Words: Scott Yorko

Some snowboards are scary in a good way. In addition to the haunting graphics, the Afterlife is one of those high-octane decks with a lot of backbone that will charge you up the wall of a halfpipe and demand your full commitment. Testers loved its clean camber profile and fun flex pattern that reacted predictably and felt solid between the bindings when jibbing. Some thought the torsional and center stiffness were a little much out of the box and hoped it would mellow up a bit after the break-in period. “Excellent weight for chucking your meat onto metal,” said one slopestyler.

From the testers: “This board is a demon, demon creature! So pumped, this board is can do it all in the park and has a lot of good qualities that translate to the mountain. Stoked! I recommend for everyone!”

Length (cm) — Sidecut Radius (m) — Waist Width (cm)

148 — 9.4/6.9/9.4 — 24.4
151 — 9.6/7.2/9.6 — 24.6
153 — 9.8/7.5/9.8 — 24.8
156 — 10.0/7.8/10.0 — 25.0

Flex: Soft

Camber: Regular camber (low-profile)

(Flex is not standardized and differs by brand. The rating here is the best estimate of the board’s flex.)

(Sidecut Radius: The measure of how deep or shallow the arc of a board’s edge is from the tips to the middle, in meters. A smaller radius, around six to seven meters means a board will generally turn tighter. As the radius number increases, a board can be expected to make wider turns. Multiple numbers on the same length board means the radius is blended.)

Good Wood 2016 Presented by THE-HOUSE.com

With hundreds of snowboards out there, how do you pick the best deck perfectly suited to the way you ride? Drop into our 2015-2016 Good Wood Board Test for the winning snowboards of the season. Our 18 unique testers spent eight days riding and rating close to 400 boards on the parks and pistes of Winter Park, Colorado, and came to the consensus that these are the best boards. Each tester rides differently, so there’s something to be said when a board stokes all who tried it. New for 2015-2016, we did away with the old price groupings and instead highlighted the two top-scoring boards in each category with the lowest prices and awarded them “Bang for your Buck” badges of approval. Now in its 17th year, our TransWorld SNOWboarding Good Wood Test is the longest running and most prestigious board test on the planet.

How The Boards Are Scored

Shortly after shredding laps on each board, our testers input scores for 12 characteristics that measure each deck on a sliding scale. The Park and All-Mountain scorecards each have different criteria to pinpoint the strengths and weakness of each snowboard. We don’t cut the boards open and examine the details, but the crew may have broken a deck or two… Once the winners are calculated, the testers are long gone, and the cardboard dust has settled from shipping, we package all feedback and send it to the brands involved, which they can use to help make better boards. Go on, dive into the results and see all the winners.