The 2011/2012 season is officially here as Wolf Creek opened its trails last weekend and in doing so created a frenzy of chatter across our beloved social sites about how this year will top all others. So, to stoke you out, we partnered up with Niche Snowboards, the eco-friendly board manufacturer based out of SLC, to give away 10 snowboards before the holidays to our loyal readers.
Niche isn't your typical board manufacturer. Dustin Morrell, Niche founder and owner, started pressing custom boards from his basement and after a couple years realized how harmful the traditional manufacturing process is. The search to eliminate these harmful materials brought about new advancements in snowboard construction: from replacing traditional fiberglass with their Magma Fiber crafted from the strong, light volcanic rock basalt to sustainable wood cores, hemp-based stringers and a laquer-free, digi-print topsheet that cuts up to 60% of the material used in traditional topsheets. The result: a lighter, stronger board that is more impact resistant and less harmful to the environment.
"The new eco friendly materials actually out perform traditional manufacturing in many aspects," says Dustin Morrell; and in the fall of 2009 Niche snowboards was put into sample production at Global Sports Technologies (GST) in Austria. Niche still makes all of their prototypes in SLC but their production is done through GST a company known for high quality manufacturing while lowering their impact on the environment which makes them a perfect match for Niche.
Ana Van Pelt (Niche Creative Director) brought her creative design to Niche's graphics and feel. Ana also contracted some amazing artists like Michael Sieben to help design Niche's graphics.
When we found out about what they were doing in SLC, we thought we would bring it to our readers, give them a chance to win a free board and see just how great this new technology is.
So if you're down for the environment and love free stuff, head over to Niche's Facebook page and enter to win one of these unique boards.
