Written and photographed by Mike Basher.
Local mountains and their unique vibes heavily influence a snowboarding brand’s DNA. If Brand X is based in the Alps, you’d expect a product line of stiff, fast boards. Brand Y from SoCal? Get ready to get on some park boards. Rome Snowboards, however, resides in a bit of a geographical anomaly. Just a thirty-minute drive from their HQ, you can hit the slopes of three incredible, diverse resorts.
Barely 19 miles south, Sugarbush routinely builds one of North America’s best terrain parks, boasting hundreds of features. A quick 16 miles north, Stowe’s steep pitches and hike-access sidecountry offer some of the Northeast’s premier freeride terrain. And just 12 miles west, Bolton Valley’s chill, cruisey groomers, side hits, and night riding create a vibe all their own.
These are the proving grounds where Rome puts its latest gear to the test. One morning, a binding’s highback might be taking shape on a 3D printer at Rome’s Waterbury office. That very evening, it’s being put through the paces at Bolton. Any necessary tweaks can be made the next morning, reprinted, and re-ridden the following night. The process repeats until the crew has it dialed.
Of course, it takes a certain amount of stoke to fuel this constant loop of progression, and that’s where the individuals truly matter. A grand total of eight people are the pistons of the engine that drives Rome Snowboards. Unassuming, really. But this crew eats, sleeps, and breathes all things snowboarding. Their fortunate geographical location, specifically chosen on Day 1 way back in 2001, was intentional: assemble a crew of passionate snowboarders, fanatical about gear, living for the next day on-hill, and place them within 30 minutes of almost any possible global snowboarding scenario. This has been interwoven into Rome’s DNA and continues to this day.
The brand’s reach extends far beyond a 20-mile radius in rural Vermont, though. With some of the heaviest hitters in snowboarding on their international roster, they also have some serious in-house product developers and testers, like Maggie Leon and Max Lyons, as well as a squad of local homies who are incredibly knowledgeable, and down for the cause. It’s this diversity which gives Rome’s boards their signature versatility. If you’ve ever ridden a Rome board, and especially if you’ve experienced a few, you’ve likely noticed that no matter which board—the pressy Artifact or the pow-crushing Ravine—at the heart of every Rome board is the soul of freestyle. Regardless of the model, they are all tools to boost creativity and self-expression, just tuned and shaped for a specific application.
The same goes for Rome’s groundbreaking bindings. Concepted and developed completely in-house by a small crew of snowboard-loving engineers and tested globally, Rome has elevated bindings from a necessary accessory to being as important as your boot and board choice. The result? A cult-like following of core shredders who fiend out on bindings like the Katana and Brass.
One of the biggest advancements in binding straps was born in Rome’s old red warehouse, nestled deep in the hills of rural Vermont. Aux Tech straps have proven to be a game-changer, taking Rome’s already proven binding offering and turning things up to eleven. Again, developed via 3D printing and experimentation in Rome’s backyard, their engineers began exploring auxetic shapes and how they affect flexion in materials. The result is an incredibly versatile heel strap, which can be found on several models across their entire binding line, and this year, on the all-new FASE system.
This crew goes hard, bell-to-bell, fully embodying the pure vibe of snowboarding. It’s this dedication that fuels every board and binding they create, from the smallest tweak in their Waterbury lab to testing new designs on the rails at Sugarbush, slashes in Stowe’s sidecountry, and ripping Bolton Valley’s after-work hot laps. The Rome Eight aren’t just making gear; they’re meticulously crafting the tools that define modern shredding, one Vermont day on snow at a time.
