Jonny

Digger - If OP isn't interested might you be wiling to part with the receivers? I have two sets of OS2 already and don't need another but steel receivers would be great. Thanks!

Two days in on my new, old stock Proteus 180 (I snagged it during the BoL sale) and my level of stoke is matched only by the pain in my thighs and left (front) buttock. I fell in love with the design during the 2012 ECES and my impressions then have been confirmed - it's just so smooth, solid and powerful, with outstanding pop out of the turn and it just pretty much ignores ice. I think Sean now ships these all tuned up but this one is older - serial 3907 - and the board came with nice base structure but no bevel. I spent some pleasurable time getting it to 1° Base 2° side with no de-tune. Used a Ray's Way tool to wax it but I think I'll have to hot wax also which always scares me a little, even with the bindings removed. First day was a bit of a struggle inasmuch as I've hardly been on snow at all since 2012 (took a job in Florida) and no part of my body was in proper carving condition. So although the board was doing everything it ought to have done, it was mostly just overpowering me - big fast turns which I couldn't tighten so I was constantly doing little speed-checking skids just to stay on the trail. Even so, the board held in crunchy conditions where other boards would have sent me sliding. I had set up just as I had with my old Coiler Racecarve 180 - 19 5/8", 63/60 with toe/heel lift and a little inward cant - but I did a little stance tweaking towards the end of the day and then after some hard thinking and reference to many of your posts (Thanks Workshop7, Beckmann, Michaud et al...) I went wider and shallower than before so I'm now around 20 1/4" and 60/57, still more or less centered on the inserts but with my back foot slid back towards heel side just a bit. The difference was kind of amazing. The stance feels awkward on the carpet but much more natural on snow, with much more power available to me and much more control over the tightness of the turn. The board responds instantly to almost any degree of tilt and if I do still need to tighten mid-turn I can stand hard on my back foot and it'll crank around really quickly without any sketch at all. I've never felt really comfortable on VSR rigs but the 13m constant radius on the Proteus suits my preferred style better than the 11.5 on the Coiler - it's much easier to make a really big turn and the construction makes variable surfaces just as smooth without a plate as the Coiler was with plate. The board is still a real workout for someone not in riding shape, hence the leg pain, because it is very stout and is just throwing Gs at you with every turn, but it's a nice problem to have and I'll have a few more days to get acclimated before I have to head back down south. I'm not much for hollering on the trail - trying too hard to catch my breath - but the people on the chairlifts were doing lot of hooting which was nice and confirmed that the ride looked as cool as it felt.

Thanks for the reply! And thanks for the stance correction - I was thinking of trying a really wide stance so I could be like you and probably would have pulled a groin muscle. I ride at 19 5/8" and have for years but the Proteus may like something a little wider and with less cant so that I can bend some decamber into it actively with my knees. Looks like my recollection of the top of Waterville in your pic - is that where you ride? Congratulations on being the first to tweak the MK in this way. I think every big guy who's ever ridden one, or a MADD for that matter, has thought "If only if it were 170ish....?"

Nice writeup and nice design! So, how does it differ in performance from your Proteus? Nimbler? Even more pop coming-out of the turn? 22.5" seems like a wider spread than most use these days - are you very tall? My Proteus 180 got its first turns yesterday and it certainly kicked me around, Not unruly at all, it just hooks up so hard that every turn that isn't deliberately sketched is a hard, accelerating swoop of G-forces.

The Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons - At last I have something in common with Daenerys Targaryen apart from white hair:

You going out again today? My Proteus is all set and so am I - kinda - two days on snow in the last four years. Were you at Berkshire East? Conditions? Sent you a text anyway. Happy Holidays! As far as the thread topic: My insanely wide feet have been pretty happy in Raichle and their offshoots - first 125, then 325 and now 700s, even with vanilla thermofits. I do have some amazing 20 year old cork insoles which helps I guess.

Good idea to ask. One of the things which is most fun about the Proteus is the way it blasts you into the next turn, and I know I wouldn't want to give that up for any degree of forgiveness.

I agree with Corey's characterization, although I think the answers may be weight-specific so I wound up in a different place than he. For me, the Proteus 180 actually turns MORE nimbly than the 170 because I feel much more comfortable really pouncing on it. I felt that at 230lb I could really overpower the 170 where the 180 would not only hold up to full aggression but would also bend enough to respond to quick low-angle push-pull cross-under riding. I think the 180 actually is 13m sidecut and closer to 19 than 20cm waist btw. I'm "old" too and one of the advantages of the Proteus over the bigger Revs for smaller hills (I haven't ridden the 163) is that the Proteus really loves to finish the turn so I feel that I can control the speed more than I can with racier designs.

Triple Jump is when one binding blows out or off and you can't establish an edge so you try to save yourself by hopping from board to bare boot and back. I've had this happen to my back foot (Thank you, Burton Race Physics!) but thank god never to my front foot If you're on a steep enough slope after a scorpion you won't stop and will become a human toboggan or Runaway Rescue Sled

Corey - what is a Wax Wizard? Google didn't help me much... For the OP - I've had good results rotating my Cateks to equal stances - 60/60 seems to work fine - and then clamping them into the center of a Workmate table (which is basically a big clamp). It's great for tuning but you obviously wouldn't want to hot wax like that because you'd get wicked base suck from waxing with the bindings mounted.

