Jonny

Intuition liners are a good call - I use Dreamliner LV - and once you have them a trip to the bootfitter will probably be a good investment. Your want the fitter to work with the whole system so getting the liners first is wise. One other thing you can try is a little more forward and/or inward canting of your rear binding. If your angles are high - like 60° - then heel lift might do the trick all by itself, but if you're running lower angles then a little lift on the outside of your back foot might take some of the pressure off the inside of the ankle. There's a small performance penalty for inward canting - it puts your knees pretty close together at the bottom of the turn - but it's pretty small. We all rode like that for decades and it still works. Remember too that hardbooting is a MUCH more demanding sport than freeriding in soft boots. If you're getting 3 hours before the pain shuts you down that's pretty darn good!

Utterly bizarre but Mikaela is handling it like a champ. She basically just had to finish the slalom in the combined to get some sort of medal, and had to ski just close to her own standard to win gold by a second, and the snow-snakes got her. Reminds me eerily of Simone Biles' experience in the Summer. I loved that she was able to talk about her first nine turns with such pride and excitement. Still a terrible shock. I do think the weird ultra-dry snow had something to do with it, but that's only part of the story. Super-classy of Goggia to lend her those DH skis but the girls generally seem to have that kind of relationship. Ledecka won the Super-G last time on, I think, Mikaela's backups.

Well, that's a very sound argument. Myself, I liked her move (and Brushie's too) although I come from the ski racing world where we obviously don't grab, and from the early days of ski freestyle, when we didn't, and not from skating. I thought it was exuberance, and if showboating then a very particular kind of showboating for a pretty narrow, skate audience who like to hoot good moves. I also get the argument that skate has hijacked the freestyle (skiing and snowboarding) world. A grab is purely a skate and surf move and functionally irrelevant to fixed-binding snow sports. What would the pipe look like if there weren't a grab requirement?

It was NEVER showboating. It was call-out to the roots of the sport and the skateboarding roots of the roots. Jacobellis was an accomplished half-pipe rider and skater and entitled to grab whenever she felt like it. In that circumstance, NOT to grab would have been a concession to the idea that SBX had gone over entirely to the race world and there was, in 2006, only eight years after Terje/Nagano, still a lot of resistance to the olympic approach to snowboarding. The fact that she fell is sad and really bizarre, but I gave and still give her a lot of credit for the move

Ledecka is ridiculous -so much ease. Looks like she's out for a freeride warmup while she's dusting people by seconds.

Not necessarily. I used springs in my previous boots but the 425 seem perfect with the front locked fully upright and the back locked nearly at full flex. I'm done for the year but next year plan to try the springs on the back foot only.

If you have a good fitter almost anything can be blown out to fit. My guy stretched my Deeluxe 425 Pros from 98 to 108/110mm. Incredibly comfortable - I buckle up in the morning and unbuckle at the end of the day.

Old thread but I thought I'd kick in - I'd ridden the original Madd 158 for maybe two runs back in the noughts, and the 180 likewise, but until last year never owned one or ridden one consistently or had a chance to tweak one for stance and suchlike. Picked up a reissue here last year but didn't ever have a chance to ride it until last wee,k but I've been out on it every day since, and I have to say it's totally a treat to ride. Just on the small local hill, in mixed conditions - ice for a few days, then slop, then refreeze today - but it's fun in all of them. It's got some camber left and has some pop out of the turn, but mostly it's just so versatile - really loves linking quick turns at speed - more than any other board I've been on except maybe a custom Coiler Bruce built me back in '02, really fun stretching the turn out to big arcs, although it gets a little cranky if I try to stretch it too far, surprisingly smooth blasting through crud, and as expected it excels on ice. This. by the way, is the blueish topsheet, red sidewall "sucks" version, so I'm trying to imagine what the good ones feel like - more pop, probably, but at my age the more docile response is probably good. I have it set up at 51cm, 60/57, with toe/heel lift and a small amount of inward cant. Size 27.5 425 Pros. Front binding is just aft of center and back foot is well aft to get that stance width. I'm 215lb and for a 66 year old pretty aggressive but it's not wimping out on me except at highest speeds, and not badly even then . This won't be my main ride on bigger mountains - that's a Proteus 180 - but for small hills and/or crowded days, it'll be tough to beat.

