philw

I've used Intecs since they first came out - I'd have to dig out the receipts to figure out when it was, but 1997 or something? I still have my first pair of heels/ bindings and I still ride them. I suppose they've done more than a man-year on snow and they work as well as the first day. These are actually in "proflex" [now F2?] bindings, the ones which make Bombers/ Cateks look like tanks. Anyway, they have a few nicks in the plastic from European lift lines, but they're good for another n years. I'm only putting 60-odd kilos through them mind, and they're adjusted so they're tight.

The whole idea of trying to profit from the death of someone in your family is pretty disgusting. If the report is right then the defence was that non-release is safer than release, which may well be correct but it's not the line I'd take. It seems to me that if you strap yourself on a board and then hurtle down a slope that there are certain obvious risks which the suppliers of the equipment can't protect you from. I can see why you have a lot of rich lawyers over there.

I have some of the original titanium disks which I bought with the bindings. I guess they don't produce those any more. They cost an arm and a leg, but they work fine and they're way stiff. I haven't tried those Intecs - they have the same toe adjuster as the race bindings, and the toe/ heel pieces look the same. The base plate looks less solid - it's an aliminium plate (?) on mine.

:) I think they should force all instructors and beginners to use soft gear. Tell them that hard stuff is evil and that it will kill them. That's what we need: a bit of decent marketing.

I rode an Atomic in 1989 here in Wuro land. I think they invented the name "Oxygen" to get around the anti-ski marketing thing which happened in the early 1990s. I assumed that they'd reverted to the Atomic name because that's all ancient history now. Their soft boards seemed well constructed compared with most of the stuff you see. I suppose they'll make race boards as soon as the sport gets fashionable again.

Well you can use soft-sided bags, but as someone who lives in a place which pretty much means I have to fly whenever I board on snow, they don't last long. My garage is lined with old Burton Wheely bags - they are top of the range gear and they're not very good. Even protecting the board edges and a lot of careful work with Duct tape means they don't last a season in general. A few years ago I just got fed up with buying those things and bought a "sport tube" from America. They delivered it here at some enormous expense, but you can get three boards and snowboard clothing in there at under 32Kgs and it's bomb proof. In a few hard seasons the baggage handlers have dented the corners, and the TSA have clipped the lock, but it's still going strong. Disadvantages: putting the two ends together requires some dexterity and a little practice. Getting stuff out ed route is not very easy.

What they said. Blue Tomato's the closest place to here for gear, so I have bought most of my kit there for a fair number of years. They're good. But as pointed out, there are also places your side of the Atlantic. I use the Intc/Proflex/F2 race bindings - the metal bits look the same as these, but there's less plastic stuff around and they look simpler. Im sure they'll all work, but the race bindings are really simple and effective.

His stance looks a bit open to me in this shot. Speed courses are steep, but I think a little photoshop tilting may have occured there. Ditto the speed blur - you can't blur the rider without blurring the board also. The blur in front of his left hand is particularly interesting. How do you stop? They steer with the fingers. They stop by gradually uncurling and eventually standing up with arms outstretched. I was shooting one of these events the other week and the only minor crash was way down in the decelleration area. The rider was way down below and had been breaking for sometime before he caught an edge and shot off into the netting. He hit the safety nets and took a whoe section of them out. He was uninjured. I was just impressed as if they crashed that hard when they'd almost stopped, it kind of emphasized how fast they'd been going earlier.

Yeah, these guys wanna watch it - I might have to take legal action if they try to name elements of my style and claim them for their own.

Duck. I think it's supposed to help riding switch, which I guess makes sense. Although the "trick" aspects of riding backwards are less impressive if you're not actually riding backwards, in my opinion. In the UK flatland it's very fashionable. It will be interesting to see if the next generation do it. I've never seen anyone run trees or steeps with such a stance, but perhaps it can be done.

