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Snowboards

Burton Hometown Hero 2021-2022 Snowboard Review

Tested and selected for our top 100 snowboard products of the year: the Burton Hometown Hero

  • Price: £560 / €600 / $630
  • Category: Freeride + Powder
  • Sizes: 144, 148, 152, 156, 156W, 160, 160W, 165W
  • Flex: 7/10
  • Shape: Directional
  • Profile: Setback Camber
  • 3D: No
  • Base: Sintered

Why we chose the Burton Hometown Hero Snowboard: A local board for local people – but for the right rider, we’ll have no trouble here.

Here’s a thought (and please bear with us): how likely is it that Elvis Presley would have changed music and popular culture forever had he come up playing to working men’s clubs in a small town on the outskirts of Glasgow? Likewise, would John “Wizard of Wishaw” Higgins have won four snooker world championships had he spent his formative years perfecting his cueing in a Mississippi trailer park?

Our point is, the nature of a local legend has a lot to do with where you’re at – and this board is no different. It was designed with the tightly-packed trees and grisly terrain typical of the B’s home state of Vermont. If that sounds not unlike your own patch, your saviour has arrived.

“It was designed with the tightly-packed trees and grisly terrain typical of the B’s home state of Vermont”

MORE INFO:
BURTON.COM

Who Is The Burton Hometown Hero For?

While it doesn’t have the eye-catching silhouette of some of the other entries on the Family Tree, er, family tree, file this under ‘freeride’ all the same. The Burton Hometown Hero is a juggernaut, capable of blasting through crud without any of the bone-shaking repercussions.

Shape, Profile and Sidecut

The Burton Hometown Hero has slightly more taper than the similarly-styled Skeleton Key and comes in a little higher on the stiffness scale too. Throw a setback camber profile into the mix and you’ve clearly got a charger on your hands. That said, it boasts a twin rather than directional flex, and is more than happy to be switched up.

Like the rest of the Family Tree line these days, the Hometown Hero is available in a broad enough size range to suit just about any lady or gent able to tame it. There’s also a kids’ version, available in both 130cm and 140cm options, as well as a Hometown Hero splitboard. Burton have clearly put their faith in this one, and you can too.

“The Burton Hometown Hero is a juggernaut, capable of blasting through crud without any of the bone-shaking repercussions”

Construction and Materials

If you’re at all familiar with Burton’s board-building recipes – which have been fairly stable for a while now – then you’ll know roughly what to expect here.

The core sits in the midpoint of the brand’s weight range, and is reinforced along both sidecuts for extra edge hold. It also features ‘Squeezebox’ profiling, varying in thickness as you move from nose to tail, saving weight without sacrificing strength. A full-length carbon layer sits below that, adding some torsional stiffness and response. Underneath it all is a sintered base made from recycled materials, built to take a beating better than Rocky Balboa. In short, if you really want to be able to blast through everything in your path, this has all the clout you need, and yet won’t feel like a plank.

“In short, if you really want to be able to blast through everything in your path, this has all the clout you need, and yet won’t feel like a plank”

Roundup

Only two years in, and the Burton Hometown Hero has the makings of a timeless classic. We loved it last year, and the sophomore version ticks all our boxes just as well. Boards will come and go from the Family Tree line, but the Hometown Hero plays for keeps. This is especially true if you frequent the kind of terrain it’s designed for; as tributes to local excellence go, it’s right up there with the Ronaldo statue.

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