Gosh - If I were to lock out my back knee I'd have to be WAY out over the front of the board. So, as a first step I'd say you might want to feel more centered over the sidecut. In any case I'd much rather take a fall or two than ever lock out a knee. Easier to heal a bruised hip than a blown femur. If your back knee is really compromised for strength (here's where I put on my flameproof suit) then you might experiment with a more old-school late '80s/early '90s setup - bindings closer together, slight inward canting, and tuck your back knee right into the crook of your front knee. It's most definitely out of fashion, and for it to work you need good flexibility at the waist so that you're angulating not banking into every turn, but it worked then and would work now too.

The above two posts are really useful. I'd add the following: Don't try to fix heel lift too soon with equipment changes (I think Sunsurfer is suggesting this too). It's often a result of techniques which are just leftovers from softboots or skiing - namely trying to drive the board with your shins rather than working from the bottom up using the soles of your feet much more, and also it can come from trying to steer with your back foot. If you're a Skier for instance you're used to the outside ski doing the work and that can lead to too much back foot pressure which in turns translates to heel lift toeside and straight legs heelside. You've got some stiff boots and it sounds like you're going to be really happy with them, but with beginning technique there's no way you're flexing them fully just yet, so if the boot doesn't bend the heel's gonna lift. Also - unless you're a really elite athlete I think you're trying to ride too much. I know - we all know - it's addictive, but hardbooting places way more strain on the body than soft boots or any kind of skiing short of elite race-training. Apart from injuries you can also groove the kind of bad techniques you'd need to start using once lactic acid starts building up, and you'll do yourself more harm than good. For instance, if your thighs have nothing less to give you're going to start bending more at the waist, and reaching for the snow, and who knows what else? If you can ride hard for four hours in a day, especially on anything other than wide, green groomers, you're going to progress faster in my opinion.

What are people using to mount the camera to the board? @patmoore seems to have something effective and I'm sure there are others too. I'm using a Session5 which I picked up used, on a whim, and it's been fun for windsurfing, and would like to try to capture some footage on snow also.

Once you're fully comfortable you'll be amazed at how little fore-and-aft movement is needed, but at this stage you may need to feel like you're stepping forward and up onto the front foot to get yourself off your heel side edge and into the new turn. I sometimes tell myself to pounce on that foot with the edge change, especially if I've carved way across and up into the hill to kill speed. That "upside-down" feeling is good, though - it means you're committing to the new turn very early and will ultimately lead to huge sweeping carves of more than 180°, which is where the fun is. Four turns is a LOT when you're just starting - don't be discouraged. If your toeside turns remain significantly stronger than heel side after a while, you could increase your stance angles a little at a time until you're evenly uncomfortable!

For me it would be the Sea/Tac area - great riding within an hour and great windsurfing pretty much year round, and the city is really cool culturally. Near Columbia River Gorge would be a second choice.

Yep - exactly what I'm talking about. It is German, although the tech speaks with what sounds like a Tirol accent and the two Swedes speak with a Swedish accent while the coach sounds German to me... It's really interesting what they say about body geometry and body position and while they don't talk about strength I think that's important too. Lindsey Vonn could just dominate SG and DH courses, partly because she was on men's skis with a much stiffer TR. Ledecka won on Shiffrin's skis which are apparently very soft in that respect, and Ledecka really flowed down that Olympic course.