I know what you mean - to judge by what you see on the slopes and what the magazines show (see TWS thread). But I've ridden with several BC people who are well capable of doing both of the above. But then they're ex-pros and they ride everyday for work: they could carve a dinner tray.:)

I suppose you're not expecting to get a lot of people saying: "gee, thanks: we've been hanging out on this hardboot forum but now you told us soft boots are better we can stop". ;-) It's all good - I'd like to see more soft boot riders capable of riding bumps. Me, I'm not really interested in riding backwards, aerial ballet, or rails. So for what I do, hard gear performs better and is, in my terms, more flexible. I can use the same board to ride everything from ice through resort powder, and I don't have to fear bumps or steeps in between. Never a sideslip shall escape my edges, stopping aside. That's why I'm here.

It's not quite what you asked, but the trick to going really fast, or so I'm told, is not to bother with turning at all. Think 2m boards, blunt edges. Speed boarders also have their hands in front rather than behind, as they trim using their hands. Here's a chap on production kit (Sims Burner) at about 130km/h

TWS is a kind of boy-band-style magazine for pubescent males. It's all vaguely strange to those of us who are acually able to hold conversations with members of the opposite sex. It's a "fanzine". The magazine is pushing a different sport, closer to skate than boarding. It would be bad for them if truth were out, and the macho teens were found to be sideslipping the beginner terrain whilst old guys rip the steeps.

To answer the question, yes I do know, having ridden both a fair amount in heli terrain. I wrote some stuff on the Fish a year or two back here, and there's a link on that page to some stuff from this season on the Kyhber. On your specifics... I didn't look close enough to see where the sidecut's centered, but I think it's on the stance, if you see what I mean. You can check that in the shop I guess. It feels more floaty than the Fish as you might expect, although that's not necessarily a positive thing. I ride hard boots centered as marked (which on the Fish is slightly back by design). "Float" isn't really the same issue with these boards as with trad designs - yoy ride lower, but they work brilliantly anyway. Having ridden a slalom board in heli terrain I think the problem there is more width and therefore stability rather than float. I don't care how far in the snow I am (so long as I can breathe every so often), but keeping a race board level is hard. Landing jumps is also hard because the stiffness makes the transition rough and the narrowness makes it hard to balance. I think. All that said, with trad design boards, you need to go big. The Fish stuff just works differently in the snow. If you're paying the pilot you don't ride much chop, but I've ridden the Fish in tracked out chicanes which you use to exit some runs. It's much easier in those conditions than a trad (wide) powder board. I think this is simply becase it's no so wide so I don't have so much overhang (that is, board sticking out beyond where my feet stop). This is the opposite problem of most of my bling bling boarding bretheren. But then they're mostly sitting on their arses wondering what happened anyway. I carry a Fish with my race board these days.. two boards is all I can manage to lug around. I ride the race board any day when there's a base, the Fish when it's bottomless. Here's a Kyhber shot..

We've had this before. I have found that the results are similar for me. So I either need my back boot to have a lot of lean, or to have some heel lift. And my front boot needs to have little lean, or to have some toe lift. With the Indy boots I find that the lean adjusters don't work so well as with the 225s (if you crank them forward you get no spring action), so I just trade in some heel lift instead.

To answer the question, you need more practice. We have enough icy bumps from time to time out here in Urp, and that's why many of us ride hard gear. I seldom if ever see any people on soft gear in the bumps, and then they're either sitting on their baggy pants or sideslipping. You have to pick your bumps and your conditions, just the same as skiers. If you're disatisfied with your gear anyway then perhaps taking that out of the equation will help anyway.

I used to ride with CD players, before that tapes, and now with MP3. I don't rely on my ears to know what's happening, and I've never had a collision or been hit. I tend to ride quickly enough not to have to bother about people behind me. I once broke a CD player on a mogul field, but that was years ago and recently I've had no trouble. The CD players had little buffers, so riding agressively (say on a bump run) would make them skip. The cd quality was better than the iPod, but the vibration-proof business plus size/ battery/ flexibility of mp3 wins out. Obviously I wouldn't encourage people to do something they don't feel comfortable with. That would be irresponsible; I'm not.

