philw

I have the F2 bindings, but how I set them depends on the boots. (1) with Ski boots I rode flat. (2) With Rachlie 225s (race tongues) I rode the minimum toe/ heel lift, which I think is one degree each (you take the two little cants and insert them back-to-back to make a straight lift). (3) I just changed names along with Rachlie to some "deeluxe" Indy boots. These have a different flex pattern and adjustmeent. I found that 1 degree toe lift is still ok on the front with minimum lean on the boot, but with one degree on the heel of the back foot I couldn't "get my knee down". A day's riding gave me a red shin on the back leg. I stuck the next smallest lift in there, which looks like about 6 degrees. Anyway, that fixes it... my knee is now officially where I want it to be and all is well with the world. Binding wise anyway: my gods deliver.

The fish still rules here at Wiegele's, although they have a bunch of Prior Kybers and also the Maloho. The main weakness of the Fish is that it's short, so it's not quite so easy as a bigger board in open glaciers. But that's easy terrain anyway, and I haven't had a problem with it. I use the standard (marked) stance, which is a fraction set back by default. I stick my F2 race plates in there, and move them both inwards (they have about a centimeter of play in the forward-back direction for each insert location). This gives me a slightly narrower stance that Burton would like, but it's still centered where the board is designed to have your weight, if you see what I mean. I detune my piste 60/60 angles to 50/50. I haven't really tried anything else but this works ok. The board's wide enough anyway. The Fish simply rules in the trees. I thought it might be a woofta board (for beginners), but it's not and if you can ride trees on a trad board you'll just go so much faster and better on one of these. In Wiegele's Ive never seen anyone ride two days in a row on a swallowtail, and I think the reason is that there is much tree riding here. The Fish on the other hand, I've never seen anyone pick one up and then give it back... I have some BS from a year ago on the Fish here . Have fun!

Hmm. Check out my new Indy booties on a Fish. There's not that much that I'd call powder, but enough to make a case I think. This was shot today. Apologies for the terrible arm position, but I was trying to avoid crashing at the time

Fanatyc: http://www.fanatykco.com/ sells Prior boards including ones with points at the front. They also stock Catek Olympic stuff, boots etc. It's kind of back from the main slope a fraction, next to a good coffee shop ("behind the grind" or some such). I'll be there once I'm done with the powder, in the new year.

No compulsory helmets please. Or compulsory "intelligent design" either for that matter!

I don't think it's a good idea to mix & match bindings - get a pair and use them like that. I think this is not a profitable line of thought. As far as the X-bone things, I'm not sure I'd go for anything other than the FE race bindings (or whatever they're branded these days). These come with wedges so you can set the cant etc up the way you like, then forget it. Again, you don't want to be thinking about micing one manufacturer's cant with another's binding, imho.

Clearly it's possible to learn in either set-up. The root issue I think is perhaps: "which is easier to learn in", or even: "which approach gets you where you want to be". If your kids want to ride the park, then the choice is obvious. If they want to ride the whole mountain, I'd say the same thing but my choice of gear would be different. p

In my opinion, no. That said, I never understood "detuning" on any kind of board. I have heard the rationale about catching edges, but I don't understand it. "Catching an edge" is a technique problem. Strangely enough my Fish actually has instructions painted on it for "detuning", which is weird as that's the one board where the edge sharpness is totally irrelevant as it only gets used in bottomless!

Ibuprofen it is. If it makes you sick, stop taking it in order to stop being sick. Massage takes the pain away for a few hours but doesn't seem to change things beyond that. Beer seems to help. Actually beer seems to help lots of things. Cheaper than that homeo-junk and it actually contains some interesting molecules. Gel form Ibuprofen is good for shin-bang, as are thermofit liners.

"rag doll", which I think is fairly self explanatory.

