philw

The last one. Well that's probably not quite correct, it's just the one I can remember best. With hindsight I should have taken another run, as it was minutes later that Vail Resorts closed everything down. This one below was quite good - decent powder, a slope which is actually about to get very steep, and three friends trying to video each other . There was a snow-snake which I hit about a second after this which caused a sharp turn I'd not anticipated. The result was that Ken (in orange) had to swerve, resulting in him and Jim colliding harmlessly in a big cloud of powder. It's always easier to remember the runs you've images of.

Apologies if it's already in the thread, but it kind of depends quite a lot on how you define "mortality rate". The percentage of all deaths in which the virus is subsequently found would be one metric. Another could be the percentage of people you tested who subsequently died. It's easy to see that these will produce vastly different answers depending on a nation's specific approach and circumstances. Without considerably more sophistication you're not going to be able compare different metrics gathered in different ways. I'd be more interested in looking at trends in specific country metrics, where you know that a country has or has not changed methodology (of data collection or process). Comparing the rates of change in different countries is probably more useful than comparing absolute numbers too.

There's other stuff in there too. I read an NYT analysis comparing 1918 with this one which chimes with that. The UK government "fluffed" the original media relations on this whole concept. The Murdoch press (think "Fox News") picked up on what they called "herd immunity" and used it as a negative ("the establishment thinks we're a herd") to try to suppress anti-pandemic action. The government realized that this was of secondary importance so stopped talking about it, so we could all get on with doing what needed to be done. However it's still an issue. If this is remotely like 'flu or the "common cold", then we'll be waiting a long time for an effective vaccine. Which means broadly that we're all going to get it... the only issue is when, and how good is the care available at that point. I think care will get significantly better, as we learn more about the wee beastie.

Makes sense. I suppose they scale boots to cope with the square/cube business, but it's still probably easier to make a smaller boot for lower loads. Also long boards are likely somewhat different to drive.

Good point. 62kgs/ 1.75m, so not remotely large. My Kessler SL is the 156 which is perfect for my weight.

Now I know. I just spent my first and last day this season at Whistler/ Blackcomb. The back country was hammered because of wind, but with minus 22 temperatures the resorts pistes were in excellent condition top to bottom. Crisp and grippy everywhere, with some more icy bits towards the bottom, although all ridable easy enough on a Kessler SL with hard boots. Anyway, that was also my first day with the Phantom modified Atomic Backlands on hard pack, and in short they rock. I tried fall line at various speeds, different turn styles, massive carves on the quiet pistes at mach 2 (no speed cops about all day, although I saw one on the lift...), the whole thing. It's hard to be objective and I have no way to do an A:B comparison, but these things don't limit what I can do. I suppose: They feel lighter, which of course they are. When thinking about them, that's the first obvious thing though, your board feels lighter and more chuckable. Maybe it's just a feeling, but it's a nice one. I'm not actually sure how the dynamics of my old boots worked. They were stiff-ish, but there's a lot of articulation within the liner and the shell would deform as I loaded it. I definitely used the boot stiffness to control the snowboard, but probably not in a simple way. The backlands are actually pretty stiff side-to side. Whilst those springs presumably put some damping into the fore-aft plane, I can trivially overpower them - those are dampers, but I suspect I'm running against the boot stiffness most of the time. When I moved to Intec years ago I appreciated the lack of slop the heel connector gave me compared with what I'd been using. The Atomics have rubber soles which I'd guess provides some damping, but they clamp in with minimal force and seem to stay put. Anyway, I'm sold - they don't slow me down, for whatever reason. I'm sure world-cup race people will continue to use more specialized gear, but for resort-legal speeds at least I'm not looking for anything else at the moment,

I learned in Finland, where there were no soft boots in the late 1980s. I just used my ski boots in a rental board's bindings and it was fine. I'd seen soft boot bindings in a shop - they looked really primitive and were not attractive. Soft boots proceeded to take over the market, but I already knew how to ride, and when I tried them they hurt my feet. An accident of history, then.

I think that's correct. Sideslipping won the mass-market. Now we have soft boot carving and hard boot carving too, it's all good. I think the climate generally is partly why hard boots (and edges on boards) were more popular in Europe from the start - we just needed something which works on the snow we have, not the snow they have in Utah. I suspect that the fact that racing exists is important in that. It's a more grass roots thing than ballet tricks, which seems to me at least to be driven top-down from the marketing.

The Rezillos. Pretty good live, actually. Like they've been practising for a decade or two.

It's hard to know if the difference is psychological or real, but I still think about it a fair bit when riding with the Backlands. I was thinking that those who like heavier boots can strap a bag of sugar between their feet to bring back the feel of 1980s hard snowboard boots and still benefit from the performance of carbon fibre and modern plastics across temperatures [My own motivation to halve the weight of what I put on my feet was mostly lugging the things in hand-baggage around the world, which is considerably easier with the Backlands. Any riding benefits are incidental. That said, I prefer lighter snowboards to heavier ones too. ]

You're correct that the backing plate can be rotated for this purpose, but it did not in my case give sufficient forward lean for my back foot, hence I bought the Phantom springs, which provide for significantly more lean than the built in levers, however set up.

