I'm on my 8th or 9th day of carving, and it's going pretty well. I'm riding a burton ultra prime around Mt Hood Meadows, working on form and getting different sorts of turns down, and occasionally dropping into the backside bowls. I've got a few technique issues, though:
The whole "drive your knees into the slope" thing, combined with trying to keep my torso upright and rotated, did amazing things for my toeside turns. I was already trying to angulate, but when I tossed in a big knee bend, I could really feel the board carve a deep trench and pop me out at the end.
I tried recreating that sensation on heelside, but I can't figure out what to do with my knees. On the 19cm waist, I'm riding angles that put my toes and heels flush with the edges, a bit over 45 front and rear. This means that a lot of my turning power is coming from front-back toe and heel pressure, and when I try to make a good heelside turn, I feel like I'm either sticking my butt out, straightening my legs, or washing my tail out. This manifests itself in the fairly wavy heelside trenches I leave.
Yesterday I tried cranking up my binding angles, to about 60/60. Instantly I felt my heelside get a lot stronger- it was a lot easier to visualize driving my knees sideways and into the turn than backwards. My toesides didn't seem to suffer noticably from the change, either.
Is this a poor-quality solution to the problem? I did notice that I lost a lot of mogul/powdermound manuverability when I cranked the angles up. Does it have to be a trade-off between power and maneuverability, or is there a technique change I should make with lower angles?