abakker

Just wondering what everyone's favorite conditions to ride were. after today in park city i have officially decide that if i never ride slush again it will be too soon, and looking forward to some colder temps again.

my friend watched a guy walk a slackline in harley davidson motorcycle boots, so i can be done. i personally am a little more comfortable bare foot, as long as it isn't cold.

if you do it in bare feet, it is a little bit safer from my own experience. we rarely fit street shoes like we do snowboard boots or climbing shoes, and as such street shoes don't offer any beneficial suport, and can in fact pivot around your foot while you are walking and cause you to sprain an ankle.

for some cool all mountain boards that can carve well and hold up in varied conditons, see if you can rent/demo a Never summer or Nidecker. they are well made boards and seem to be logically designed for a range of uses.

no, i don't think you need dedicated slackline stuff, a ratchet strap would work fine, however make sure your ratchet strap is rated to take the tension. i use 4000 lb webbing. also, make sure that the slackline doesn't twist. the correct webbing is available at REI for around 30 cents a foot.

in my opinion, if you haven't tried it you should. its pretty inexpensive to set up a small one and you can get almost all the parts you need at a west marine or similar store. if you are setting up a low to the ground one 4' or less, hardware store suplies are good enough and almost certainly wont break (this is what all of my friends and i use). when you get into setting up highlines (anything that you harness into) you should get every type of saftey gear possible, but for cross training purposes i don't really see any reason to need anything that extreme. all in all for a line about 20 to 30 feet and all the other stuff we needed (anchor straps etc.) we only spent about 50 to 60 dollars.

i managed 50 days this year and it has been my best ever. i didn't start until december 21st, and am still going. for next year, i think i can make it more economical, but for this year, 4 boards, 2 pairs of bindings, 2 pairs of boots. gear costs are phenominal, but i caught the hardbooting thing bad and am still trying to find stuff that really clicks with me. as for resort costs, i have done half of my days in Utah where i can lodge for free with a friend, but still have to pay the lift tickets. the other half i have done at bluewood in dayton washington, which give me a $215 student season pass. although i have to drive roughly an hour each way to get there, as long as i bring 3 friends from college with me each time, the college activity fund will reimburse me for my gas. all in all a good system, but now that the season is ending, i need to sell some gear and get a job. i have $123.68 left in my checking for the rest of the year. :(

that actually makes perfect sense, and seems to reflect what i was thinking anyway. plus, as far as i can tell, a set of track 225s in lock mode is about as stiff as a set of stratos pro in walk. i would guess that the bts would help by taking more of the force and distributing it but not blowing up. In a fall like this the best way to not get hurt is to have a releasable binding like on skis. this is not a good idea in actuallity, and we all know that releasing while mid turn would cause its own set of problems, but in a situation where you really stuff the nose and start flipping, it seems that the best thing would be to not be attached to the board.

just for clarification, is the consensus that we shouldn't ride in walk/powder mode EVER, or that we can use the walk/powder mode in powder only?

i have been riding a friends speedster SL 166 recently and have been really enjoying it. the tighter turning radius makes narrower and steeper runs a little less scary than trying to ride them on my coiler PR 184. it is the first real slalom board i have ridden and i must say that i am hooked. the board performed well, and since it is stiffer, i could ride a little more weight forward than i could on some of my other boards, and still not fold the nose. after a day of riding it I was in love, and after 2 i was convinced that it had to be part of my quiver for next year. now it is just a matter of selling some stuff from this season...

a few weeks ago i tried slacklining for the first time, and although i am not proficient at it yet, i can already tell that it helps my snowboarding, particularly in the low speed carves just by helping my balance. i was just wondering if anybody else has noticed this/has tried slacklining? Slackline

have you considered a rad-air reto? i can say from personal experience that they have terrific edge hold and a slightly longer SCR to suit riding at higher speeds. RJ has a 156 at www.exoticboards.com reto has a 28.8 nose 24.4 waist and a 9m sidecut.

i have had significant trouble with the same problem, that is not generating enough angle on my heelsides. my fix was to run slightly higher angles and to really push myself lower on the snow. it may seem like more commitment, and it is initially, but if you are already 80 degrees over, and then you lose your edge, it is usually a much better fall than coming out of your edge at a 45 degree angle (which is a common problem) and then falling all the way to the ground. if i am really pushing my angles i might fall more if the snow isn't perfect, however the falls are more like slides, and there is rarely impact. just my 2 cents

simply brilliant. better add that one to the welcome new carvers section. maybe under the heading "are you doing this?" if so, come read here.

thanks for the in depth answer. so, to take this a little away from the theoretical and back to the realm of me actually getting another snowboard. i posted earlier looking for a short sidecut board. take the f2 speedster SL linup. the two lengths i am looking at are the 163 and the 166 they have sidcuts of 9.5 and 9.7 respectively. now supposing that they are for the same course and have the same turning arc, the 166 will turn sharper because its added length will allow me to decamber it better(easier)?

i ride my tanker at 44 f 40 r i have sizable toe lift and heel lift (more heel than toe) and i have inward cant on both feet, though the front foot is flatter. this setup lets me widen my stance more comfortably and still carve well.

-68 with windchill at the top of stratton. was riding with PSR when he used to teach at the stratton snowboard school. one run, then defrost...we had to coat any exposed skin with vaseline to prevent frostbite, but the snow was amazing(when its that cold, it takes the wax off pretty fast though).

which one is more important in determining the actual carve circle that a board can make?

personally, i really like the idea of a BTS, but i still prefer the 5 position lever because with the way i ride hard boots, i need to be able to modify the flex quickly. if the BTS had a walk mode...

i recently helped a friend of mine convert a pair of solomon xscreams with the pilot system into telemark skis. while we had the plate removed to drill and put t-nuts into it to mount the tele bindings, i got to thinking about the pilot system on a snowboard. the idea would require slightly different construction to deal with the board's added width, but i think especially with titanal boards which are subject to point loading, the idea could aleviate alot of stress caused by a metal binding. in addition to that, even on a non metal board, it would reduce the risk of breaking the board by folding the nose, because the board would be able to distribute the flex to the rest of the board without the insert pattern and binding interupting its flex as much.

i'm not saying that wood isn't good/that it is flawed doesn't work. it works. i ride wood core boards and love them. on the other hand, is it ever a bad idea to not look for something better?

i highly recommend a rad-air tanker. i believe there are a few for sale in the classifieds. mine rides perfectly in powder/woods/bumps/slush and can still carve groomers. as for length, i recommend the 172 and 177w models. a good friend of mine who is about your size rides the 177 and can manuver it fine in all conditions.

it seems to me that with all the technology going into these boards nowadays, someone should come up with something to replace the wood as that appears to be the weak link. just look at the main forum, 4 boards in 3 days from different riders. i imagine that there are synthetic/metal solutions (no foam) that could improve on wood.

i seem to recall the sidecut on the 158 to be much less than 11 meters, but the website threw me off. did the old madds have tighter radii?

i ride mostly at my local hill with pretty narrow groomed runs and am really looking at a board with a really short sidecut. right now i have really long sidecut boards, and could use a board with a sidecut of 8 to 9 m. any suggestions from people who have ridden any boards that fit this description would be great.