The Snow Industries of America held what they're calling the "SIA Snow Show and On-Snow Demo" in Salt Lake City January 19-24.

The idea was two fold. An unofficial reason could be that the snowboard industry was getting tired of having to attend the winter Action Sports Retailer show in Long Beach, CA, but more likely the idea for the show was to give retail buyers a chance to ride 1998 product before they make orders in Las Vegas at the SIA show the first week in March.

The show was a success according to the SIA. They say 2,582 retailers attended the show, while the on-snow demo only attracted 198. A total of 275 member companies exhibited at the On Snow demo. "I'm impressed and really pleased," said Perry Gladstone, president of Limited Snowboards. "This is a terrific environment for buyers to preview products. they don't have appointments, we're not trying to close them. There's no pressure. Everyone is relaxed."

A lot of rumors have been flying lately about the women's snowboard clothing market being dead, but Montoya had a full line of technical and fashion pieces that looked strong and good.

Gladstone wasn't the only happy exhibitor. "It was a great show," said Kim Boyle, marketing director of Swag/Prom snowboard clothing. "We didn't do orders, but it was a good chance to show people what we have and set them up for Vegas."

While the retailers were thinking buy, buy, buy and the manufacturers were thinking sell, sell, sell, we were thinking spy, spy, spy. We saw the SIA Snow Show as the perfect chance to see what's up for hardware 1998.

In all honesty, we didn't have much time to go into depth on any of the product. We snuck in, tried to fire off as many shots as we could before being escorted out of the show by some big Mormon guys who wanted to see our "Photo Passes."

Photo passes? We don't need no stinking photos passes.