I can't think of a European chair without a bar, and most of them have foot rests which are useful for those of us who fancy a rest. You're generally required to put the bar down, and there's absolutely no problem/ issue with getting out of it all at the top station. I have noticed the whole "macho" thing in the US, which is kind of weird when you consider the US penchant for helmets, lawyers and stuff. I abuse your friendly hospitality and politely put the bar down... chairs can stop quickly and I don't want to have to even think about hanging onto them.

I don't think riding the edges takes any more effort that sideslipping, but it's hard to tell as it's all technique. If you're working hard then probably more practice will help - I don't find it particularly hard to ride quickly top-to-bottom without stopping almost anywhere (eg Whistler, Les Arcs). And I'm old enough not to be doing it on basic fitness. I can't see why you'd get pain specifically there, although it's easy to get "shin bang" on the front boot. Some experimentation with the front-back angles on the boot might help (toe/ heel lift settings plus boot lean). What gear are you riding? p

(how does that Springsteen song go about "glory days"...?) I started in '89 as that was the first time I saw a board setup which I thought looked ridable. I was on some 160ish Atomic board (before they got ashamed of the name and then less ashamed of it again) with ski boots. Later I got some "UPS" hard snowboard boots, but I went back to ski boots as the "snowboard" boots were too soft. I never learned to skid turns, so I never felt the need for floppy boots. I've rented soft boots a couple of times when United delayed my bags, but soft boots make my feet hurt and I hate the lack of control. Occasionally I'll be hanging out at some apres-board cafe and I'll notice that the other [soft] borders all have taken their boots off... I've forgotten I'm wearing mine the second I put them on.

Burton's an excellent adolescent marketing company; what's that got to do with the sport? The newer wave is a much better bet - they have focus and they care about the product and the sport which Burton never did. </rant off> Now what was the question again?

I've found a 163 SL board works well for me: obviously you need something which flexes reasonably in that sort of usage. I think picking your type and condition of moguls helps a great deal, more even than with skiing. Big nasty icy bumps are trickier on a board than on skis if only because you don't have the independent leg action thing available to you, or poles. I wouldn't buy a "mogul specific" board, but I do expect my piste board to be able to handle piste, which generally has bumps on it here and there. Actually I thought that this was one of the things which sets hard-booters apart: it's straightforward to ride moguls.

Donek will ship to Europe: they take care of all that stuff including duty etc. I regularly ship boards back here, but I tend to carry them myself. Otherwise, the price you quote sounds too much. Presumably if it's for export then there's no US sales tax? You may have a bit of duty and VAT to pay (the courier will collect it COD generally).

Actually it isn't if you're trying to search for F2 ;-) Have a go and you'll see what I mean. I'm kind of interested in the American bindings, partly because they're now relatively cheap, and partly because they look so well crafted and generally cared-about. But looking at them, I'm not sure I need all that complexity above my board, so perhaps I'll stick with my old F2(proflex) jobbies. They have teflon-coated steel recievers, so they don't seem to wear. I wonder why both Bomber and Catek have choosen to suspend the boot platform above the binding. I know skiers' views on "risers" change with the fashion, but what's the reason for such a high profile, other than that it gives an opportunity for suspension (Bomber), which I don't need.

It's ok, and it's not hard to get to other places from there. I haven't been for quite a few years, but when I was there it was mostly intermediate terrain with the more interesting stuff fairly high up. I thought that was a good idea, as in poor snow the stuff you'd lose was just motorway. The catch is that some of the higher lifts close in bad weather, or at least they did when I was there. As far as good places for carving, pretty much anywhere with snow will do. Unlike some other styles of snowboarding stuff like tunnels & mogul fields are straight forward... just takes a bit of practice.

True, but there's not exactly much suspension on my road cycle, and my "sports" car is pretty stiff, as are my windsurfer sails... All these things flex of course, but it's about having the right type of flexibility in the right places. It's good that there's a choice in stuff like this. I tried some of the Intec Proflex (now F2) bindings with the suspension things a few years back and ended up dumping the dampers - they are removable and what you're left with is essentially the same as the undamped Proflex race plates.

