philw

I spent a fun day at Mike Wiegele's on a Slalom board (Nitro Scorpion 163 to be precise). It was the end of a long heli-session so I thought I'd try something different. Otherwise I've ridden a GS board in the same conditions many times. The GS board is ok but the stiffness doesn't really help you in the turns or in the jumps. Balance is a challenge. The Slalom board was of course pretty damned usless - balance was very hard, flats were a nightmare (not enough surface area), and it was probably the hardest workout I've had for a long time (and I do know how to ride heli-terrain). Trust me: this is not a good idea. For normal resort powder, which has a solid base, it's a different story, and race boards are much more useful. Given enough powder and / or the choice I'd still use a Fish there.

Well I have a snowboard one from a few years ago and it fits two boards plus boots & stuff easily, a third board also at a push. Mine came with a lock which your TSA people will chop; I replaced mine with a pin and circlip of which I carry a spare. The baggage handlers won't take the thing if you put more than 32Kgs in there. They will bang the corners in a bit but that doesn't seem to matter. Old Burton Wheely cases, of which I have about 5, are good for lining garage walls so you don't bang your car doors into them. They're bog-all use for serious travel - they always fail at some god-awful airport like SFO where they charge you for the baggage trollies... As far as boots in hand baggage is concerned, I've heard that said (the heli operators used to recommend it) but I don't think it's practical. Many countries are fairly sensitive about hand-baggage allowance, which is often about 6kgs plus sttrict dimension limts. It is a pain when some crappy airline delays your boards, but that's the way it goes. It happened to me last year - I had to ride on crappy soft hire gear and borrowed clothes for a day - but you have to take stuff like that. Well you do if you fly united.

I use 50 parallel on fish these days. Kind of mellow compared to my piste settings, but you don't have the same dynamics and 50 seems like a good compromise to me. I still ride with what was a once called new-race-method facing-forward stance, so I can see the trees on both sides. I have ridden much wider boards (eg Supermodel, Canyon, the Solomon equivalents etc) with similar stance angles. The biggest problem was stance-width, as manufaturers increased the minimum width to meet the needs of phat kids' stances. Those can be bad with hard boots. Holding an edge on anything resembling hard-pack would be tricky with a wide-board and forward-stance. Not a problem for me as I'm not riding lift-serviced with these boards.

Well I live in England, but I don't bother with tour companies. Their philosophy is to take care of everything for you, which is fine if that's what you want. You will be herded into nasty aeroplanes with hordes of brightly coloured, excited and overweight holidaymakers. You'll be bussed to your resort, where you'll stay from changeover day to changeover day irrespective of snow conditions. They will expect you to take group lessons and will buy them and your lift pass for you. Some people like it. The bigger companies are all much of a muchness in my view. They change their names and take each other over every now and again. There are a number of smaller "specialist" companies who tend to focus on one or two resorts. Often these do the "chalet holiday" type of trip. It's kind of like the English dinner party transported to the alps. Sometimes they have free alcohol: draw your own conclusions. You can have great holidays with any of these. Just book it with a credit card (gives you some protection) and ensure they're ABTA listed. If you're a bit more adventurous then you can either drive (13 hours or so to Tignes from North London) or fly (easy jet - from about £25 to £100 each way depending on timing) to the alps and get on with it. This will cost you more, but you'll be able to eat what you want and go where you want. If you want "deals", then you may need to stay in an unfasionable place (eg Morzine instead of Avoriaz etc), or book last minute. I tend to opt for the latter, as that way you can go where the snow is...

I guess I can't really answer the original question as although I've ridden soft boots they, well, just too soft. I don't know what the "free" word means - it's used and abused by any marketer who wants a positive word. For powder I just clip the boots in a Fish and get on with it.

I heard he was working as a guide for the Whistler Cat operator... perhaps you can hold several of those jobs down.

I've seen a fair bit of aerial ballet on snowboards, as that's mostly the fashion here at the moment. FWIW skiers are actually rather better at it, and as someone alluded above, they have a bit more flexibility which helps with some of the contortions. Calling it "free"-something is kind of strange, but I guess the kids wouldn't feel so butch if they thought of it as what it is. How about synchronized aerial snowboard ballet for an olympic sport? Ok, you'd have to be on drugs too.. There's nothing at all wrong with the flat land stuff of course. Personally I'd like as many people as possible to do it, especially those who can't turn. Do I know or care about the boy-band-teen heart throbs who help brand the gear? No.

