Spring Break Kaunertal, Austria 2016 | Just when you thought its time to pack up your snowboarding kit, with all the snow clearing the peaks of Europe, there’s always one annual trip that must be attended, the ‘Spring Break’ UK snowboard test is the last call for those final laps in the sun!
Held just an hour’s drive from Innsbruck within the Tirol valley resort of Kaunertal / Austria, lies the Kaunertal glacier awaiting the arrival of 300 folks from the UK.
Here industry riders, brands, shops staff and regular snowboarders gather to test and ride all of next season’s kit from boards, boots, and bindings as well as a whole heap of cool kit. Now in its tenth year the ‘Spring Break’ is as memorable as ever, friends are made, good times are shared as the UK snowboard community bands together for 7 days of spring fun shredding!
Being my third trip, I’d now like to think of myself as a ‘Spring Break veteran', I’ve shared this trip with many others, for whom too have now revisited this stunning area of Austria. This time id brought along my friend ‘Alex’ who was visiting his first mountain range after just a few trips at the indoor snowdomes. So I knew this trip would be really good to get a wide variety of kit tested from beginners to higher end models.
Traditionally ‘Spring Break’ is thought to feature slushy, clear riding conditions, yet due to late heavy dumps of snow after the season’s end our experience was anything but!
Experiencing every condition imaginable 3000m up was quite an ordeal,
from heavy snow storms, bad visibility to a lucky clearing of sunshine breaks on our last day; we were put through it all to enjoy what was available to us. Yet when you have just three days of riding and kit to get through, there’s no time to pack up and go home!
When the conditions did improve some great powder riding was had as well as the odd cheeky jib session on great little hit areas around the glacier.
With 10 runs available this isn’t about the mileage, you get on a set up and if your liking it you might just want to spend a little more time getting to know it better… and if you don’t you’re never too far to go back up to camp and change your set up. It was great to finally test out some kit I’d missed from this year’s order, now covering our stores whole catalogue, to give you a taste of what we’ll be having in stock for the 2016/17 season.
From brands such as Anon, Burton, Capita, G.N.U, Lib Tech, Union and
Salomon, there were so many surprises and we can’t wait to share these
with you soon!
Check out the edit below of what I got up to, with product reviews to come during pre-season, this is surely going to be another awesome season to look forward to!
