Gear Patrol

Leaving first tracks through three feet of fresh stuff on an uncharted backcountry run can be a spiritual experience — especially for snowboarders struggling to get off the pipe. It’s tough to be sure, as most lift tickets lead away from the Promised Land and deliver only crunchy corduroy runways back to the beast. To help powder seekers find salvation, Austrian manufacturer Splitsticks (~$1,800) has developed a complete splitboard package that conquers the mountain.

Music and snow sports go together like Rick Ross and cheese covered honeybuns, but squeezing your favorite cans inside a helmet is rarely a formula for comfort. The POC Receptor BUG Communication Helmet (~$330) skirts this dilemma by integrating Beats by Dr. Dre headphones into the helmet neck roll, which combines bass-heavy tunes with a…

Oakley’s Airwave goggles are a new breed of advanced snow sport eyewear equipped with a heads up display that simulates viewing a 14-inch screen from five feet away when a user looks in the lower right corner of their peripheral vision. That description sounds confusing, but the important thing to remember is that the technology…

Unless you’re fortunate (or wise) enough to live near the mountains, purchasing proper fitting binding, boots and boards may be a mere half-pipe dream. But, at some point you’ll discover that skipping the rental headache is the only way to go. When you’re ready to make that jump, the 2013 CAPiTA DBX Snowboard ($500) will…

Next time you’re on the mountain, count how many times you see “Burton” plastered across the slopes. There’s a good reason for that, and the Mystery Snowboard ($1,500) gives boarders every reason to keep on loving. The first flagship board out of Burton’s Craig R&D facility, the Mystery maintains the visual sexiness of the brand’s…

Your average snow shovel works great for cleaning out the driveway or dispatching amateur crooks pestering a prepubsecent Macaulay Culkin. K2′s Rescue Shovel Plus ($60) is the snow shovel of the future. Thanks to a unique modular design, the handle can be affixed to the blade to transform the Plus into a hoe for faster…

What do you get when you combine three nights of Red Epic filming on a skidoo, with a bespoke L.E.D. suit, and Artec pro snowboarder William Hughes in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France? One hell of a visual spectacle, that’s what. While the short film above looks as graceful as ever, apparently the luminescent…

With enough bite to make a Yeti white with jealousy, Atlas Snowshoe has outdone themselves with the Aspect ($269). Built around an all-new traction system called ReactiV-Trac, the Aspect’ offers up tons of grip thanks to an angry saw-toothed perimeter. Something you’ll want when the powder gets especially naughty. A platform of offset webbing creates…

Snow goggles are snow goggles, right? Well, if you don’t care much about ‘em, then yes. But if poor fit and feel, changing weather and slope conditions get you down on your way down, then pay a visit to the Oakey Airbrake, rife with the kind of technology that will make your time on the…

Pure. Uncut. Powder. We’re not discussing Whitney Houston’s daydreams here people. We’re talking about the stuff that transforms passionate snowboarders into giddy Catholic school girls. Sure, if you can commandeer a chopper on a whim, accessing the stuff in the prime backcountry of your choice is an easy affair. For those of more humble means,…

Burton’s reputation in snowboarding needs no introduction, so we’re sure that the F-Stop photo backpack can meet all of the crazy demands of professional photographers tasked with documenting the acrobatics of legends like Shaun White. Even if you haven’t mastered the skill of shooting while edging down the mountain, the F-Stop bag still looks like…

Much like Tony Hawk’s name has become synonymous with the world of skate boarding, Shaun White defines the sport of snowboarding for many fans. This year’s Winter Olympics have given Shaun a grand stage, upon which took the gold medal in the Men’s Halfpipe event earlier this week. Astoundingly, it was a never-before-seen maneuver that…

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if there happen to be an endless supply of cash at hand then all the better. Or so the thought must have been with the creation of Ski Dubai, a 242,000 square foot indoor ski/snowboard slope with year round snow. Ski Dubai features 5 runs that fall…

The only downside we can think of with snowboarding is the fact that you need tools. Not a lot of tools, but tools nonetheless. Adjusting, screwing, tightening, loosening, it tall requires bits. The Burton FBI-6 Pocket Tool is small enough to hide in your coat pocket. It’s packed with drivers, bits for binding adjustments which…