Heli operators ban use of leashes partly for this reason. "getting out" quickly is fairly important generally, especially for novice back-country riders. Specifically: (a) you'll need to be quick out-and-in if you lose speed on a flat; and (b) you may need a rapid exit if caught in a tree well. To me those are both much more likely than making a flying exit in an avalanche, but getting out rapidly there might be helpful too. Personally I use the Intec stuff, so it's a pull on one or two handles and I'm out of there. All the guides I know use clickers with a rope rigged as shown by my mate below. The theory is similar to my Intec rapid exit. As fas as avalanches are concerned, as you note we just don't want to go there. Personally I would expect that I'd be trying to ride out of a slide rather than dumping my board, but I hope I never have to find out.

Well YMMV, but I've never had a problem with Air Canada or anyone else, including many flights last season. Obviously what they write on their web sites is the law as far as this is concerned. Flying within Europe it's generally not an issue so long as you're within your 20kg limit. There are some exceptions, such as some budget airlines, so it's wise to check before you book. Flying to Canada/ the US it's usually not an issue. The check-in people use a "two checked bags" rule, so one snowboard bag isn't an issue. The last time I flew AC they even weighed my bag (about 26kgs) and stuck a "heavy" label on it. There was no charge. 32Kgs is the limit for any single piece through LHR and probably anywhere else. I've had my Air Canada bags transfered from the atlantic to internal flights without any hassle, even though some of those turbo-prop 'planes are small. Note that English check-in people are more prissy than just about any other nation, so you need to be careful if you don't want hassle. [i'm English so I'm allowed to say that.] Flying out of Canada is even less hassle. There are usually lots of people with boards and skis; I think there'd be a riot at YVR if they started charging. It's never been an issue so far. Unlike the "airport improvement" tax.

It's good that SJ is at least considering covering people who can hold an edge. I'd have thought that there must be enough talent around here to provide some material. The problem I have personally is that I so rarely see anyone else on hard gear that it's difficult to get pictures of them. I wonder if the way forward with all this isn't to push the gear, or a particular type of [laid out] turn. That approach allows TWS and those kids to write us off as a separate sport. Perhaps a better angle would be to "sell" grace and speed down the mountain. That's what people see when they say "wow, how do you do that" on the hill. I'm thinking that you could sell riding well as something to aspire too, rather than something uncool. It doesn't actually matter how the board's fastened to your feet.

St Anton's right on the rail line, so it's easy to get to that way. There's also a road of course. It's a compact place - the lifts go pretty much from the village (ok, there are other villages too..). Accomodation: most places have a tourist office, probably accessible on line. Generally harder than the US to find places to stay, particularly at holidy periods. IMHO it's best to have a car so you can drive to where the good snow is. Austria's low and doesn't always get it. There are lots of bus and shared-taxi services from most ski-related airports to the resorts; google for them. Boards? I always carry two (hard boot) set-ups... one for piste and resort powder and the other for back country. As stated, you can rent soft stuff but that's about it these days.

I just tried my Grivels (step ins, top model, can't remember what they are) on my Raichle (top model, can't remember what they are) boot. The Raichle soul is longer than plastic climbing boots, so you'd have to get the spanner out to lengthen the crampons, although there's plenty of scope for that. I didn't actually want to change my crampons, so I can't be 100% sure, but it looks like it'll work fine. The clip at the back appears to clear the Intec pins and passes outside the heel, so that should be ok. I think it'll work ok.

A slalom board from about 1994, just when symetrical race boards and "the new race method" with forward facing stance was taking off. Well at least it was here. They changed the design a few times, but the original had red/white graphics and a black base. Perfect flex design for my weight.

Or go up the sea-to-sky highway to Whistler, then North past Pemberton to the back of beyond (Lilouet?), then across to Cache Creek & kamloops. I think I'd prefer that, or the Okanagan route, to the main drag with all the lorries. It depends what you like. Warning: there's nowhere decent to eat in Cache Creek.

Yeah, I've never had a problem with them on the big transatlantic jets or the local torbo-props. They may have changed the rules, but last year was the same as ever. They don't open the bags to count how many boards you have in them in any case ;-)

I regularly heli-board in December in BC. Of course the days are short - you can probably find a web site somewhere which tells you sun-up/ sun-down times. Heli operating ours are pretty closely tied to those. At Wiegele's the last pick up is one hour prior to sun-down, so typically in December you'd get: 08:15 First flight 15:00 Last pickup time Or something there-abouts. Prices are often lower at that time for this reason: you're going to get less vertical. That said, my average for a week in December is something over 150,000ft, so I'm not complaining. In practice the snow's usually pretty good at this time of year, although it can be cold. The average standard of rider tends to be higher, because the terrain is harder. You don't board glaciers if there's flat light or a storm, so you're in the trees. Novices don't like trees. So probably December's my favorite time of year. Vertical-wise, you need to be of the highest standard to be in the last heli of the day. Translation: if you're asking questions about it, then day length is unlikely to be a restriction on what you want to do. You probably get more down days in December/ January that later in the season, but that's a lottery in any case. I'm not actually sure that cats have fewer down-days than helis. They're stopped by different things is all. Anstey I can't really tell from their map but it looks to be down by Revelstoke. That's a ways from Blue River. Wiegele's is bounded by CMH Valemont in the North and Monashees in the East.

