philw

Here's the difference between the generation one and generation two Phantom lever "heads". The new version is on the right, and also has a little white "P" logo stamped on the outside. The U-shaped bit which grips the boot rod is very subtly tighter. I also fitted mine with crossed tie-wraps as I don't need walk mode: I can walk in ski boots! And drive, cycle and even possibly ski. I like the fact that lots of Atomic's line of boots will take these levers. If I wanted stiffer/ heavier, there are plenty of choices with those Hawx etc, and they're all modern designs. Or if my boots die in the hard-boot wasteland of North America... I could just get some rental Hawx boots and make it work. I was trying to figure out if I actually turn differently when using these levers/boots, versus my old Head Stratos Pro etc. I think my turns are rounder now, that the transition particularly with the back foot at the start of a turn is a little bit smoother.... but it's hard to be sure I'm not kidding myself. I made some other changes whilst switching to these too: my board is a new design which definitely suits me; it's shorter than I used to ride, so likely more responsive; and thanks to someone here whose advice I took... I mellowed out my back foot angle somewhat. Oh well, it's all good, doesn't matter why. And here's the Gen 2 Phantom levers as shipped. I presume they send the 10mm metric wrenches because in the US no one has them. It seems overkill. The Gen 1 levers had small cheap disposable wrenches. I do think their industrial design is better than the competition - these are neat and sexy.

I think the number of people carving, or wanting to carve, is larger than it was. That's an unalloyed good. I look forward to a time when I can once again admit to being a snowboarder, and people won't assume I'm a side slipper numpty who will slow them down. Yay. Bring it on. Those additional numbers have to come from the general snowboarding population - people currently using soft boots. People often tell me they're surprised that I can ride well in powder, what with my hard boots and all. I just laugh, because it's not about the boots. Turn that around the other way, and I'm not remotely surprised that soft booters are able to carve well in their chosen footwear. => It's not about the boots. My understanding is that soft boot setups can be harder than my own boots. It's still not about the boots.

Sounds rough in the tree well. I always have backup buddy somewhere out there, so there's that. I've never really been in a well, although this season I ended up near the surface upside down within the lip of a monster. Inevitably my buddy came to laugh at me as I tried to slide frontways out of it, failed, and had to take my board off to rotate, then post-hole out. The wells I see tend to be massive, and it'd be hard to fill them completely with snow, so I feel time is one one's side in those circumstances. At a heli op they equip you with a whistle, and you're supposed to blow it if you're in a well. I also have a radio, but I've never felt the need to use either. Some folk here use the F2 Intec T-handles, which have a Fastex compatible socket in the tops, in conjunction with a bit of string, so they can "pull the eject cord" without having to bend down at all. Back in the day you could buy F2 pants which had a pocket designed to take an extension of the T-handle, so you could step out of your bindings without apparently doing anything at all other than playing with the thing in your pocket! I liked my Intec bindings, but I don't miss them.. which makes sense to me at least.

I rode Intec step-ins for years, liking the solid connexion and the ease of clipping in at resorts. I also spend a lot of time in deep snow and never had a problem with the Intecs there. However I switched to levers with the Atomic Backland boots [because you can't run Intec heels there] and I really don't notice much difference. I doubt I'm any slower at resorts - I'm not lacking flexibility and it's easy to flip the lever. And then in deep snow... I did play briefly upside down in a tree well the other week... I relaxed and looked around, worked out that I would need to take my board off, reached for the levers and flipped them. So I'm not sure scrabbling about in my pants for the t-handle would make any difference. And then you don't have to clear so much snow out to re-engage the lever based bindings, so in general usage they're actually easier in powder. I'm not taking sides, just putting another perspective.

I don't think I posted this before, but I saw it today and thought it may fit here. That first curve looks a bit lumpy, harumph.

I still think dragging on the snow looks daft, but if people are going to do it, then maybe there's an opportunity for a custom clothing business...

And another video of Backlands/ Phantoms / F2 at Blue River. This one is at 40°/30°, which puts me off the bottom scale on the F2s, but it works really well.

After a while you stop falling over. I can't think of a different answer.