I took a hard look at Skype a while back for some investors and irrespective of what you guys use to buy your boards, the business case is a bit kind of important. If you're trying to borrow money from people then you really need to figure out how to pay it back in most countries. Even your churches need money to run. There are a few other interesting features of Skype, principally the claimed "distributed" directory and the proprietary tunnel approach to the VOIP protocol. When I tried it the directory didn't work (it was all hosted in Norway IIRC) the tunnel was an interesting hack, but I'd kind of rather they fixed H.323, SIP etc than go down any proprietary route. Plus there are some potential security issues with hosting other people's tunnelled communications on your machines. Sorry, I was looking to talk about bindings...

(good thread). My experience... (1) Leg Breakers I've been riding a lot since the 1988/9 season and I only had one injury, which was a broken ankle on my front leg. This was in helicopter-accessed back country, and we were in the wrong place - the snow was crusty glacier stuff. I overcranked a turn slightly and the nose bit too deeply... the board augered in and I felt the boot break (Rachlie 225s), then something bad happened to my ankle. I rode down to the pickup on adrenaline, and they helied me out before the really bad pain started. The boot broke at the cant bit (which is a bad design anyway); the Intex Proflex race jobbies were unmoved. So if you can build me a binding which releases before the boot breaks, I would at least take a look at it. (2) Buried Logs I hit a log buried under about a meter of powder in Lake Louise in about 1996. It was a bit of a steep chute, and I was on a slalom board (Nitro Scorpian 1.0, 163, the red one). The nose of the board broke, and the laminates were left hanging by the top sheet. It didn't board down the rest of the run very well, but otherwise no damage was done. I was just pissed off that my board was toast. I borrowed some duct tape from a pisteur and scooted back to the base. Arguably a releasable binding may have saved the board: has anyone trashed a ski in the same manner, or did the bindings save it? (3) tree wells I ride a lot of trees. The "clicker" people tie a rope between their release handles and figure they'll grab that if they go in. I have my T-handles tucked up in side my pants, and I know where I'll be going if and when I get in a well. But I've ridden a lot of heli terrain over the years and never once yet fallen head-first into a tree well... if you're going there you tend to slide in backwards, which is not quite the same problem. I always figure that I'm in a better position than the old strappy people though - I don't have as far to reach and the problem's simpler. I do find the T-handles brilliant for heli use generally though: the bindings don't get cut up in the baskets; and you can get in and out so quickly that you're much quicker generally than the rest. This isn't really the same issue as binding-release on overload, as you don't load the bindings if you take a header into a tree well. In practice I'm not sure I'd look to releasability in this market. I want a binding which is stiff, and although it needs to be adjustable when I get it, once it's locked in I want it to stay locked in so I can worry about other stuff. I want it to be elegantly engineered and to do the job. Releasability may have more pull with beginners? I wonder if it might not be simpler to engineer releasability into the Intec pin mechanism, rather than putting something into the binding. Phil

I saw one in use in the mid 1980s, probably about '86 I think. That was in Tignes. The guys with it couldn't ride it.

Er, wot about the rest of the world? I thought Canada was a bit less parochial than your southern neighbours, but perhaps I was wrong. The best place is anywhere there's decent snow; if you need motorways then you just haven't progressed far enough to appreciate a decent mogul field.

Just to put another view, I hate leather gloves. It's ok if you have a bucket of scotch-guard or whatever and you don't mind playing in it every day, but for most use it's just not the right material. Goretex with taped seams is the only way to go. Anyway, gloves aren't hugely useful IMHO. Too many seams, too expensive, and too cold. And you can dump mitts much faster (which is essential for photography). Ok, I admit I don't actually thing it's particularly good style to actually touch frozen corduroy at mach 2. The trick is to know you could do it trivially, but you don't actually have to "put yer knee down".

Slightly OT, but that's the main thing for me generally - I just don't want slop in my systems, even in over-the-head powder.