What To Wear To The Mountain (Snowboarding Gear Tutorial)

Whattup Shredder?

o are you about to go shredding and don’t know what to wear to the mountain?

You better make sure you go prepared, otherwise, you are gonna be shivering under a tree wondering what you were thinking.

In this snowboarding gear tutorial, we break down the clothes and protective equipment you are gonna need on the mountain.

Don’t skip this!

What to Wear Snowboarding

Table of Contents

Christian: (00:00)
What up shredder, one of the most confusing things about snowboarding is what to wear to the mountain today. We’re going to break it down step by step. So you know exactly what to bring to the mountain.

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Christian: (00:26)
What to wear the mountain. It can be extremely confusing and it seems like you need 27 different pieces of clothing just to go snowboarding. I was available in a pouty with one of my new Stillwater friends last year in, we got out of the car and he said, you’re really good at getting ready for snowboarding. And what he meant is he’s scrounging around trying to find each piece.

And I just have everything neatly packaged up and ready to go get out of the car, get on the Hill and catch that power before anybody else does. So today, then it was much better than the stuff that I am is going to break down exactly what you need to wear to the mountain so that you have a great day out there. You don’t get too cold, not too hot. And you’re not scattered all over the place with your gear.

Ben: (01:04)
Yeah. The first thing you’re going to want to do is secure the bag. Now, what I mean by that is have a bag that you can kind of keep all your riding stuff centrally located in.

Christian: (01:11)
Yeah. That’s going to make like, reduce so much stress from your life, especially if you’re going in the trip and you’re not going to have to wonder, do I have everything? Cause you know exactly where everything goes in the bag and what you bring. All right. So let’s grab that bag.

Ben: (01:24)
Alright. So this is the perfect riding back. Chris, multiple pockets. You got your big one to kind of keep everything, uh, your, your pants, your jacket, your, your base layers. You can see the separate pockets up top with zippers and mesh. That’s where I’ll keep like my socks on the side here. We’ve got other separated pockets. You can keep your beanies, your gloves, anything inside there.

The same thing on the opposite side, I’ve got my tool snacks pocket right here on the other end good little pocket. This is where you can keep some extra face masks, another pocket on the other end. This is where I keep my backup goggles. Well, yeah. And then one of my favorite parts about this bag is really the boot locker.

If this is a little bit extra, but you can see a waterproof bag with ventilation, uh, to let those boots burrito all in one place, you’re never going to forget anything and you can overpack it.

Christian: (02:22)
Awesome. So is this called? It’s no more guy. Like if you get this from a snowboard company,

Ben: (02:26)
This typically designed to that, this is a snowboarding back. Yes.

Christian: (02:29)
I always just use an Ikea plastic bag, but

Ben: (02:32)
You can do better. So that’s our riding bag. Again, you don’t need a ride bag. You can go young Christian’s way and get the big Ikea bag, but just one central place to keep all your stuff together.

Christian: (02:43)
Yeah. I’m going to upgrade this year. So let’s get rid of the bag and let’s bring in another piece of gear.

Ben: (02:48)
So here we are base layers, right? This is where it all starts. What I really like is the air blaster and Ninja suit. This is a one piece zip up runs the whole way down with a 359 degrees.

Zipper goes almost the whole way around so you can’t get in and out of it easily. I’ll show you real quick here, the whole way in case she got up, go to the bathroom, you got that covered.

And really what this does for me is it builds the foundation of my whole kit. So one piece with the little cufflinks, uh, you do have the optional hood and then it zips up nice and high with some softer material around your neck. So this is your base layer. You don’t need to do a Ninja suit, but this is definitely my preferred baselayer these come in different, uh, varying degrees of, uh, how warm they can be.

They go all the way up to a Merino wool, which is going to be a little bit warmer. I just take the basic acrylic and it’s a, it works just fine for me. And I’ll pretty much wear this every single day I snowboard.

Christian: (03:45)
Yeah. The proper base layer is so key. Like we’ll see people out there snowboarding in khakis or wearing jeans on the mountain, or they have cotton base layers in. As soon as they get wet, they’re pretty much done for the day or they’re stuck up on the mountain and their clothes are freezing. They’re getting hypothermia.

Ben: (04:01)
Yeah. Cannot stress the importance enough of the base layer. This is where it all starts. This is going to give you your foundation. So this is actually going to wick away, sweat, right? It’s not going to freeze

Christian: (04:12)
Cause a lot of times story and you’re going to get sweaty when you’re running hard. And then as soon as you’re having the lift, it’s cold again. So you have the sweat freeze pattern going on. So you have to make sure you have something that can combat that pattern.

