When I was just a little grom I would always get excited when I got my hands on the new Burton catalog. I’d sit down and carefully flip through all the pages reading about what new technology they’d come up with for that year(remember Super Fly Core II?) and all the new outerwear I’d seen pros rocking the season before. I suppose now that I’m an old man(by industry standards) I shouldn’t get as excited as I do for their website launch each year. I suppose I should be jaded like many of my friends who dismiss the new technology as unnecessary and the graphics as unimaginative. Many of them say Burton has lost touch with it’s roots and become too commercial. Bullshit. All you have to do is take a good look at the product for this year to see that now more than ever(and for the past 4-5 years in my opinion) Burton is doing an exceptional job of representing core snowboarding values while turning out killer product. This is not to say that I don’t have my issues with some of their choices(U.S. Open moving to Vail for example) but I can tell you that the gear I have is on a quality level all it’s own. So here, in the dogs days of summer, in the middle of this “heat wave” as Southern Californians call it(no humidity so who cares) I thought I’d put together a piece with the hard goods you should be most excited about putting to good use on the mountain this season. Burton says 2013 is an iconic year, I’d like think that’ll be the case. After all, scientists say that it’s gonna be a La Nina winter and getting skunked on a good season two years in a row, that’s just unheard of. Cheers.
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