Burton Snowboards is a great example of doing one thing very well: The Burlington, VT-based company has been pumping out snowboards for over 30 years, and has acquired a following of successful athletes like Olympic gold medalist and Burton poster boy, Shaun White, who soar out of the half-pipe at record heights with custom-made decks.

The company, which deals in snowboards and related gear, outerwear and accessories, has the celeb cred. They carry over 50 different types of boards. But is it hype, or true quality? We set our intrepid road-tester up with the new 2009 Malolo ($549.95), and got the scoop:

The reason I choose the Malolo is mainly due to my current level and mind set of snowboarding. Gone are my 22-year-old days of hiking the half-pipe, like my buddy Shaun, or taking on a huge jump in the park at every waking breath. I still like to hit the pipe, yet my love now is powder, powder and more power. Steep and deep mountains, preferably in Jackson Hole Wyoming, Lake Tahoe or Canada.

The Malolo’s length and shape fuses a hybrid of freestyle and freeride performance – allowing me to either take that jump if it comes up or drowning in waist deep powder. The model comes in five different size options; a 149, 154, 158, 162 or 168cm long. Standing high at 5’11 and, um, well….girls don’t disclose their weight, I settled with the 154. Due to the board’s tapered shape I also sized down a few cm’s versus my normal size of 156. (A tapered board is where the width of the board’s nose is wider than the width of its tale.)

Recently, Mt. Snow Resort in Vermont hosted a huge snowboarding contest called the Winter Dew Tour. The top male and female snowboarders converged together in hopes to gain momentum for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC. I decided to make the trek from New York City and see how my board would do in various conditions considering the Weather Channel told me it’d dump about 10 inches of snow over Saturday night, making Sunday a chance to see how the board performed in both fresh tracks and on groomed corduroy trails.

What I found is the Malolo is brilliant for powder days and good for non-powder days. I learned, for my style of riding, I’d prefer another Burton board, a Custom X 56 for fast and icy conditions on the East Coast. That’s not going to prevent me from not riding the Malolo on the “right side”, but to me, it’s made for days with epic conditions where a helicopter is involved – whisking me away on my dream experience.

The cost of the board is reasonable too, considering you get more bang for your buck in its versatility. I wasn’t crazy about the graphics, but that can be fixed too! Burton has a custom made online buying option, Series 13 at Burton.com, where you can select any of its models and create your own board graphics, all for around $300 more than the board’s original cost. It’s tres tres chic couture, yet for snowboarders!

At the end of the weekend, I was happy, because all that matters is snowboarding down the mountain and having fun with friends.

~Jessica McMenamin

Overall Rating:
Value – 9
Looks – 7
Quality – 10
Performance – 10

Total ...36/40