Advances in snowboard technology benefit skiers

By CATHRIN SCHAER

Every year snowboard and ski manufacturers make technological advances that allow their customers a better, faster, more manoeuvrable or more comfortable ride.

A lot of these changes are pretty subtle, involving things like slightly different mixtures of materials inside the ski or board, a side cut that varies by a few millimetres, or a binding that's a little more responsive. To know how this kind of improvement is going to affect your winter sports skills you need to discuss the issue in depth with a knowledgeable sales assistant, or even better, get to test drive the new gear on a mountainside before you buy.

But if we're talking about really big changes, probably the most revolutionary moves are being made within the ski industry. Worried that potential customers were being attracted to snowboarding because snowboard boots are softer and don't necessarily cause as much pain as hard old ski boots, manufacturers have started to make ski boots that combine both a hard and a soft shell. There was only one such model of boot around last season; now nearly every ski company makes one.

The other big change in the industry involves freestyle ski-ing. This is where skiers use twin-tip skis and rather than slaloming perfectly downhill, they attempt the same tricks and twists that snowboarders do.

As a result of the popularity of this new school of ski-ing, there are all kinds of changes being made to the hardware, many of which borrow a lot from snowboarding. Rossignol, for example, have sandwiched rubber between the top and bottom layers of their twin-tip skis this season to absorb vibration - this is a trick borrowed from snowboard manufacture.

But just as ski manufacturers are taking from snowboarding technology, snowboarding is getting right back. Board manufacturers have started to realise that, despite past enmity between skiers and boarders, ski companies have been making winter sports equipment for decades and could teach their punkish younger brother a thing or two about making the gear. Which means that every year snowboarding hardware gets more advanced.

Possibly the main thing happening in snowboarding is the widening range of board choices. Whether you're a skinny guy with big feet or a female with little feet who prefers to ride more aggressively, there's a model of board out there for you. To find it, you'll need to speak to a sales assistant who knows their stuff.

In terms of snowboard bindings and boots there haven't been too many changes. The step-in or "clicker" binding (where you simply step into the binding to attach yourself to the board) continues to die a slow death, the strap or ratchet binding keeps getting better and easier to use and other small speciality bindings, such as those created by Flow, maintain cult following among certain riders.

High fashion

IN

Monotone colours, fewer colours on a jacket

Just a little bit of fluoro

Pastels with a retro, 70s flavour

Fitted, versatile jackets for women, that you can also wear out hiking or to sports games

Shorter jackets for women

Loose-fitting silhouettes but not overly baggy

Trousers

Vintage one-piece suits worn with a sense of irony

Using the word "technical" to describe your clothes

OUT

Anything skin tight

Really baggy pants and jackets mark you out as a 16-year-old boy

Do-rags - are you 16-year-old boys really from the ghetto?

All-over fluoro, anything sparkling

Bib pants

Tight pants tucked into ski boots

Pastel pink and lime for women

More than six colours on a jacket

Fleecy jester (or any other joke) hats

Skier versus snowboarder aggressiveness