A lot of the questions that we get asked at Snomie.com deal with what kinds of snowboards we recommend and it seems a lot of people who get confused by the options are beginners who are just starting off, so let’s look at how a beginner should go about picking a snowboard.
How to pick a snowboard is explained in our free snowboard gear guide, but I felt that beginners are slightly different from the more intermediate snowboarders who know the type of terrain they they want to ride, so here are a few extra bits of info aimed just at beginners.
1) If you’re unsure of what terrain you’ll end up riding, go with an all-mountain snowboard
If you’re like every other beginner that’s just starting off in the snowboard world, you don’t know what type of riding you might want to try further down the road. This makes choosing your first snowboard trickier, because you don’t want to get a specialized snowboard that only performs on one type of terrain.
This is why I recommend you pick an all-mountain snowboard.
What’s an all-mountain snowboard?
They’re basically the jack of all trades. If a powder specific snowboard is a 10 out of 10 for riding in powder, an all-mountain snowboard would be a 7 or 8. The difference here is that the all-mountain snowboard will also perform well in the park, on boxes and rails and on groomed runs, whereas the powder snowboard may be lacking in these other areas.
All-mountain is never a bad thing and it’s very common for even advanced riders to have an all-mountain snowboard in their gear kit.
2) Never take the word of a shop employee as fact
There are tons of shop employees who will tell you nonsense and will act as if they know what they’re talking about, even when they don’t. Unfortunately, beginners are the customers most likely to listen to them and end up buying whatever they recommend.
It’s never a bad idea to get a second opinion. I recommend checking independent reviews on forum and websites such as shayboarder.com or angrysnowboarder.com because not every snowboard is the best in the world at everything, despite what some companies or salespeople may try to tell you.
Also, never take ‘I snowboard a lot’ as a sign of knowing which snowboard is best for you. It’s certainly not bad to snowboard a lot, but there are a lot of shop employees who snowboard a lot that are horrible at picking snowboards and don’t know the first thing about snowboards.
You ever notice how bad trick tips by snowboard pros usually are? They end up telling you about the trick instead of how to do it. The same goes for how to buy a snowboard. Just because they are good snowboarders does not mean they know how to help you buy a snowboard.
Good luck with your first snowboard and if you want a more in depth guide to buying and selecting snowboard gear, go download our free snowboard gear guide 🙂
– Jed