Blue River

[philw]

Well this is "Alpine snowboarding" in my book, riding the whole mountain, not just a prepared course. So I'll put it here. You need to watch it on Vimeo to get the "HD" (720p) version. The original is 4k and looks somewhat better.

 

 

When I get a second I will do some After Effects processing on it to fix some stability issues and clone out my skier buddy better.

 

• Delkin Devices Kaboom pole
• GoPro 4k in Supeview
• Head Stratos pro
• Burton Landlord 159 (they're back with trad camber, rockered nose - just like my Kessler)
• F2 Intec bindings
• Burton AK jacket (thanks Jake)

Hmm, actually that's not looking quite right - the frame seems to be a bit stuttery. I will look at how I transcoded it - a frame rate issue perhaps?

Edited January 22, 2015 by philw

[Hilux]

Great vid...lol credits

 

Pow and Intec? Not too stiff? What angles are you running on the board?

[philw]

I transcoded the video twice, that may be why it looks kind of choppy - I'll look at that. I need to re-work the ending too, now I look at it.

 

 

...I've ridden powder with Intecs since they came out. I don't crank the boots up hugely, but I don't find them too stiff. That said, it's all a question of style: I don't do a lot of tricks.

 

I use the same angles I use for piste, which are pretty much 45 degrees parallel these days. I'm not hugely sensitive to that. I will notice immediately if the boots are in walk mode though.

 

It's really hard to ride "carving" boards in back country powder, irrespective of what you put on them. But powder boards work great, irrespective of what you put on them, I think.

[Hilux]

Not to worry about the chop!....I was laughing at the credits....identifying boots....ballet. I suppose that's for the non-hardboot crowd? And to get a chuckle from the alpine riders.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Hilux

[Futahaguro]

Dude, I don't have anymore envy left after watching that!  Great video!  Were all of the helicopter take-off and landings related to the number of runs you had?  I like the cropping to create different camera views, especially the big blue helmet at the end.  Heli-boarding is on my bucket list so you can understand my envy comment;)

[philw]

;-) I try to go there at the cheap time of year, when it's "unlimited vertical", so you can expect 10-15 runs a day, depending on how long they are of course. I was there a couple of weeks, so I have a bucket load of heli in/out shots in all sorts of conditions. The days are short in late December/ early Jabuary - typically 08:15 through about 15:00 for the last lift. So there's a lot of getting quickly in and out of helis. This is not at all the same as "daily heli" where they charge by the run: you can expect to have three runs done here before 09:30. I don't fly generally when operators charge for extra vertical - that can result in them wanting to take you down stuff I don't want to pay for.

 

The main deal is to try to get with a guide/ group/ organisation so you never have to wait for the heli ("heli waiting" - it's just as expensive as heli boarding but nothing like as much fun). So some of us spend a lot of time and effort trying to rig it for maximum efficiency (maximize the good vertical/cash ratio).

 

I'm just now uploading a version which isn't jumpy (that was an encoding issue I think), and which has a bit of stabilization and some more cropping in it. I am having trouble with After Effects and 4k video files - it's an old copy of AE and the files are huge, so it barfs quite a bit. The blue helmet I want to fill the screen with, but that's the maximum zoom ;-( I think I can "nest" two zooms, one in the other, to get what i want there (basically fill the screen with blue, then fade to black for the final scene. 

 

Bucket list: it was on mine in 1989. I heard about it as a school kid and thought it was just such a radical thing. So just the one time I thought.... it's dangerous like that.

[icebiker]

That was fun to watch!!  Thanks for sharing...almost made me feel like I was there.

[Gabe T]

Nice vid! Nice camera shots from the front view. What sort of binding mounting system is on the Burton? Didn't think it would be compatible with f2s.

[philw]

Burton and F2.... for the first season or two of channel/EST I used other brand boards as I couldn't work out how to get my 4 holes into their finbox, and I wasn't sure it would be strong enough. With a little assistance I got it dialled, and then they changed the channel hardware to make it even easier. So any channel board works now.

 

You can actually take a standard 4x4 F2 plate and mount it directly into the channel using Burton supplied hardware. You need a washer per bolt as the F2 titanium plate is thinner than the plastic stuff jibbers use, but that's it. Bolt through two diagonal plate holes into the channel and you're good to go, although the angle markings will not of course be accurate. The advanced version (which is what I use) requires you to drill two bolt-sized holes along the central axis of the F2 titanium plate, one at the front and one at the back. Then you can bolt through to the channel along the central axis, and the angle markings are perfect.,

 

So that's what I've been doing for years and it works fine. Wiegele absolutely doesn't care and knows this is fine. If you think your local rental shop may have kittens about it, then I'd just rent the board and not tell them how you're going to use it. I've never so much as scratched a board doing this, it's fine for me at least.

 

Here's some old text and a picture of it in use. Note that with the new generation hardware (last two or three seasons) you don't need to grind anything - the standard hardware works out of the box. Using new Burton hardware with an older EST board also works out of the box.

Edited January 25, 2015 by philw