Ben: (04:22)
Absolutely. And that’s your base layer socks, right? Everybody has them. Does everybody have skiing or snowboarding specific socks? And what makes that a skiing or snowboarding specific sock? What I have right here, this is from a company called smart wool.

They did a CoLab with, we drink water, awesome company, check them out sometime, but what makes it a snowboarding sock is really the material that they put into it. And then the stitch work as well. If you see on the toe here, you want to go pro this shot, close up. What we have here is a seamless toe box. So there’s no seam that’s going to be adding any bunching.

You can see built up padding underfoot. So a little bit more support to wrap your arch more padding in the heel. And then a little bit of a elastic at the top, just to keep everything tight at the top of the sock, you don’t want the sagging down and dropping. So this is a snowboard specific sock that I would highly recommend.

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Snowboard Protective Gear

Christian: (05:15)
There’s a couple things I want to get to, but one is, I see people have boats that are too big from them. Maybe they borrowed from a friend or the hand me downs. And they think I’m just going to put on three pairs of socks to make this boot fit. Is there anything wrong with that or is that good or bad?

Ben: (05:28)
Yeah. You’re not going to want to do that. Uh, if you are wearing multiple pairs of socks, what that does is as your body sweats, it kind of builds a layer of condensation between the socks, which is then more likely to get colder. And then you’re actually kind of tracking a cold layer around your foot. So don’t wear multiple pairs of socks. You want to get the right size fitting boot and wear a ski or snowboard specific socks. Yeah.

Christian: (05:51)
And then do we have, depending on how old it is, do we have different like thickness or temperature rating? Absolutely. Christian.

Ben: (05:58)
So this is a good sock for pretty much your everyday, you know, not a really cold day, but these will, these will get you through just about everything. And then if you are looking for a more, um, you know, really cold day sock, you can look into that thicker material, Marino Wolf. Again, you’re never wanting to really double up on a sock. Maybe just get a thicker sock to begin.

Christian: (06:16)
Yeah, come very common mistakes. So I’ll talk about, it’s going to make your feet cold or they’re just going to freeze out and you’re going to have a miserable time. So get the right socks and you’re going to be happy snowboarding.

Ben: (06:26)
And the pro tip here for you, that is going to be get two pairs of snowboard socks. You know, think about if you’re going up to the mountains, you’ve got to make a Trek up there and you want to crash on a buddy’s couch.

If you have one pair of socks and it’s sticking up the place, that’s going to be your only trip to that lady’s place. So get two pairs of socks. I recommend more thin pair and then a thicker pair for the colder days. And this also doubles as you breaking in boots, you can start in thinner sock is that boot breaks in, and then they’ll do a thicker sock once you’re kind of packed out that liner.

Christian: (06:54)
Awesome. Sucks. Let’s go ahead and jump to the next item.

Ben: (07:00)
Here we are. We’re talking about bids now. Um, you don’t need the rocket bib. I really like it cause I don’t get snow down my pants, but yeah, this is going to be basically for the lower half of your body. You want a good waterproof material? I recommend at least 10 K. Um, we can go into waterproofing ratings later.

We’ll explain all those, but a 10 K and up for anything here in the Rockies, depending on where you’re at. If you’re in the Northwest and get that wet, heavy snow and rain, uh, you’re going to want to go with maybe a vortex material, but for the dry snow of Colorado, I get by with my 15 cave dibs.

Christian: (07:32)
Yeah. So there’s going to be the waterproof rating. You can see it on the tag when you’re buying your snow pants. And again, Ben is wearing them. So it’s coming only up to his chest. Not all snow pants are gonna look like that. Something just stopped like regular dates, but it’s really up to you. I know I’m gonna style for awhile. And now they’re back in. You have to on that.

Ben: (07:49)
Everything’s cyclical Christian. Yeah.

Christian: (07:52)
Personally I did last year and I loved them on mouth. They ride, the Powell just rolled around and not getting any snow on the vehicle.

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The Best Snowboarding Gear

Ben: (07:58)
Yeah. So as you’re out there looking for your new pair of snow pants, a couple of things you want to consider the waterproof rating, obviously see how they fit. You don’t want some, well, depending on your style, you can go baggy. We want something that fits you comfortably.

