Steve Prokopiw

It's been some time since I posted on Bomber. i thought I would take a minute to review a board that I rode a couple of weeks ago at Schweitzer in North Idaho during a visit to see family and friends. The Thirst BX 174 was one of two boards I rode the two days I was NICE 2017. the board I rode the first day was my custom Donek Two Headed Dragon 172 twin tip and the two boards are very different. I haven't been riding much since the 13/14 season putting in just 10 days a season(though I carve in my dreams a lot ). The Donek was designed with high performance, short turn playfulness in mind and has served me well, but I just did not feel dialed on it while riding the big, steep slopes of Schweitzer. The Thirst BX, on the other hand took to those slopes like it was born there-and it literally was born just a few miles away in Bayview. From the first warmup on a green run to the next on a blue and the next on a black it performed like a high performance metal board even though it is not metal. It has the snap and aggressive pop of a glass board and the smoothness of metal. Mark really nailed it with this board. While it is unlikely this model will see BX racing under the boots of actual racer, I would happily choose this board to negotiate whatever feature I had to clear or maneuver on or around. It begs to be ridden hard yet rewards finesse and can be bent into whatever turn shape the rider chooses-even when changing shape mid turn.If I had one built for me I might order it about half a centimeter narrower than its 22.4 waist width, as I like to stuff my funky feet into a 25.5 boot. But then, I'm not positive it would be any better because the one I rode was so much balls to the wall fun, even on the steepest slope I was willing to ride(Schweitzer has steeps that will make you wish you had brought extra underwear.), It reminds me of the solid, smooth, and super performing Diablo Composites BX that Able built, only the Thirst is much shorter.The fact that I felt like the board was almost made just for me when I rode it on just my fourth day of the season, without being in the kind of riding shape I am usually in by this point, makes me think I will not be the only one that loves to ride it.

Well built,Inexpensive AND USA Made-cool!

My Nitro story...One sunny day in January, 1992 when I was the snowboard foreman at Copper Mountain's ski school, a cute Canadian girl wearing purple stretch pants and Flexon Comps and riding a 162 Nitro, slid up to our lesson area as I was sending instructors out with their groups. She asked if anyone could show her around the mountain.We were married six months later. :-)

Well,it looks like the behemoth that is Vail Resorts has eaten yet another resort. Vail purchased PC from Powder Corp for 182 mill in cash a couple of days ago.It also appears that my hypocrisy knows no bounds, as the Epic passes we bought to be able to visit friends we still have in Vail and Summit county will now be valid at PC;even though I was rooting for ParkCity (Powder Corp) resort to win this battle. Say good bye to the only Nastar course in Utah and hello to 8.00 a slice pizza.I am excited to be able to ride the excellent carving terrain at PC on the Epic pass, but I also wonder if another of the several reasons I was heading toward a limited pass at Park City ,the halfpipe,will be eliminated.

Good to see you'll be back in the groove!

Haha;I've already got that covered with a recently built Donek,but I am husband to a hardbooting wife and mother of two rippin little carvers :-)

...and Mothers of those who carve! :-)

Nice,Bryan!

The camera used in my photos is a JVC Adixxion 2.I like it better than my old gopro for several reason,including the 'flip screen' mode and side mounting option allow me to take wide angle shots using 720 or 1080 to present a more correct perspective and full framing of the rider. Dave,even though your gopro doesn't do these things,those are cool frame grabs.I didn't use frame grabs because,technically this is the photo section,hehe.

I had a great time at Solitude.I hadn't been there before this, but I will be back next year since it turns out to be a great carving mountain.I did try to put some music in the background with the sounds of the day mixed in but youtube's music editor feature didn't work like it should so I chose to leave the music out. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/XngfoNE11Bo?list=UUek4XMMUITe0y_2_57visEw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Plus one!Carving is a really good time! I'm always surprised more people don't want to do it.

Just my own comparison of softbooting to hardbooting...Based on the level of intensity when high performance carving,I would say carving;in hard boots particularly.Of course,making more than five or six turns in a row would help burn more calories. But when I think back to my soft boot days and compare that to a top to bottom carving run ,or even a long run split in two or three parts like interval training,I think that hardbooting is a higher intensity(ie muscles firing harder for longer duration) activity than what I typically did on soft boots. Conclusion; long bouts of high intensity carving will burn off more oatmeal stout than jib bonking. :-)

The Donek board I just got fits the bill as a spring quiver killer.It is a twin tip 174 carver that is 22.0 wide and has 7' de-camber at both ends with a medium flex.It kicked butt in the chopped up slush and soft sticky groomed last week in CO.

Here are a few pics of my new custom Donek Twin Tip.This design is based on the Freecarve 2 platform with a few tweaks,hehe. I had presented Sean with a similar idea a couple of seasons ago ,but finally decided to pul the trigger a few days ago.We revisited the concept of a true twin tip with a centered stance and an idea I had to take a stock graphic and create a mirror image for each half of the board,Originally I was heading toward a two headed python,but this time around the Dragon-1 graphic was calling my name-so we made a two headed dragon! The board specs are ; 22.0 waist width,centered stance(though I mount my bindings with about 1.5 cm of setback) custom stance width of the inserts at 20.5" centered,decambered for 7" at each end,12 meter constant radius,and a 174 overall length with identical nose and tail shapes.It also includes the 'rubber construction' option,but no metal-This is a sweet riding, lively, but reasonably damp,glass board! Cudos to Sean Martin and the Donek crew for turning this from concept to badass reality under my boots at A-Basin in just FOUR DAYS! The 'Two Headed Dragon' performs like I dreamed it would-super performance when on edge and super friendly putting around or riding backwards.I am about to head out on the hill here at Beaver Creek to put it through it's second session. Pun intended-This Dragon Slays!!!

Very Cool! Hardbooting isn't quite dead after all! ...and congrats to the Winters boys too!