It's been a while since I was there, the road used to be basically a dirt track, from what I remember. I've been a few times, don't think they ever saw anyone from UK before

I just watched the first bit, which suggests that you need to bend your knees more. I know it's a worn concept, but honest, that's the thing.

Huh, I was just planning on a visit. Is it that wet all the way up?

It seems to me that it's not a problem. You break the skis, then someone buys you some more. It's better than old school, when stuff would last for years and go appallingly "out of fashion". These people have designed a product which is always fashionable and updates at zero cost to the user. A brilliant model.

My main motivation was convenience for flying, when switching from the HSPs to Backland Carbon boots. Plus 25 or so years of technical boot development which skiers have enjoyed. Even Mountain Slope is an old design. The "Sense" boots look interesting. I would say that the clever bit about modern Carbon boots is that they achieve similar performance at less weight; the Carbon is probably used to deliver that, rather than to deliver something you don't want (greater stiffness). Carbon is probably also more stable over a range of temperatures and stress. It's a composite so you can engineer it very precisely. Lighter boots.... feel lighter. It may be psychological, and mostly I don't notice, but when jumping my gear definitely feels lighter. Perhaps it's like "power to weight ratio" in a car. With the race bike analogy, I want the lightest machine I can get at a reasonable price. I'm not going to drill the components out, but lighter always feels better. Heavier boots... you could buy some ankle weights and strap a kilo on each ankle to see the benefits of that at a cheap price today. Metal boards actually use metal and rubber for their dampening effect, it's not specifically mass which is the issue.

I did not need springs with the backlands, but I did need their increased forward lean as the standard levers (with that 7cm) was not sufficient for my rear boot. I think the Phantom levers will accommodate a range of lengths there as you can see from the design.

The orange aluminium standard lever on the backland has a centre-to-centre distance of 7cm (distance from the centre of the pivot to the centre of the recess which clips over the bar on the boot.

I have a Rylo - see videos elsewhere for examples. I find the Rylo (or GoPro Max) is a better than a traditional POV camera as the stabilization is better and you don't need to aim the camera at all. It's easier to use a 360 camera, although you have more editing to do. Less to do whilst riding, more to do later. I actually got some useful feedback from someone on here (viz: try a different rear foot angle), so there's your evidence that the basic idea works. Carrying a pole does affect your riding, however. You need a fairly quiet upper body, which is fine if that's your style but maybe not so much if it isn't. You can video other people, and again 360 is easier than a directional camera because you can't miss the shot, although you have to be very close... this shot shows Ken (Orange) trying to video me (front, yellow) the other day. He may look far away, but these are very wide lenses and he's uncomfortably close. You need to be on it to ride that close safely. You can however see probably that my mate Jim in the back is in the back seat, although he already knows that and doesn't care. Ken's using a GoPro Max someone lent him - he stopped using his traditional GoPro 8 as soon as he realized what you can do with 360. It's worth pointing out that the video quality from traditional 180 GoPro cameras is vastly better than the 360 cameras. That's where the trade off is. I miss the 4K ProTune quality, with the Rylo being best in perfect light and at lower resolutions.

I didn't really notice any difference in riding these (Atomic Backland Carbon / F2 Race Ti/ Phantom Link levers) versus my previous set up (HSP, F2 Intec). These are the Carbon boots - light, but not as light as the "ultra light" ones which I think have only one buckle - these have two buckles plus a power strap. The boots are noticeably lighter at less than half the weight of the HSP/Intec combination. I think they're stiffer (which I like). As noted elsewhere I used the Link levers because I needed more forward lean than the Atomic levers provided, not because I wanted springs. In practice I felt that I could probably easily overpower the springs so they were likely not relevant, although I've no real evidence of that. Bear in mind that in that type of snow you can ride without buckles pretty easily - it's not the same kind of test as hard pack. The boots look small and skinny, which is slightly worrying in the cold, but I had no issues at minus 10 - minus 15. I didn't bake the liners as they fit fine out of the box and my advice was baking would not improve that.

I thought maybe this would go in "videos" but that's "videos of people carving" and there's not a lot of carving here, but it is "all mountain" hard booting. This is a Burton Skeleton Key 154, F2 Race Titanium bindings, Atomic Backlands with Phantom Levers.

Yes, the 360 cameras (my Rylo, the GoPro Max, and probably the Insta) automagically remove the pole. They have two back-to-back lenses with about 200 degrees field of view each, so they have coverage of the bit where the pole is from two sides. You have to line the camera up with the pole, but if you do that then it just takes it out. I'm not precisely sure how they do it, but it's 100% reliable. The Avatar thing is an image from the same camera, simply zoomed out to the maximum. I think they call them "little earths" or something. It's a kind of inside-out projection of the spherical video, if you see what I mean.

Well of course I think people should use whatever they like, but I've just been riding with an old mate who is a reasonable part of snowboarding history and he's hugely in favour of the Burton Step On stuff. To hear him talk about them it sounds like they're a significant step towards the control and power of hard bindings. I've no idea, but if you're into soft gear then it may be worth looking at those.

Burton Skeleton Key 154, F2, Atomic Backland.

I reckon that the question isn't answered unless you actually try it. These boots are stiffer than most, which is kind of why people put springs into them. In any case, Atomic make a whole range of similar boots and you can pick the stiffness you want, so even the fattest macho men should be fine. I don't know if they'll rip on my race boards, but I don't see why they would not.