philw

Using your friends' gear sounds like the right approach to me. If you've done that, then you can probably work out what sort of "Alpine" you want to do. There is more variety in the ways you can carve a turn than the ways you can ride a rail... my advice would be to avoid any of the extremes until you know what you want and why.

Well I have skied (not snowboarded: we hadn't invented them at that time) there. It's a very small ski resort by EU standards, but there's nothing wrong with that. Popular with school groups back in the day because it was small and cheap. But "sweating the asset" - making use of the lift infrastructure all year around - seems like an obvious idea and I'm not sure why it took so long. Some places also have "Sommerrodelbahn" - mountain scale luge tracks formed from half-round metal pipes which have been around a while. Downhill Bikes... with hindsight at least, it seems like an obvious thing to do.

Good question. I've been riding "soft boot" boards for years, just because I found hard boot boards were not to my personal liking in powder. Those old GS style boards are like planks in deep snow; you can ride them, but they feel unresponsive to me. I didn't ride powder boards on piste though, because my Kessler SL was significantly better at that. Burton's Dump truck was maybe first more modern (short) powder board I tried on piste. I heard it was supposed to be good at that, but ... I concluded that it was too wide for me. I found it hard to get on edge with my negative boot-out. Then I mellowed out my stance because someone here suggested it, and at 40°/30° I found the Hometown Hero fit my boots pretty well. It just blew me away on piste. That wasn't what I expected. I've rarely been that surprised. I retired my Kessler immediately, and just switched to the HH for everything. It'll carve circles indoors, or rip closed piste with Fawcett at Mach 2. I love the 6.6m radius; I can ride closed piste as fast as I like, and still carve circles indoors, all on the same board. I don't actually think these are particularly novice friendly; novices tend to try them and swap for something a bit bigger, in my experience. I doubt anyone here is a novice though. I think the jury's out, and it depends what people want. I would look at the board width and what angles they're going to work with, then rent some and see. But overall this has to be a good thing for those who like to turn on the edge, irrespective.

And the video from that trip...

Yeah, it's relatively easy for me to get there. All depends how much snow they have and how much I've already consumed by that point

Mostly, but I carve hardpack pretty much the same. The Seth Pro looks most interesting. I'm generally pleased that they saved the brand and are making a niche for it. I'm sceptical of STs in the sort of powder I ride, but if Seth has a spare small one hanging around this season I'll happily see if I can get some shots of it ripping. If it does

Other Media -> Insert image from URL These are all big boys' boards though. Winterstick is changing though, will be interested to see what Seth comes out with and hope I'll get to ride some. If they do small ones

Atomic Backland Carbon, probably 2018-19 generation, Phantom Levers, 2nd gen. 40°/30°, reference stance. The Backlands & Levers get a lot of interest; I should carry some around the world as I think I could sell the things easily enough! A couple more shots from today.

I guess I'm just rubbing it in, but I think pointing out that hard boots work in real snow as well as on prepared tracks is kind of handy, and pointing out that those same boots work great on ordinary snowboards. The guy shooting the rider there is Max Palm's dad, also a heli guide. This is up near the Argentina border. Snow is good above about 2,600m. Hard boots and the Hometown Hero 1.44.

I think you'll find my Atomic Backlands are quite well sorted for uphill too

I'm thinking... that although I'm "extreme" in many things, and most people probably think I'm ridiculous... I'd maybe want to look for alternatives to that, which looks a little inelegant at least. But then I think much that passes as snowboarding "style" is inelegant, so "it's all good" as the Canadians would say. But.. what problem are you trying to solve, precisely? I've not seen the film, but Barbie's foot angle is in the trailers and that's what came to mind here The boot delta - the angle of the footbed to the horizontal - is a factor in any forward lean, as is forward lean on the boot itself. I have a bog-standard 1 degree/ 3 degree F2 set up, no titanflex. If I rode stock Atomic Backlands with their forward lean minimum on front, max on back (the standard lever gives 2 settings), I did not have sufficient lean on my back foot. I could ride, but I found the back foot felt odd, I had to put extra effort into forcing the back of the board down, something like that. I could perhaps have "double stacked" to fix that (I thought about it), but instead I found the Phantom Levers, which have a much larger maximum forward lean... with those, the feeling went away. Hence my question: what feeling is it that the double-stack is intended to fix, and are there possibly not other ways to fix it?

There's a recent book by a UK medic who I think is also a TV pundit about precisely this. It's a better read than many such things, but that article reads like a selective precis of it: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451300/ultra-processed-people-by-tulleken-chris-van/9781529900057 The initial argument in the book is that we evolved over a very long period of time to deal with food. "industrially produced edible substances", otherwise known as UPF, have only been around for a short period of time, and we aren't evolved to deal with them. I was surprised on reading the book that it's only relatively recently that research has started to identify the causes of the correlation between obesity and UPF.

