Snow Bunnies Catch Bigger Buzzes with Sports Equipment Innovations

It’s all in the slope.  Nah!  Sure, the sparkling snow, breath-hampering altitudes, and trendy-clad skiers and snowboarders add a certain ambiance and appeal to winter sports.
Yet if you dig underneath the glam, you’ll begin scratching the motor of it all- serious gear.
 

Have you ridden a tri-slider snow sled?  How about some battery-heated ski socks to keep you cozy? 

Rider-driven company Burton is hard-core into its mission to provide the best snowboarding equipment on the planet.  Strategic gear like bindings can increase rider comfort and performance, given the design hits a home run.  Burton tapped into the freedom of Dassault Systèmes’ 3D mechanical design software to create the revolutionary CO2 snowboard bindings, which are known for their anatomically canted design (think seamless energy transfer and maxi comfort).  Carve it, baby! 

Then there’s snow. 

What about different gear for different snow?  In 1984 The New York Times published an editorial claiming that Eskimos use 100 different words to describe it.  According to Wikipedia, there are 19 types of “falling snow” and 23 types of “snow on ground”. 

Finding the right combination of gear and snow is vital to good highs.  One blogger gives the following example, “The Spatula design [in skis] has proved to be unbeatable in powder, and especially in the crud, spring mank, heavy snow and in all kinds of ‘sketchy’ snow you can imagine.” 

The same blogger predicts that next ski season’s hottest gear trend will be a new form of hybrids that “combine rockered tips and tails and some negative sidecut at the tips with sidecut, and possible slight amount of traditional camber, under the feet.”  Surely this speaks to you gear heads?

The beauty for winter sports addicts is that sports equipment design is only going to get cooler and more innovative with time.  Each snow season will continue to be filled with ample equipment upgrade opportunities, and snowboarding will drift into an “old school” reputation as new snow sports conquer the slopes.  Ah, the anticipation of change, now there’s an adrenaline rush!  

–Kate

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