[quote]...love to hear you reason(s) on why you are not using alpine snowboard boots? [/quote]I used to use those, but they were very heavy. When I tried the Backlands... it turned out they seemed to perform better from the get go, to me. "Alpine Snowboard Boots" all seemed to me to be based on last century moulds, and built from material of the same generation. Season on season they'd change the colours, but there's nothing new there. My Atomics are all carbon fibre sexy, and as I was with hard boots from the start, I've no fears of using ski boots. In fact at least some of those Alpine Snowboard Boots are pretty much ski boots. That was why I took the risk, and I don't think I'll ever look back unless someone builds a brand new hard snowboard boot from scratch with modern principles. I feel kind of liberated - I could buy a Hawk boot if I want, finally I have a lot of choices. --- I'm still massively impressed with these things, I really do think they're a game changer. Saw some guy leading a class of split boarders at Whistler the other day... and he was packing these too. We now actually have young snowboard school teachers who are riding hard boots. -- I swapped my Phantom gen 1 levers for the gen 2 and they are pretty much identical except for the gen 2 ones auto-flip into walk less often. You can see they made the lock tighter. I had one untoward "flip into walk" in deep snow, so maybe I will still need a bit of wire or something to completely prevent that (I never walk!).

Well I'm going to put this in because I think it's a trend. In the helicopter line up... "are those boots standard AT boots or snowboard specific ones", followed by various questions about Phantom and "splitboard" technology. Then they usually tell me how they'd started trying more forward angles, and they were surprised how well those work. That's my "lift line", and that's what I'm getting. I'm inadvertently on trend, it seems, at least with people into this sort of snow.

Dunno. The first image, I would have my knees fully bent in a turn like that. They'd be forming about 90 degree angles. The second shot... same thing. That's not a "criticism" - I've no idea what knees are supposed to be up to in these turns... but I'd bend those suckers.

Slight update on my Phantom Levers. I bought them when they first came out... can't remember when that was, but pre Covid at least. After a few seasons use, all of it "downhill only", I found that the levers sometimes automatically switched into "walk mode", which I never use as I'm too lazy to walk. It seemed to get worse... that may be that the snow the last few weeks has been deep and a bit heavier than usual, or it may be that my new pants are less tight (ohh, err..) than the last ones. Whatever, it became a frequent issue. A ski strap holds the things in place, but the permanent temporary fix was a tie-wrap ("cable tie" in other countries). I pointed that out to Phantom, and their support admitted that they changed the design of the levers for their 2nd generation to avoid this. I bought some new levers plus a couple of the new head pieces, as I like to have 2 sets of everything... because hard boot spares are hard to find. Phantom no longer provide a full set of springs with the levers; not a problem for me as I've a full set from the 1st generation. Actually I've been using the standard (gold?) springs all the time, as they clearly work. Has anyone mucked around with the springs and if so... any views on that? Do you ride with both springs the same, or soften/ stiffen just one of them? I can't really imagine I could improve on things, hence I've not dicked with the springs.

I learned to ride snowboards there, because it was so small I found the skiing limited. I never put skis on since. Some years later I laughed a lot whilst watching a snowboard video with some Finnish professional guys. They boasted of having started their careers in "the mountains of Serena", which I enjoyed as a concept. In the late 1980s they had an icy half pipe there, which may have been where those guys learned their stuff. There were school trips, from what I remember.

A different type of snowpack to here though - poles don't really help with very soft snow. Although CMH used to recommend people "carry collapsible poles", so there's that. This chap actually rides with the poles, which I think affects ones stance, in powder. I never use poles, simply so I don't need to take abuse from skiers

Hyvä! Looks like midday. I picked bits out to view; my attention span isn't great. Gotta get me some fake hair so I can have mine streaming out of my helmet like that too. Reminds me of Serena Ski, only obviously much bigger!

I knew this, and thought of it today as I saw a guy heliboarding with poles. I didn't comment, of course. I did think it funny though - he had soft boots and poles, I had hard boots. Between us we could have managed one skier or one park rat, if we'd distributed the toys cleverly enough between us. But anyway, when the South Koreans finish up re-introducing carving to the Americans, we should remember not to take the Mick out of people riding park boards in suck [sic] stance. We have to show we're better, not just on the snow, but in the lift lines too.

