I always feel like it’s necessary to point out that any attempt to quantify what makes snowboarding good is, at its core, subjective. Hard as we try to strip personal bias away, the fact that snowboarding can’t be neatly measured by metrics is part of what drew most of us to it in the first place. With that said, we take this seriously, and the process weighs on us every year. There is no perfect way to do it. Like a contest judge, there will always be disagreement, always a different angle, always a clip someone thinks should have tipped the scale. These nominees are simply what we decided, not a law carved into stone. I don’t just welcome other magazines doing awards, I encourage it, because more perspectives only make the conversation richer. This list exists to honor the riders and projects that stood out this season, and while the gray area will never disappear, our confidence in these choices is rock solid.
-Stan Leveille