Ohh yeah. Asymettric, black. Radical. Or at least the one I'm thinking of was. Probably about 1992. I think I have a magazine with a review of those in it somewhere, although I don't of course have the copyright to their pictures. If one doesn't turn up I'll try to dig it out anyway.

CMH have a place at Revelstoke, operating out of a hotel on the trans canadian I think. There may be an independent operator there too. Kelly wasn't with either I understand, although I have seen him at Wiegele's. There are shed-loads of operators; it just depends what you want.

I don't think it's the opposite of my riding style - I carve pistes but I spend a lot of time in heli-terrain, also in comfortable hard boots & using plates. That's a separate discussion, but I think that the sort of skill which allows you to carve is the same sort of skill which gets you about on the untracked. For sure there aren't many rails there. I have some bs about heliboarding here. Most of my experience is at Wiegele's, but I've also done some time at CMH and elsewhere. Alaska is a different game, from what I understand. It kind of depends what you want, but as you're asking, then probably BC is a good place to start. Wiegele's generally has a lot of people around, and a lot of flexibility in helicopters. That means that they can group people more effectively than smaller operators.... so if you're a hot-shot you've less chance of being held up, or if you're a learner then you've less chance of holding others up.

Opinions are easy, facts perhaps a bit more difficult. FWIW... I think that most equipment is what used to be called "beginner/ intermediate" stuff, and there seem to be many boarders who attain that level. That's perhaps ok whilst the fashion is for "freestyle", but it doesn't really cut it out on the mountain. Hence I think that at the moment snowboarding might be losing a lot of people back to skiing. Once you know how to sideslip, and assuming you're not interested in ballet-boarding, then there's no where to go. There will presumably be some data which would confirm or deny this. The fashion wheel does turn, and some people always want to be expert, so there may be an opportunity ahead. The challenge for the industry fashion leaders will be to change with the fashion, but the're good at that. Look at Solomon: the epitome of ski and golf fashion takes snowboarding without breaking stride. The challenge for the small players who are helping us now, will be to capitalize on any shift and increase their share. That's a tough one. I have a mate who's opening a snowboard shop in north america to sell "real snowboards". He's not a hard-booter, but he wants to sell expert gear for ripping, not beginner junk. Of course the market for the latter's going to be bigger than the one for the former.

Carving is certainly possible, but it's much harder than on snow for the reason you give. You need sharp edges and good technique.... not a problem for most on this board, but many local boarders never learn how to hold an edge. On the other hand, if you can rip on this stuff then everything else is pretty easy. On Dendix you can load it pretty much as hard as you can manage, but you have to bear in mind that you're not going to go very fast on a 200m long Dendix hill full of sideslipping beginners. Think of it as gym training and you'll get the basic idea. You can see that the fashion for freestyle is good for slopes like this. Snowflex is better to fall on that Dendix. Most of us have some Dendix scars.

Oh yeah.. we have a fair choice here in the uk, where Snowflex is made. There's: (1) Dendix This is the stuff with wide hexagons of bristles. Pictures from a local Dendix slope. (2) Snowflex As per your link. Here's a shot of it in use from a Snowflex halfpipe in Sheffield (think "the full monty"): (3) Indoor snow Like artificial snow only indoors. Some pictures of our local indoor slope. What's it like? Well you can figure that the hills are generally quite small, hence it's mostly flatland stuff. There are a few carvers around. It's not as fast as snow, so the slopes have to be built very steep and they have "misting" systems to reduce friction. If you're living in the UK then pretty much either you use this stuff or you're likely to be crap.

<shrug> Even the political jokes are so parochial that they make no sense to me. Perhaps it would be more polite to have a separate area for USA politics, so the rest of us can easily avoid it, at least here? Kerry. It's a county in Ireland. Visit it sometime, but don't take your snowboards. Check out Northern Ireland whilst you're at it, although please don't sponsor anything.

IMHO for deep powder ya want a soft tail. The nose doesn't make that much difference to the ride: the tail's where the action is.

Well if it works for you... Someone had a bag of those at a back-country place I was at a few years ago. Some people tried them for a day, but I didn't see anyone taking them out for a second day. I suppose I'm prejudiced because I can't see how they might work: the engineering doesn't stack up. They look weird though.