All-mountain snowboards, sized by published weight rather than chin height

What all-mountain actually means

It means a board with no strong opinion: enough edge hold for a groomed run in the morning, enough float and forgiveness for whatever softer snow turns up in the afternoon, and a shape that works in both directions. It is the right category for almost everyone who is past their first week and is not specifically a park rider.

It is also the category where sizing goes wrong most often, because the chin-height rule is still repeated everywhere. Chin height was a rough proxy from an era when boards were narrower and stiffer. What a board actually has to carry is your weight, and the makers on this page publish that number against every length. The snowboard size chart page explains the height-and-weight method.

Profile, in one paragraph

The three profiles you will see named are camber (the board arches up in the middle, so the ends press down - grippy, unforgiving), rocker (the board curves the other way, so the ends lift - forgiving, vague on hard snow) and the hybrids that combine them.

Camber-rocker-camber, which two of the boards here publish, puts rocker between the feet and camber out at the contact points. The rocker in the middle is what stops you catching an edge; the camber at the ends is what keeps it from washing out when the snow is firm. For all-mountain riding that is the right compromise, and it is why it has become the default shape at this price. The shapes page covers twin, directional and the rest.

The three, compared

The picks

Camp Seven Drifter with APX bindings

The pick, and the reason is the second row of that table. Camp Seven publishes a rider weight range against every one of its five lengths - 153 cm for 100 to 160 lb, up to 163 cm wide for 170 lb and over - which converts the size decision from a rule of thumb into reading a table.

Underneath that it is a camber-rocker-camber board with a dual-density poplar core, artisan heartwood stringers along the rails and fully wrapped Rockwell 48 steel edges, sold with bindings mounted and a three-year published warranty covering both. At $279.95 that is a genuinely complete setup minus boots.

Two honest limitations. The shortest published length is 153 cm, so a smaller adult is out of range entirely - look at the women’s packages instead, which start at 138 cm. And the base is extruded, which is slower than sintered on cold dry snow and needs half the maintenance in return. The waxing page explains what that maintenance actually is.

System MTN CRCX package

The one to buy if the household has more than one rider. Eight published lengths from 138 to 163 cm, two of them wide, is the broadest size run of any board in this ledger - which means one brand can fit a twelve-year-old and a six-foot adult, on the same profile, learning the same way.

The trade is information. System sells the MTN in several package configurations at different prices, so there is no single list price to work from, and it publishes neither an edge specification nor a warranty term. What it does publish - the camber-rocker-camber profile with lifted contact points - is the part that matters most for someone still learning not to catch an edge.

Camp Seven Redwood with APX bindings

Marked as the skip above, in this context only. Rocker at tip and tail on a true twin is the most forgiving shape sold and it is exactly right for a first season - the beginner snowboard roundup covers it on its own terms. As an all-mountain board it gives up edge hold on firm snow, which is the thing an all-mountain buyer is usually trying to fix.

When you need a wide board

If your boot is around US 11 or bigger, your toes and heels will hang over the edges of a standard-width board far enough to drag in a turn. That is called toe drag and it is not a subtle sensation - it stops the turn.

All three boards here publish at least one wide length, and the Drifter and MTN publish two. This is the reason the buying order runs boots first: until you know your boot size, you cannot know whether you need a wide board. The boots roundup is where to start.

Why these are all packages

Because a board and bindings bought separately is a compatibility problem, and a snowboard binding bolts on with no adjustment and no release setting - so bundling them costs you nothing in fit. The packages page makes the full case, including the one component you must never buy as part of a bundle.

That component is boots. Every package on this page is board and bindings only, and that is correct.