Um, you know, do a couple of those snowboard movements and um, make sure you’re not tearing out the Protz or anything and a mixture of those plants that can flex. Um, so if you look at the waterproof rating, make sure it’s comfortable and the fit is right.

And then you can check out some of the extra features. You know, these pants come kind of loaded with stuff, be it all the extra pockets that you have. Um, the ventilation on these, this bent shock on the side. That way, if you’re overheating, you can just undo these on the chair and you can breeze, um, for the pockets. I prefer like a sealed pocket. So, um, you’re not gonna trash anything there and see it’s a nice waterproof pocket. And then yeah, I mean all the way down

Christian: (08:50)
The bib guards must have some cool stuff. If you’re a fan of the boa, you’ve got the Gloria hole here. You can open

Ben: (08:56)
That up and just turn your dial without having to take your cough up off your pants. So that’s a really cool added feature that a lot of companies have, but not everybody calls it the same thing

Christian: (09:07)
We got the pants let’s get the next one.

Ben: (09:10)
So as you can see, I’ve got my jacket on here. This is my interact pullover. I really like this jacket. It’s got half zip, a great waterproof rating. They’ll crawl on the cuffs to adjust that hot flank, to tighten up the so if you want to get that nice and snug over your glove, you can see the Velcro just coming in nice and tight again with ventilation.

This one has a little bit of a different style, just on one side coming the whole way down. Really pretty nice to let it air out and breathe while you’re overheating. Um, big kangaroo pocket across the top. Again, zippers are very clutch when you’re out there riding bell curls. Great. I trust zippers a little bit more for actually keeping stuff in the kangaroo extends across the middle.

And I can use that as a little storage pocket as well. Um, I prefer to have a jacket with a hood for those really brutal chair rides. When you’re just freezing, you can pull this up tight and pretty much get into your bubble. It’s a little bit warmer here today, but this is a nice way to really hit your eyes warm and dry material.

Christian: (10:14)
All right. Yeah. So we got the, we got the base layer. We got the socks, we got the Piats jacket. It’s time for some accessories. All right, we’ve got our accessories here on the table. You would walk us through.

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Snowboarding Clothes

Ben: (10:25)
I just like to ride with a face mask. Um, you know, something you can kind of pull up and down, kind of cut off some of that light from the wind, really protect your nose and those really kind of sensitive areas that can get frostbit and without you noticing, so a face mask is a good one. Um, I go a little bit extra and rock this hood right here. Um, it just make me feel secure.

This is a for everybody, but it is nice. Cause it can kind of stretch over a helmet and give you that warms locked in in that sense. Um, a beanie, I like Pat more orange, one of my favorites from how there and then some mittens to mittens gloves, whatever your preference. I think mittens are great because you know, fingers needed friends again, shout out well light. But when you have the Mitt in there, it’s going to keep your fingers together and they’re going to generate the heat for each other versus a glove where every finger is kind of on its own.

Ben: (11:15)
So maybe it’s for me. And then of course the goggles I’ve got the dragon DX three right here. This is an awesome Goggle that is over the glass compatible. It’s got great peripheral and it doesn’t break the bank here with its lexicon lens.

There we are all complete, ready to ride. Layering is key, but as you can see, I don’t really have any skin exposed. Um, for me that’s kind of like a personal preference, but the sun, uh, and elements can be pretty damaging. So make sure you have this ability to get fully geared out and fully covered.

Christian: (11:49)
Yeah, but I mean, it’s gonna make your day so much more fun. If it’s cold out there and go have anything exposed, you can just be nice and cozy in all your gear. And Ben has layers on right now, too. So he can always take off, you know, one of those face masks, he can always take off some of those layers and strip down to get a little more air going. I always say it’s better to be too warm than too cold because I hate being cold. So I think that’s all we got, but hold on my phone’s ringing.

Christian: (12:16)
Oh yep. Nope. That’s your mom. Oh my helmet. Cause none of us want to relearn to read or walk or anything like that. You increase your chances of not doing significant brain damage to yourself. Probably like 70 or 80% of skiers and snowboarders wear helmets now. So it used to be like uncommon or maybe even a little taboo, but now it’s become taboo not to wear one.

And so I know it can be tempting to want to be cool and not wearing a helmet. But the reality is you’re not going to be happy with yourself. If you smash your head in like Benson, you have to relearn to eat or to walk or to do of those things.

Someone who’s just the sport. It’s a lifestyle sport. It is an awesome time, but let’s be safe out there wearing a helmet and you’re going to trip even harder. Alright. Can you sell Strider?