No one seems to have talked much about what seems to me to be the wild card in the pack, which is torsional rigidity and especially the way in which torsional rigidity progresses along the board. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. It's true that TR is closely related to thickness and longitudinal flex for a given board width but it does vary from that relationship, especially when the layup features multiple axes. The magic baked into some Coilers I've ridden (a 2002 180 Racecarve was my favorite for many years) seemed to me to owe more to the gentle progression of TR, which allowed the board to feather into a carve really smoothly. The same applies to my current Proteus but the boards Sean was building back in 2002 seemed much harsher to me, and I think it was more related to this feature than anything else. Long ago I had a homemade jig (big clamp, long weighted lever arm, twang it and measure frequency) I used to use to measure the TR of my race skis and it was often the decider between the race-day skis and the trainers and the hard-snow pair (very stiff) and the rut-runners which I preferred softer.

I think if you want a really solid connection you'll be happiest in size 26. My feet are 28.15/28.25 and I wear size 27 425Pro which give me about a half-finger fit for length. The were blown and groundout for width but the length is perfect.

Catek OS2 Step In with steel Bomber heels.

Find a good bootfitter and let them fix the width. It's true that UPZ start out with a wider forefoot than Deeluxe, but it's NOT true that unmodified UPZ will work out of the box for truly wide feet, so you're going to need a fitter anyway. Pick the boot whose features and flex suit your style of riding and let the fitter do their job. My feet are 11.5EEEE (my right foot is even wider) and I bought Deeluxe 425Pros because the stiffness suits my style and weight, they work well with my preferred Intuition Dreamliners, the ankle pocket is about right, and they accept Fintec heels. The size 27 start at 98mm width but the fitter blew/ground them out to107/ 108, which is wide enough for anybody.

I bet the green tongue is softening, starting to bow upwards under load, and popping the linkage from underneath. I don't have mine in front of me but I think the tongues MAY be exchangeable left to right. The back boot will always have been flexed more, so the front tongue may be less tired. I liked BTS in my AF600s but in the 425Pro (which I love) I run the lean adjuster locked in front and flex/lock in back. The boots are so snug, though (size 27/11.5EEEE Feet), that the buckles are barely done up and not under much tension.

Sounds like the problem we had back in the '70s with certain thermoplastic ski boots. They shrank in the cold, and then re-expanded at uneven rates depending on the thickness of the material and other factors. With those boots the low-forward-pressure bindings like the Salomon 505 would often just flat out release without reason.

I'm eager to see hip-dragging but I don't remember asking for puppy-patting. Is that a local rule or something? Seriously guys - that's just sour grapes. You look terrific, the stoke is evident, and I wish I were out there with you.

My exact experience with the Proteus 180. GO EARLY seems to be the key - for me on both sides not just heelside. If I drop low and get it bent before I reach the fall line it'll do whatever I want after that. Otherwise it acts like the SCR is 18 not 13.

I don't think weight is always the primary issue. Don't know if this will strike a chord with anyone else but if I'm pumping linked cross-unders and the board is giving back all its pop at the edge change faster than I can get out of the way, its too stiff. The feeling is like I'm being hit on the soles of the feet rather than being slung into the next turn. Not many boards are too stiff for my 100kg weight, or for my leg-strength (I'm still pretty strong even at 65) but many are too stout for the combination of my strength and my increasingly limited quickness.

OK, I'm weird in all sorts of other ways too but for me the backside 360 is WAY easier than toeside to complete with pure line (and no hand down!). All my boards have been pretty darn stiff so maybe that's part of it. The other part is maybe that the backs of my boots are stiffer than my quads are strong. I do drive my weight pretty far back toward the tail and at just about straight uphill I think I kinda hurl my weight forward again. I'll put my inside hand down if I have to but if I do it doesn't count as a true carved 360. Very nice description of the toeside process, though, and when I get home from FL there's going to be a 158 waiting for me which will be easier to work around than big Proteus, so I'll try it!

Right? I like a very tight fit fore and aft - less than one finger, but width is always a thing. He told me he got that boot to 110 (he had to grind to get the last little bit) and I told him the State Police were on the way. The Deeluxe just suit me better in other ways than UPZ and these are likely my last pair - Intuition Dreamliners, footbeds and Fintecs and I feel like a millionaire. Used to be if you had toenails in February your boots were too big - not anymore.