Leah and I headed down to the Qwest Event Center for this year’s Ski Fever convention today in search of our first snowboard gear. Every year the Ski Fever show comes through both Portland and Seattle but we missed it last year. Plus, last season we only managed to get out to Snoqualmie a couple times so we just rented gear from REI each time. The gear was alright, but it was..well..rental gear. We both had a blast learning to snowboard though so this year we resolved to actually buy our own gear for a little better experience.
I really wasn’t sure what kind of deals we might be able to find at Ski Fever, especially considering thatthere are some pretty good deals available online. I tried asking around to a lot of friends and fellow ski/snoboarders but strangely no one I asked had ever been to the show before. So we just threw caution to the wind and went for it.
The show was actually pretty fun, but at the same time a little overwhelming. Almost every ski and snowboard shop in the area was there with their gear which included new, last season’s, demo, used, and everything in between. In addition there were booths for most every major resort in the northwest and British Columbia. Deals were definitely there, but you had to really work to find them. We spent almost six hours at the show finding our gear. Ultimately we both picked up complete board, boots, and binding sets and spent far less than we would have at any store or online. We got brand new gear and in some cases were even able to haggle the price down a little.
The show included some other stuff like skier/snowboarder celebrity appearances (oh whom I had absolutely no idea who they were) and some events like rail-riding and acrobatics. It added a little to the atmosphere but they weren’t really that great. Almost every booth had some sort of raffle going on and of all the ones we entered I actually did win one of the drawings..a free t-shirt from a resort (yeah). The bottom line is that the show is really meant for the gear and that’s what it does best. Here’s the gear that Leah and I picked up.
My setup:
Ride Decade board
Burton Mission bindings
Burton boots
Leah’s setup:
GNU B-Nice board
Burton Citizen bindings
DC boots