My name is Lachy, and I am lucky enough to get to snowboard 100 to 150 days a year. Although I was born in Australia, I have been following winter going between Canada and Australia (with some trips to Japan and the US) for the past 10 seasons.
I learnt to snowboard at the fairly late age of 24, and since then it has been the only thing that I want to do. Before I started snowboarding, I had a serious job working as a web designer. The 9 to 5 life eventually wore me down, until I decided to organise a work visa, and bought a ticket to Canada. Since then, I have been living what most people would call the ski bum lifestyle.
I am the sort of person who likes to do a lot of research before I buy something, and as a complete beginner I needed to know about everything – snowboards, bindings, boots, googles, outerwear – the whole lot. It was quite hard to get the information that I wanted, and most product pages were just copies of the manufacturers descriptions, which are full of technical terms that I had no chance of understanding.
I was able to get some good information from local shops, which helped me choose the gear that would suit me best. Although now I realise that I was recommended gear that was in stock, not what would necessarily be the best for me. That’s ok, I understand that’s how retail stores have to work.
Over the years I have worked in a few different jobs, that have all helped me learn, predict and help choose the right board for the right rider.
Although the most time has been spent working in repair shops tuning and repairing boards, I also worked in retail selling snowboards, and in rental shops renting out high performance boards.
Those jobs, especially working in rentals have helped me in being able to pick the right style of board for someone, no matter their skill level. Whether it is someone who just wants to cruise around the mountain with their family, or someone who knows how to carve hard on a camber board, or someone just starting out, I have gotten better at getting the right board for the right person.
If you want me to give you a recommendation on a snowboard or other gear, click here.
I’m not the best rider, but this video below will give you an idea of how I ride, so you know I’m not just making this all up. If there is pow, I’ll be wherever there is the most of it, otherwise I would probably be in the park, or out looking for side hits. In the future, I plan to have videos showing me riding the boards I review, rather than just having me write about a board after I am done testing it.
How this site started
I was looking at buying a new board and was doing some research. I knew that from other boards I had ridden, I wanted a camber, twin board, with a medium flex. I knew a couple of models that would suit me off the top of my head, but I wanted to have a look at all the boards that might suit me, from all brands.
I wanted a way to search through lots of boards, that would show me any that fit my criteria. I started entering lots of boards into the site, and filled out their details such as camber type, shape, flex and terrain.
It made it easy to show me whatever style of board I wanted, for example:
- rocker, stiff, directional powder boards
- camber, medium flexing, twin directional all mountain boards
- hybrid camber, soft flexing park boards
and any other combination you could come up with. That is where the idea for the name came from, as it was like a robot that can help you choose a snowboard.
Use the drop downs to help you find a new snowboard
How Snowboard Robot can help you
There are a few ways that Snowboard Robot can help you choose some new snowboarding gear.
1. Find a new board
You can use the filters to show you all the boards that suit your style (eg stiff camber boards to ride in the park)
2. Read my reviews
Read the reviews (find them in the menu at the top) to get my experience and opinions on products I have used. If I haven’t ridden the board/bindings etc, I will try to explain the (often ridiculously named) product features in an easy to understand way, that tells you what you should expect, and how they should work in real life.
3. Find the cheapest store to buy from
On any of the product pages, at the bottom there is a section that searches all the major US snowboard stores, and lets you easily find the cheapest place to buy the gear you want.
If you already know what you want (eg Burton Cartels) and you just want to find the cheapest place to buy them from, you can use this search page to find the best place to buy from.