ThirtyTwo has been dropping segments from the film for the last couple of weeks, and from what we’ve seen so fart, this isn’t one you should sleep on. While you’re waiting for it to download, peep the Trailer

We’ll have a review up soon.

The full AMMO movie is available now at local snowboard shops for $9.99, and will be up on iTunes for $2.99 on Oct 1.

Fun movie that definitely makes me want to ride Bear again (it’s been a while).

Also, did big floppy mittens suddenly become cool again? Some of these kids put Matt Goodwill to shame in the floppy glove department.

Thanks to Bear Mountain, Snowboarder Mag, and Red Bull for the video!

Stay tuned following the jam for the exclusive premiere of Bear Mountains’ full-length video “The Peoples’ Park” at 7PM PST.

Schedule:
3:00PM HD&HR Preshow
3:30PM Hour Long Semi-Final Jam
4:45PM Hour Long Finals
6:00PM Post Event Highlight Show
6:30PM Award Presentation
7:00PM The People’s Park Live Stream
*All times in PST

Video courtesy of: Snowboarder Magazine, Bear Mountain Resort, Red Bull.

This is the original business card we hit the road with in 1999

I started SBG with two good friends in the fall of 1998 as we prepared to hit the road on a snowboard roadtrip. It’s been more than a decade since I started cobbling together bits of code to make a website that would catalog our trip as we traveled from Alaska into Canada and then down through Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado during what was to be one of the best seasons on record.

We started out as what would later be called a blog

In the years since, Snowboarder Guide has taken a number of forms. We started out as what would later be called a blog, an online journal chronicling the story of three 18-year-olds on the road with the sole mission of snowboarding. The journal turned into reviews, and the resort reviews we wrote and published were some of the first available on the web. Over the next few years we moved into product reviews as well, and before the term blogging had even been coined, we had adopted a web magazine format.

We’ve been as small as two people, and at times had ten contributors. Maggie joined our team, first writing reviews, then articles, and then taking on the role of women’s editor and overseeing the female half of the product world as the industry recognized the need for women’s specific gear. We married in 2001, and celebrated 10 years this year. We’ve traveled all over the US, attended incredible events, hung out with legends and heroes, and made friends throughout the snowboard industry, and along the way we’ve had more powder days than anyone really deserves. 

In the process, we lost our voice.

In the mid-to-late 2000s, two things happened: snowboard blogging really took off, and the print snowboard magazines started to put some real money into their websites. SBG was caught in the middle, more than a blog, but without the resources or print-revenue of a magazine. Stretched thin, we adapted by posting more press releases (because it was free content and search engines loved it), and opening our review system up for public reviews. In the process, we lost our voice. We were still here, snapping photos at events, publishing press releases to the website, and moderating user reviews, but it was no longer our words that made up the bulk of the site. The personality and character that our readers trusted and came to our corner of the web for, vanished.

At the same time, I was being pulled away by my other project, teaching, coaching, and guiding with Steamboat Guides. Steamboat Guides is awesome, and I’ll still be on-snow with SG many days of the week, but SBG is back.

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

We’re still hammering out a number of details for this season, but I thought it was time to start laying some of it out. As Mark Twain so eloquently put it, “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” So here are a few of the changes:

Press Releases: We strongly feel that press releases are an important part of snowboard story, and so we’ll continue to post press releases. However, our goal is to do a better job of filtering the interesting and newsworthy (or things we want to make fun of) from the bland, generic press releases that fill up our inbox, and provide you that information with our voice. You can still read the standard press release at the bottom, but the top will be our words.

Contributors: Reviews and articles are back to a small team of on-snow reviewers. We hope to grow this and include more riders, but we’re starting small, and finding our voice again. If you’re interested in joining our team, feel free to get in touch.

Reviews: Reviews have been migrated out of the separate Censura review system and included within the main site. This makes for a site that runs faster, is actually searchable, and is far easier to update.

Review Scores: After ten years, we’re updating our review scoring. More on this soon.

A new look: This one is still a little ways off, but should be ready by the time snow hits.

SBG is a testament to years of hard work and great rewards, and is proof that if you work hard you can create something from scratch. It has been an incredible journey. I hope you’ll join us as we explore what’s next for Snowboarder Guide.

Brandon Hobush lacing his ThirtyTwo boots

I have to interject that I love the new world of digital snowboard movies. I mean we’ve been headed there for a couple of years now, but for some reason it feels like companies are really embracing it this year. I remember paying $20-30 for snowboard films when I was growing up, and I had to carefully weigh which movies I wanted along with whatever other gear I actually needed that year. Usually this meant I’d pick up Mack Dawg’s film first, since it came with a soundtrack CD as well, and then grab TB whatever if I had the spare cash.