It's not a problem I've really come across - perhaps I'm picking bigger resorts. Even when things get crowded it's reasonably amusing slaloming around people. Often the slope looks like a lot of people just standing around - if you go fast enough then that's how it seems. And no, I don't/ haven't ever hit anyone, and I don't eat children etc etc. I guess I also do a lot of different types of turn - I can wiggle my hips with the skiers too. How about learning how to do that. Then there's the mogus: not many people riding those, I find. Plenty of space.

Not sure I'm helping here but the 2004/5 Indys come with Thermoflex liners and no power-strap, if that makes sense. The liners weigh less than the old-style 225 liners.

(just for completion..) Had lunch with the FIS sec today and the original information is correct... The FIS don't have a rulebook for speed boarding available on their site because it's not an official FIS sport. They do of course have the rule book for speed skiing there. The author of both rule books is the same guy who told me about this. He assured me again that use of releasable bindings are mandatory in his rule book for speed snowboarding, if you see what I mean. Obviously you could have non-FIS controlled races using anything you like.

Yeah, but unless you got them the wrong way around I prefer the first. The second is a tad oversharpened on my [sharp] monitor, and although the blue cast in the first is a bit too strong, I think you did an "auto" on it which makes it too gray, IMHO. The first one needs a touch of shadow/highlight to bring out the rider, and perhaps a bit of minus on the blue I think. The first set of shots isn't sharp though - perhaps the Autofocus couldn't keep up, or it's the batch processing which isn't giving them their best face. If they are sharp, then do some USM after resizing them. CRTs are generally softer than LCDs. Sharpen for the LCD, but expect the thing to look soft on the CRT. If you're printing, oversharpen a fair bit as ink-jets are way soft.

Snowboarding isn't World Cup, but on this course in Austria they were happy for Snowboarders and others to run. I'll get hold of Peter Bittner's contact details in due course - perhaps he can help. Otherwise I'l talk to the FIS sec about Sun Peaks. He was very much trying to get speed snowboarding fired up (he and Peter B explained that they had been "writing the rule book" on it). Perhaps there's a way to approach it which would keep everyone happy. This comp took two days, with no entry fee and free food, beer and I think accommodation for the competitors. The wind is measured along the course and has to be less than 15km/h cross or something like that. The "production" class was invented precisely for the reasons you suggest. In practice and on this comparitively slow/technical course the fastest "production" guys were up with the "professional" guys in practice. It's just as speeds increase that the fairings and stuff make more difference. I looked at it on my Donek FC1 and wimped out when I saw the steepness and computed the cost of the cameras I was carrying. But it would be interesting to start low and work up until you ran out of bottle.

Ah, you spotted the nutter in the Swingbo. There was also a world-record set for airboards (like an inflatable body-board) and another nutter riding a kid's shovel at over 120km/h, plus a guy on Figls! Here's the swingbo: The shovel guy's second and third shot here. The Figl guy is first shot here. I don't have the final (faster) results, but the practice times were: snowboard: 129.96 km/h Figls: 131.29 km/h Airboard: 120.4 km/h I can't find the time for the Swingbo guy but he was definitely up there with everyone else. As I said above, this is a technical course so the pro skiers were doing about 150km/h only in practice. I roped down the start and it was stupidly steep, even for a raceboarder. The slope was iced by the local fire brigade.

Yeah, I already checked those but they don't appear to cover snowboard. I know that it's not a World Cup sport, which may be why it's not there. But I know that the Secretary of the FIS Speed Ski Committee and Peter Bittner were both involved in writing the rules, so perhaps they are correct. Maybe the American event wasn't FIS homologated? I'll have a beer with the sec in a day or two and check.