David Kirk

I rode the lift one day with a softbooter and he asked how long I'd been hardbooting and I told him about 30 years. He then asked "is it fun?" and my mind spin in many different directions I could go with that answer. After a long pause I said "no...not really" and the guy nodded in understanding. dave

I’m sorry to hear that your board failed..but I’m happy to hear you weren’t hurt when it did. It looks like one of the very old foam core Rossignols and and they were very poorly designed and produced. I worked at a Rossi dealer back in the day and I think the only ones that didn’t fail where the ones that didn’t get ridden. Please consider yourself lucky to be uninjured and make a bench out of that thing. They never should have been sold to the public and you got much more mileage out of it than most did. You got lucky that both binding ripped out - that saved you from a likely injury. These boards failed when ridden hard because as the board flexes into an arc the binding can’t flex with it and the inserts will get pulled upward with a huge amount of force and they will fail. Modern boards are orders of magnitude better than your old Rossi…your riding will instantly improve, you’ll have more fun, you’ll smile more and you’ll be safer with a modern board. It’s a day and night difference. This would be very difficult to overstate. Have fun buying something modern. You will not regret it. dave

I'm sorry that I didn't somehow see your post... The Oxess really does a great job of allowing for hard carving and powder floating in the same run . It doesn't carve as well as a narrow race board and it doesn't float as well as a powder board but it does both things well enough that I don't have FOMO for a different board that day...and its really fun! dave

It's spring break week so we have some out-of-towners at Bridger Bowl. I was hardboot carving and riding single and shared a chair with a soft booter who looked to be in his late 20's. He looked down at my gear and blurted out - "dude! those boots are ****ed up!" I didn't know how to respond so I just said "thank you" and left it at that. He didn't utter single word after that. Awkward silence ensued. dave

That is just the nature of spring steel...it will rust if left wet. I doubt titanium springs would be a viable answer. They wouldn't rust and they'd be a little lighter but titanium isn't nearly as stiff as steel (30% less stiff depending on the alloy) so the spring wire diameter would need to get a good bit thicker to have the same spring rate. New springs with a fresh finish would work or you could try getting them powder coated. Eventually any finish will fail and they will rust again. dave

Interesting device. It looks like fun. With all due respect and then a bit more respect...why would someone choose the Oneski device over an alpine snowboard? Thanks so much. dave

I use a Carveboard in the summer and the pneumatic tires are smooth and super grippy. They are a great size in that they are big enough to roll over stuff but not so tall that they get floppy when loaded up in a turn. You might check them out. dave

Hello - This is Dave (tall guy, blue jacket) and I was one of Hing's fellow instructors (Andy, Hing and myself on the snow and Chester inside). I'll reach out to Hing and point him here and see if he can share the video is took at the MCC. dave

For some reason the rear foot is carrying more weight than the front. It could be forward lean, it could be toe/heel lift combo, it could be technique, and it could be fore/aft position on the board. Assuming you have all the forward lean and toe/heel lift sorted you might try shifting your position rearward on the board by 10-15 mm. This will help you stay centered with equal weight on both feet while not feeling like you'll go over the handlebars unless you hold your weight rearward. I'll bet it would help. dave

The year was 2002 and we got 58" overnight. The avy control was a huge task and in the end they couldn't open that day. The next night we got 10" on top of the 58" and they opened. You needed a big long stick and you needed to go as fast as possible to make sure you didn't bog on shallow slopes. It was fun but 18" is better than 60"+. dave

I don't think that there is one perfect or ideal set up. I think there is a certain range that would work best and when getting too far outside that range things will start to get worse. I'm a bicycle framebuilder by profession and a lot of my time is spent designing a custom bike so that the person riding it is comfortable and efficient. There is no "one perfect" position on a bike but instead there is a fair narrow range that will work best for them...and within that range the small changes can help with comfort or power transmission. I think the snowboard is the same way. There are certain basic ergonomic things to keep in mind and they present a frame work to work in. If you get too far out of that (an extreme example would be duck stance on an alpine board) and while someone might be able to make it work they are swimming upstream and making life more difficult than it needs to be. So staying within the range will usually yield the best results. I hope that makes sense - it's late and it's been a long day so who knows! dave

Should the set up be optimized for the static or dynamic? I'm not sure that they differ much. I think if you drop your hips straight down and the lifts and forward lean aren't good then you will end up moving forward/aft when you lower the hips...or you'll be weighting one toe or heel more than the other....or both. If your set up allows for you to lower your hips straight down and this results in even weighting/pressuring of the cuffs then you will have a very predictable and stable platform to balance on, and make power from. You'll still be able to adjust fore/aft as needed during the turn but it will be your choice and not one made for you by the set up. dave

I use old raichle 125 (very soft) boots with BTS and very soft springs. I love them. dave

A pair of F2's with the extra lift kit (they come with one and you need two) will be the cheapest, safest, and quickest way to get where you want to go. dave

Yes...sole ramp angle does come into play here but unless your boots have WAY more than average I'll bet that you'll still benefit from have a heel lift in the rear just like nearly every world cup racer using Mountain Slope boots. The way to really tell how things will work is to follow the suggestions in my first post in this thread and play with different amounts of toe and heel lift and see how it feels on your kitchen floor. This can be harder than it may seem - you really need to open your mind to what your legs are telling you as you test different lifts on the floor. Feel how much weight each leg carries and how your shins are interacting with the boot cuff. When you have a good combo of lift (a gross adjustment) and forward lean (fine adjustment) you will feel the same pressure on the front of your shins against the boot cuff when you drop your hips straight down. The straight down thing being key. You can make lots of different (and not so good) adjustments feel like you have your shins pressing with equal force if you move fore/aft when you sink down. Drop straight down. You know you've nailed it when you sink dead straight down and the boot pressures feel the same. dave