Dunno. But in UK you'll not see anything like that on a dry slope. Most people use old snow gear, but if you want something specific you want it to be slightly shorter/ softer than your normal ride, because top speeds are much slower. You get a lot of base wear, but it doesn't matter. Edges get rounded and need a lot of sharpening... if you know how to use them

Here's a video of some riding last week in Iceland - early June 2023. Not great snow conditions, but they did have snow, at least if you had a helicopter. The second half of the 1:33 video shows how not to manage a slough in a [fairly wide] couloir. I suppose I should have either pulled out skier's right into the already tracked section, or tried to hide under the rocks skiers left until the slough had passed. I wondered about riding out of it in either direction, but on balance decided I was safe enough riding the slow wave, which wasn't getting appreciably worse. I just waited until it stopped and then rode out and down. Trip report in regional thread here

Well I've been here a long time and sometimes it feels like it's all massively long boards being euro-carved on perfectly groomed snow, so here's a summary of a trip I just got back from which is the opposite: a tiny board on back country snow in Iceland. ---- Iceland's pretty far north (between 66 and 67 degrees) so early season it's dark, but late season lasts a fair time as it's colder up there than other places. It's not a cheap place to visit, but it's got lots of interesting geology including active volcanos, and it's easy to get to from the UK at a mere 3 hour flight. If you want to go snowboarding in the northern hemisphere in June, it's pretty much the only option. They sell flying time, not "vertical", so like AK and not like BC. The reason is the relatively high "down day ratio", and you can expect to sit one day in four, or there abouts. Trip lengths are mostly 4 heli days... I've taken two back to back before now, but it gets old after a while and on balance I think 4 days is about right. This season - 22/23 - was a poor snow year in Europe generally and specifically in Iceland too. The last few years I've been here at this time we rode to sea level from peaks at around 1,300m; this year the snow line was between 500m and 700m, a very different deal. However the snow higher up, on the right aspects, was pretty similar to usual, which means nothing like BC over-the-head powder, but spring snow of all types. There are two main heli operators in Iceland, both of which I've visited several times. This one is Arctic, which flies two machines with a maximum of 16 guests, hence they have 16 radios here. You can see the location on the wall map below. The radios are not much used in anger (compared to BC) as you usually have line of sight. Here's Arctic heli's lodge, which is at an old farm up a valley accessed by gravel road. Larger hire cars are available for those with longer snowboards or more friends. One of these boards is perfect, the other should be hung on the wall and admired. Mine's the baby. The poles and the monster board were a give-away to a guide from someone who learned the hard way what works best. The perfect board is my 1.44m Hometown Hero with F2 bindings. For the avoidance of doubt: I do not touch ski poles other than when picking them up for fallen skiers. I ride the HH in BC powder, and on hardpack, but it works great on spring snow too. They provide transceivers and shovel packs, and airbags for those who want them. You don't need an airbag here really; I leave mine at home. They do of course give full safety briefings and training in slide rescue etc. Selfie time. That green stuff... last year this time that was all white, and you could ride back down to this location. Let's look at that from above: At the bottom centre of this is the lodge, where the previous shot was taken. Needless to say we used a bit more flying time to get to the snow this season. Because of the snow line, pickups were higher up the valley than usual, what with grass snowboarding not yet being a sport. If you go high enough, it's all white. I was actually the only snowboarder out of 16 guests, and possibly the second oldest... which may be a concern for the snowboarding demographic. On the other hand I had most fun. In Iceland hard boots are achingly fashionable again - last season and this I got a great deal of positive reaction from particularly guides, who all either already have the Backland set up, or are going to get it. As one guide pointed out, you really appreciate the responsiveness of hard boots on this snow pack. I don't know, haven't tried softies here and can't see the need to... but I would think no boarding impossible here, the snow's not that soft. It's mostly kind of steep, but hard to show in images. These are all Insta 360x3 screen grabs. Brown snow is a thing (see "tracks" thread), but it's pretty much the same as the white stuff, and you can leave funky white tracks in it. At nice 360 carve in brown snow would be fun. I nearly pulled off a few at the pick-ups... but never quite made it all the way around. The snow's typically slower at lower level is my excuse. And here's what my Garmin watch thought of one day... Typically we'd be getting 13-15 runs a day, between when the snow softened up in the morning and when it became too sticky in the early evening. I've ridden at midnight here before - it doesn't go dark - it's all about the temperature and snow conditions. You can whale watch from the heli as it flies over the fijord. The machines were pretty Austrian helis: Here's a steep south facing run with isothermal snow. I could hear the snow sloughing even through my helicopter ear defenders (the electronic ones which allow speech through). It looked like some of the snow was moving uphill! In fact I think the base I was on was sloughing downhill fast, and some of the layers on top were moving at a slower speed than the base layer. It was weird to watch. On the original image you can see the guide plus 3 skiers right down the bottom there - it's a long way down and you don't want to fall on stuff like this as you'd go a long way. No one fell all week in this group, but we were likely stronger than the others who I noticed picked some more mellow lines. Approaching a flat topped peak with a couloir on the right hand corner of it. That's where we were going. You can see the sides of the flat top are steepish. I let the skiers hit the couloir first - I'm faster, and I can pick narrower lines than skiers with their poles and skis and all that. Plus I don't want someone barrelling down from behind me, on skis or tumbling. The guide slowly ripped the snow out of the centre of the couloir, making it less likely to slough on the guests. The other guests followed him, down the centre of the couloir which was quite wide. I'm not much for riding tracks, and I reckon I'm not phased by a bit of slough management.... so I took the skiers left hand line by the rocks, which was all fresh snow. That started really well, but the video shows I kicked a small slough off pretty early on. I didn't stop, but there were rocks and it was as steep as you're likely to find... and over a few turns the video shows the slough slowly growing into a monster wave of wet snow. I could hear it, and see it moving down all around me. In this video still the snow to the rider's right is all flowing downhill at about the same speed I was. Until.... ... it overtook me and swept me off my feet. The video shows I was toe side when it took me out. I rolled heel side (as above) ... then I considered my options, which were make a 180 turn and out, or try switch, or sit and wait. I didn't fancy switch, and the turn out seemed risky: if I'd lost it, I'd be rag-dolling over the rocks to my left. The slough sped up a bit, but the direction seemed safe enough, and I knew it would stop eventually. It started to slow, and as soon as I felt it safe to make the turn, cranked the board forward and right and rode out of it. It felt like a couple of minutes; the video shows it was a few seconds only. Anyway, a few seconds after the above, I flipped the board across the by then slowly moving slough and just rode out of it. Lessons learned: well, it was fun but potentially risky, not particularly because it would "go", but because if the flow had wanted to take me over the rocks it may have been uncomfortable. I knew in advance that the couloir was a terrain trap (the flow was going to end up down the middle), which is partly why I kept out of there. I couldn't see him do it from the top (it was steep), but the guide kicked a similar slough off down there, and he pulled out and waited for it to overtake him, then started out again. So with hindsight, I should have made that toe-side turn sooner and traversed into the middle of the couloir, waited for my slough to go past, then ridden the debris down. Well now I know. There were one or two half-pipe features to play on too. I should say... I'd not particularly recommend the heli boarding here, in that it costs as much as over-the-head powder costs in BC, and this isn't remotely as good as that kind of snow. The reason to come here is that their season is long, and maybe to check out Iceland tourism too. And here's the video.