Donek Proteus 180, brand new, still in its box, waiting for me to get home to tune it. Fell in love with one at ECES five or six years ago and haven't ridden but a handful of days since (teaching in Florida all winter), but this year I'm going to make sure I get on the snow. Coiler 180 Racecarve built for me in 2002 - 19" waist, 12M sidecut, built very stout to handle my weight. Still a great board which on good snow will turn inside anything but a real slalom stick, but beginning to be vulnerable on ice and at very high speeds. PJ 6.3 - the green camo one. I ride it once a year just to remind myself how hard the sport used to be...

Barry, it sounds like the kind of board you'd have fun borrowing but don't need to own. I'm 230 and prefer a very stout board (the Swoard Hard flex feels ok to me for instance) and for me the Kessler is fun but hard work. There's no sense that you can glide around with a light touch and rely on rhythm - you push hard every turn or it will straighten out and run away. It's fun to play with but not many non-racers will feel like it's an everyday ride.

Dibs on the Proteus! Best board I've ever ridden and one of the few that could blast my 230lb out of a turn while still retaining some smoothness. If the 171 outperforms that it'll be some ride.

The worst mistake you can make is also the most common - shells which are too loose. You really want almost no room for the liner if you're going to ride with aggression. When you pull the liner and put your bare foot in the shell you want to be able to slide one finger down behind your heel, but not two. Almost any other fault can be repaired by a good fitter, even a bad buckle location isn't insoluble. FWIW I wear size 11.5EEEE street shoes, and my 700 shells are size 27. So were my 325s, which worked pretty well also. Boosterstraps on both. I have a very wide forefoot, very high arch (cork insoles) and big shin and calf muscles. I ride narrow boards but even on ATV type boards I think you'll quickly find that 45° is the lowest you'll want. Higher angles just give such amazing precision and power heel side that it's addictive.

If you mean between me and other riders I want about three seconds minimum between me and the previous or next rider/skier and probably more if its a skier who's behind me because hardly any of them understand just how sharply we turn. If you mean clearance between the sides of the trail or the trees then the steeper it is the tighter I can tolerate - easier to get restarted if I have to check hard. I do like to have options, though, not just the one set of turns which will get me through a gap or sequence. This is all assuming no tree-wells and such - if those are around I want LOTS of room. Humping my way out of a well is no longer my idea of adventure...

The aluminum step-in heel gets eaten up by Fin-Tecs but if that's not an issue the Catek SI is a really great binding. I mark my settings and also measure them with calipers so that I can recreate them easily. I also don't tighten the cant-adjust screws all the way until the king-bolt is cranked down tight. Then I'll put another half turn on all the canting setscrews which maxes out the tightness of the kingbolt and has so far for me eliminated the issue Eric mentioned of the binding angle swinging loose.

Oh heck yes - I'm half Viennese. Wouldn't wear it snowboarding but anything else. Paypal? direct email is easiest at jyepstein at gmail dot com

Riding? I wish - two days in the last three years! I'm teaching/directing in Sarasota and hardly get home enough as it is so I can't really go far afield. Couple of days at Bousquet this year and that's it. Still on that Coiler 180 with a plate and it still works so the Proteus will just wait until I can get on the hill more. I do get to windsurf Sarasota Bay pretty often though, so at least I can make some kind of turn... Those UPZ buckles are monstrosities given how much those boots flex. At my current weight the Boosterstrap option is the only cure. I sold mine almost right away and went back to 700s with heavy BTS which are fine.

This drives me crazy. Only way I could ride UPZ is by removing the top buckle and replacing it with a BoosterStrap, which works very well.

Only one that I use although my old PJ63 is still rideable it hasn't seen snow in a decade or more. Bruce made me a very stout 180 Racecarve in 2002 or so and although it's wearing a lowrider plate and a desanctis tune it's pretty much the same board as when it arrived - still good camber, still carves a very tight, predictable turn even with about 150 days of use. Bruce built it for an athletic, aggressive 210lb rider and now I'm a much more passive 230 but it averages out OK. If I were able to spend more days on snow I'd replace it with the amazing Proteus 180 and if I were younger and more nimble perhaps a MK but for how little I ride now it makes no sense...

Longer sidecut radius really needs longer running edge, so the answer should be pretty easy for you to figure out, just by thinking about turn radius. If at GS speeds you hammer an edge, while trying to stay early, does it hook you into the gate? Do you have to center the turn right on the gate or risk getting way above the line? If yes to either then longer sidecut will really help, and you can start by looking at some of the boards the FIS women are using - maybe find a year-old board with some edge left to start. In your shoes I’d look at something 175ish. Don’t worry about it running you into the woods - longer boards are actually much easier to control than shorter at racing speeds.

If you use an iron to apply wax you MUST remove the bindings, or at the very least back off the screws. Otherwise you get an ugly condition called “binding-suck” where the heat-softened P-Tex is pulled up toward the screw inserts. It takes a pretty thorough grind to remove this and while it may not have a huge effect on riding it will drive you nuts to look at it.

Find a PT who specializes in this. You may have PF or Achillies tendonopathy which is similar but affects the tendon just behind the Plantar Fascia. He/she will teach you taping techniques which help for now, and massage, stretch, shoe selection strategies which help for the future. For now, make some small water balloons and put them in the freezer. Once they're frozen, put one on the floor and roll your foot around on it for a few minutes. You can use an old "spaldeen" handball filled nearly full with water and then frozen for this also. Over the long term really HARD massage has helped me the most, and I never wear shoes without orthotics. DON'T go for cortisone injections except as a very last resort - they often result in a full tear which is really awful.