What bindings are you using? dave

No cants unless you have lower leg or foot issues...you want a toe lift under the front foot and a heel lift under the rear. Have fun! dave

Try this - Put two pieces of masking tape on a hard surface floor the same distance from each other as your stance width. Put your boots on and buckle them as if you were riding and then stand with your approximate stance angle on the two pieces of tape so that you are standing as if you were on your board…the tape being under the center of your boot more or less (perfection is not the goal here - just get the boot more or less centered over the tape and at your approximate angles). This is more or less what it’s like with your binding set up flat. Can you stand naturally? Are you more or less “cuff neutral” in the boots - meaning not working the front of back of the cuff just to stand there? For most people standing like this will be awkward and uncomfortable and you’ll feel pressure on the back of the front boot and the front of the rear boot and you may need to rotate your hips in an odd way to allow your feet to stay flat on the floor. Not good. Now put a hard object like a book or piece of 3/4” plywood under your front toe to simulate toe lift in the front. This is no doubt much more natural feeling. You’ll probably also notice that your rear foot is now carrying the slightly more weight than the front foot. You will probably also feel that your shins are pushing less on the boot cuffs to stand in a more neutral position. Now take that book out from under your front toe and put it under your rear heel and stand naturally. You’ll probably feel the weight shift to the front foot and the shin-to-cuff loading change. Now finally!….put a book under both the front toe and rear heel. This will most likely result in your standing more naturally with less cuff load and with more even front-to-rear weight distribution. I think you’ll find that you can lower you hips/butt straight down and you’ll feel the load on the front of both shins increase. The key words here are “straight down” - just sink into the boots and you’ll probably feel the load on the front of the cuffs increase about the same for both boots. This is an awesome thing and what we are looking for. We have two legs that need to be able to work independently even though they are attached to the same board. With a front toe lift and a rear heel lift the legs can share an equal amount of the work load. The caveats - there are some very good riders out there for whom flat boots work well and I say more power to them. For mere mortals not looking to make the sport harder toe and heel lifts used in conjunction make riding hard easier, and will help keep one of your legs from getting fried while the other is fine. The other caveat is that the amount of forward lean set into the boots will influence things. Most will find that having a bit more forward lean on the rear boot will allow for a more neutral stance and even leg loading. Forward lean can be fine tuned once you have toe and heel lifts under the boots. A little can go a long way and can take a good position to a great position. Lastly…if you’ve been riding with one or both feet flat and you switch to front and rear lifts you might feel that your stance is suddenly too narrow. Running front and rear lifts will allow for a wider stance, and better balance, and make it easier to apply power through the boots and into the board….and just as importantly to absorb the power and bumps coming up into the board and your body from the snow. Most of us here are not racers but we can learn a lot from them. I think you’d be very hard pressed to find many top tier racers that don’t run with a toe and heel lift. I think you’ll also find that nearly no one uses a binding cant unless they have a very unusual biomechanical issue that they have to deal with. The cants that come with F2 binding are best left to shoving under that table you have with one short leg to keep it from rocking. I realize that some will read the above and say it’s BS…I respect that. That said most riders will benefit greatly with a toe and heel lift. Now if we can just get F2 to ship the bindings with the lifts that nearly everyone needs instead of implying that one is fine…… Dave

It's worth checking to be sure that your 4 mounting screws are not bottoming out in the board inserts before they put real downward pressure on the center disc. If the screws are even a little bit too long it won't work and the binding can rotate. dave

The softboot angles change things a lot. To skate in the lift line you are having to stand with your front knee twisted to the side by a lot and knees generally don't like supporting weight while being twisted. I think we all assumed that given the forum we are on that you were using hard boots at narrow carve board angles. dave

Cool - are you running the front binding flat or do you have some toe lift? dave

Does your front knee hurt mostly while sitting on the lift or does it feel strained while riding? dave

I know of a few guys that do that at my area for the same reason. I know of no rules against such a thing. I try to dress in bright clothing and I pick bright colors for my boards in the hope that I'm better seen and given more room. There was a time when I wore a dark green jacket and black pants and I had too many close calls. Now I have bright lime or orange pants and a bright blue jacket and I'm pretty hard to miss at this point. I feel like there are two types of people that blow by you when carving across the fall line - the first is the person above who just doesn't see you until it's too late. Bright clothing or a vest like you suggest is a help to those people. The others are people that see you just fine and just want to show you how cool they are by blowing past you while in the back seat with zero edge engagement. This type of person isn't coming close to you because they couldn't see you but instead they are aiming to be close to teach you a lesson. Making yourself more visible will not change this guy's behavior at all. But in the end helping the first type of guy see you will help a certain proportion of the time and has no downsides as far as I've ever seen. Put on the vest while still keeping the eyes in the back of your head open is a good plan. dave

Thank you - that's what it looked like in the photo but it was hard to be sure. I'd like to buy the boots and have sent you a PM. dave

Can you please tell me the boot sole length as shown on the side of the heel? dave