I had to come to Iceland in June to find some brown snow to do this, but here you go. And yeah, the local guides are all into Backlands with Phantom springs too, it's weird to have people look at my gear and say nice things about it, and how "it's the way to go". It feels like when I was in my old clip ski boots riding rings around the rear entry people... eventually they worked that one out.

I lock my board at resorts to ensure that opportunists with tools like the Leatherman look elsewhere. Obviously anyone actually equipped to steal isn't going to be affected; that's not the point. Sorry that wasn't clear.

I have a combination cable lock which is "for travel" and it's thicker than the standard snowboard locks, although it just rolls up, doesn't retract. I also have a little ringbolt, which I use to replace one of the rear binding's bolts with when I'm riding at a resort. If you don't have that, someone can nick that £1,000 board by simply unscrewing your £200 bindings from it, with any snowboard tool. That's 4 bolts for the Burton Channel. The eyebolt makes that much harder, because although you can rotate it, it's got that cable looped through it, so you can't take it out easily. I still like the idea of a Samsung Smart tag in the binding too, but until someone produces a plastic F2 wedge with one embedded in it, that's hard to do discretely.

"Surfy" - depends what you mean. I guess no boarding gives that, but it's probably not what's meant. A lot of hardbooters do have a very "stiff" style, at least from the sort of feedback I get from soft booters in helicopters. They expect me to be stiff, and I've seen people riding powder that way. However... I use Backland AT [hard] boots with something like 40°/35° and I surf the terrain more than most on that. You can't control the lateral flex, but there's some from the binding interface. The main thing is the friction-free ankle with flex being controlled by Phantom springs. Doesn't solve the bending-over thing, although I would possibly argue that stretching to do that is a good exercise

Ha, that's exactly it. Perhaps that's what he's doing, but I'd want to really cut down on some of that, don't want to look like an instructor, the shame of it! But it's a style, of course - each to their own, and the more variety the better.