( I rode with Block for a week back in the day. I was surprised when I heard he also drove cars, and surprised [in a good way] when I heard he'd lived that long.) But yeah, so carving is cool again. Who'd have guessed? Those split board guys are even making hard boots cool again. In a forum called "carving central", that's got to be the best news in about a quarter century of decline

Perhaps the more important thing is that... they're selling carving.

Do not ever raise your back hand above "handbag height". I do it occasionally when fighting for balance, but it looks ugly in photographs, of which I wasted more than on excellent shot with that. I did consider photoshopping the arm back where it should be, but it seems like cheating. With a softer board, on piste, you can get some really really deep carves with very little effort. Sometimes pushing the back knee backwards a bit at the end of a turn seems to help round out the turn.

Impressive. But quite carefully done. They move the bindings about, and you have to look at the bits where he's actually getting any edge versus much of the rest. You can see the way the board vibrates in the slow-mo shot - there's a surface texture which the board's nose & tail (not the mid section) is slicing. Zambonied ice would have been more of a challenge; I guess they picked the parts of the surface to turn on quite carefully. The other thing is that the guy is at quite high speed before the turns which actually cut are made. Great marketing though, cleverly done.

My advice would be to ride a lot of different boards and find what works. 3D has been around for a long time; I've not tried the new stuff [yet], but it probably won't be taking over in slalom racing anytime soon. I'd say you're less likely to find a particularly wide range of use for such a board. The 3D Fish is as popular as the old Fish was in powder; I don't think it's much different there, although I'd guess it'd ride worse on hardpack if you encounter that. [quote]It seems that the tech has gotten to the point that you can conceivably do all three categories on either soft or hard, with debatable compromises, particularly at either end of the spectrum.[/quote] The current generation of boards (specifically the Hometown Hero for me) is entirely capable of carving circles with ease, whilst also being my choice for helicopter powder. That's a first for me, ever. Perhaps that happened because soft booters are re-discovering how to carve turns, and modern soft boot boards therefore support high speed carves better. My board has a 6.6m sidecut, but it'll ride any radius I like, and unlike previous boards doesn't fall apart at resort-illegal speed. To me the trick is not to ride like a hard booter, and particularly not to use "hard boot" boards which are too specific, like a track bike or something. I happen to use hard boots, but like a split boarder, that's not the defining thing.

Yeah, it's an effective way to stop you singing to yourself as you ride, as well. So there is that.

There's a thread here where people post music they're listening to... I kind of assumed that was whilst they were riding, but maybe not. I used to file my records by how noisy they were, and for snowboarding I stick to the noisy end; I suppose it's classed as rock/ punk or something like that, "granny music" I guess. I ride better with a decent rhythm. If I'm riding alone I'll have some voice content for the up-haul. From a safety perspective, I don't rely on my ears at all. As with my bike riding, I like to look behind all the time so I know what's there. I'm quicker than anyone other than the out of control straight liner, and I'm pretty sure I can see them well before anyone can hear them scream. I've never been hit, and fully intend to keep it that way. I don't stop on runs either, it breaks my rhythm and kind of ruins the exercise. Each to their own. Technology: Sony WM4 in-ear buds with custom moulds. You can set up the noise cancelling/ voice amplification plus they'll shut up automatically should you speak to someone. They work reliably inside a helmet even at cold temperatures, and the power lasts all of a winter day at least.

Me too. Although there are lots of different ways to do this, perhaps there needs to be a sticky or something here advising people of roughly how most people set the gear up, in case someone comes along and doesn't know.

about 75cm overnight. It's unridable when you get that much though - you can't ride the steeper stuff as everything's sliding, and the flatter stuff... you can't penetrate. I have had many days following a skier-laid single-file track down the steepest safe thing... it isn't very much fun. You know you're in the good stuff when you have to time your breathing with the turns. My first ever heli trip in 1989 had that on the first run: I was screwed.