tail felt too short to lock in properly and the nose too long. So it was a little awkward for butters/presses and the nose and tail felt significantly different to each other. 

Score Breakdown and Final Verdict

Check out the breakdown of the score in the table below.

The Valhalla is first and foremost a board for advanced to expert freeriders who want to optimize for powder, speed and carving - but it has a hidden versatility that may suit some riders who don't want to have to ride all-out, all the time. 

While it's unexpected slower speed performance may take away a little bit from it's highest speed capabilities, it does so in such a minor way that only those who like to really point and shoot down the steepest terrain should be affected by it.

For me it had all the stability at speed that I'm ever likely to need, so I appreciated the way it balanced high/slow speed performance and ease of turns/aggressiveness of carves, while certainly being more optimized towards fast/aggressive.