When the snowboard film landscape started to blow up in the early 2000′s, prices weren’t very quick to respond, and soon there were 10, and then 20, and then 30 movies all competing for the same audience with the same price tag. It’s all very different now, with releases like AMMO available for less than $5 on-line, and even the mega-releases like The Art of Flight are available on iTunes for under $10.

Anyways, to make my point, courtesy of ThirtyTwo, Brandon Hobush’s full part is just a few words below this one, and rather than reading these words you should probably be scrolling to the video and clicking play.

ThirtyTwo dropped the wreck-heavy intro section last week. If you missed it, catch up here: http://youtu.be/2TSLbanjE2c

ThirtyTwo.com will be releasing a video part from “AMMO” once a week through November 3, but you don’t have to wait until then to see it all. You can either go to your local snowboard shop to buy it today or download it from ThirtyTwo.com for $2.99 on October 1.

I received a pretty early invite to G+, and have been playing with it since pretty early in the test. Google Plus is an interesting blend of the existing social media sites, more robust and, in my opinion, far more useful than Twitter, while allowing for a blend of personal and public sharing that up until recently Facebook hasn’t allowed.

You may have noticed the G+ share button that started showing up on our pages a few weeks ago, and we’ll definitely be using the new service as much as possible heading into winter 2011/12. We’re evaluating their emerging tools like Hangouts and Huddles/Messenger, and hope to have some cool content and possibly contests using the service this winter.

Keep reading after the break for a quick look G+ video and links to join and follow us there.

Similar to Twitter, I “follow” a number of people I don’t know personally and wouldn’t friend on Facebook, like Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google who posts great photos and stories about his adventures, Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.com who always has something interesting to share, and Michiel de Lange who posts new breathtaking photos almost every day. However, similar to Facebook, I have circles of friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and family (just to name a few groups), that I share varying degrees of content with. G+ does this far more gracefully than Facebook, even with the new updates to lists, and it’s easy to share photos of the party last night with friends, while coworkers only see photos from the company luncheon last week.

This level of control over sharing makes it a much more natural place for people who want to have more control over who sees what.

G+ has yet to roll out any kind of business profile or equivalent to the Facebook Fan Page, but there’s every indication that business pages are in the works and coming soon. In the meantime, you can follow me for SBG news, reviews, articles, and snowboard industry updates here: https://plus.google.com/108417708679404328465/posts

If you haven’t joined the fun at G+ yet, what are you waiting for? Jump on this link and join the fun: https://plus.google.com/i/Z0rqcwvLYLo:uk2u5U5LVWQ

If you’ve been using +, sound off in the comments. How have you been using it, and what do you think of the service?

This is the first in a series about off-snow training. We’ll look at trampolines, fitness training, favorite exercises, and other sports with skills that transfer easily to snowboarding.

Continue Reading “Off-Snow Training: Trampolines” at Steamboat Guides

After all sorts of shenanigans on Thursday night, the Riders’ Polls went off without a hitch. We arrived a little on the early side, found a booth in the VIP section upstairs (thanks TW Snow!), and settled in with a few drinks.

Riders Poll Award Winners

Rookie Of The Year: Halldór Helgason (DC)

Men’s Rider Of The Year: John Jackson (Forum)

Women’s Rider Of The Year: Annie Boulanger (Salomon)

Men’s Video Part Of The Year: John Jackson (Forum Snowboards’ Forever)

Women’s Video Part Of The Year: Annie Boulanger (Absinthe Films’ Neverland)

Video Of The Year: Forever (Forum Snowboards)

Standout Of The Year: Xavier De Le Rue (Standard Films’ Black Winter)

2010 Legend Award: Tom Burt (Winterstick)

Men’s Reader’s Choice: Eiki Helgason (Rome)

Women’s Reader’s Choice: Marie-France Roy (Rome)

If I were able to I would add a SIA Party of the Year award to Transworld and the event sponsors: New Era, Matador, Vans, Aerial7, POW, Keystone, Breckenridge, Ball Park, Red Bull and Zumiez. Great night, looking forward to next year.

After meeting with the hundred or so companies we normally see at SIA, not to mention the after parties, we’re usually pretty wasted. But SIA.10 took it to a whole new level with two days of on-snow demos immediately following the tradeshow.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out previews from each company we met with, including photos, and mentions of any products that really caught our attention, as well as on-snow previews for select boards, boots, and bindings. For now you can check out this gallery of images, an overview of the entire trip.