I'm heading to Iceland in a few weeks - end May, early June. There it's warm, but it's "spring snow" stuff, not powder but granulated, which works if you hit it "in condition". The guides work the mountains so you should never hit any bad conditions, although over several seasons I've seen some terrible snow. Everything from very steep frozen sastrugi through rained-on blue snow so slow I've walked away from paid-for helicopter time to stop riding it. When it's that bad (only had it one day in 5 trips), the board sticks to it, and it's inconsistent, wax doesn't help. You tend not to get "slush" in Iceland, it's either reasonable corn, ice, or [rarely] rained on garbage. Altitude and aspect are massively important. Here is some of that "dirty wet snow" stuff: And so I don't make it look too terrible, here below is some rather better stuff, but you can see it's at least "sugary" and wet.

Except today I was riding at my local indoor slope, testing some new stuff out for a late season raid on Iceland... and I remembered this thread. This is a small slope as you can see, and the main issue is avoiding everyone else. It was busier than this at times. I know how to look where I'm going, even if it's uphill, so that's manageable. The snow's in good condition and supports deep carves on my 144 Hometown Hero. Anyway, 1st attempt... I got all the way around with a sort of Euler spiral track and stalled at the top of the turn, board across the slope. I pulled a tiny jump turn to get going again. Not pretty. The second one, I rode straight out of it. After that, I nailed one every run. The lifts here are slow so you get maybe one run every 5 minutes, with sessions being sold by the hour. I had in mind the instruction to shift my weight back towards the top apex of the turn, but I'm not sure I was doing it particularly well. I didn't take my camera so no evidence, maybe next time. I need to work on trying to make the shape a bit rounder, and maintaining more speed through the critical top bit. Once I'm done with that I shall have to move onto the heel side, which I'm almost doing to get into this.. Thanks again for the tips on that one.

That's not "offroad" though - it's mostly not even off piste. You can see the piste markers. It looks weird, only works on easy terrain. It's all good, but a very limited way to ride in my view. I do think the EC folk come across as prescriptive, but there's plenty of room. Perhaps the return of carving to snowboarding would have come from there with a bit more flexibility, but to me they lost the plot - I prefer "soft boot carving worth watching" to most EC stuff, aesthetically. Has anyone used the EC peoples' bindings? They look quite pretty and may well work for regular snowboarding. In bottomless back country powder, I'm pretty sure you could not complete one single snow diving turn because you wouldn't be able to generate the force needed to get you back up.

This. I think riding with your bottom in the air is inherently funny and if we're talking about it, I'll be laughing for sure. It seems common for people with hard boots to use equipment and styles which only work on really easy terrain - to me that's pretty much why the rest of the world went another way.

My laptop will handle Topaz, but it works way, way better on my desktop. As it doesn't require user input you can "batch it up" and just leave it to run. Topaz has a free demo - with watermarks - but the software is identical. I bought it (at discount: they have regular sales) because I tried to think of it like buying a camera lens, to make me feel better about it. I'd be wary of the massively impressive demo footage used to sell cameras. Forget that, and go instead to the manufacturers' user forums (eg https://forums.insta360.com/ etc) and look at what real customers are achieving. Note that most "reviews" are paid for, so you can't even rely on those. I think... you can do quite well with a single pole mounted "selfie" 360 camera. You can vary the pan and crop into the footage in different ways. I did not bother in my thing above, but I have some older 360 footage where I've been a bit more creative. I think there's a lot you can do there, but if you want more... you need a separate camera person.... which clearly Koura and others are using, for good reason. But the faff level is then much more - you're going out to shoot, not to ride. That's the choice, I think. If you use a chest bag then even big cameras are pretty easy to carry about. Backpacks I hate because the gear isn't where you can get at it quickly. But then you're into radio communication and working out what to shoot and where to ride and all that... "carving" is a tricky one, in that it's basically the same move most of the time, and the background is typically just ski resort forest. I mean: there's inherently less variety there than in riding all over a mountain. I can at least find sections with trees and without trees - most carving folk don't really have that luxury. For variety you could try a drone, if you have permission - make a shot which looks like it's stick mounted, then surprise the viewer by making it clear it's actually a drone. The Insta 360x3 also has "bullet time" which is a fun idea, but the field of view isn't enough for snowboarding, and the quality is really terrible. It may be just that we have to wait for higher resolution 360 cameras...