EnisiWaya

P.S Just in case anyone is wondering , When this thread started I logged on to the CASI web site and studied everything I could access. It is a very expansive required knowlege base. Anyone with CASI certification at any level should be proud of it. Chase

Ditto Rob! let me ad some thoughts based on 42 seasons in this "business": AASI has their martini glass "Y" model. At our top level 3 cert you are expected to excell as a level 6 plus rider in at least one of the three disciplines, park, free ride, or alpine. the unwritten rule of unofficial level seven riding is when you get bored with your particular discipline and go back down to master one of the others, go master skiing or telmark or teleboard. How can a single mountain deny hard boot snowboarding when we have the Olympics and hard boot racing is such a big thing. Do they deny shaped racing style skis and the technique they require and force all the ski instructors to ski skidded "carves" on straight skis because it looks better to those who are stuck in the 70s and can't learn the newer technique for skis at 172cm with a 12 meter side cut radius? Yeah 2/3 of our ski instructors are still not edging thier skis until after they pass through the fall line even with the shaped skis. You mention a cross-under turn initiation pushing the skis uphill from you and extending to de-camber them and start the turn and they look at you with a blank stare! So .......I get to switch gear when there is a level 8 or 9 private ski lesson. Works for me LOL Boris's mountain's tunnel vision denial of a major portion of CASI certification just shows their lack of general knowledge of snow sports. I assume they advertise and purport to be a CASI ski school. If they are selectively denying a major portion of what CASI has for snowboard knowedge and training base Why not turn them in to CASI and pull their right to claim to be a CASI accredited and certified ski school. I have heard of PSIA and AASI at least putting ski schools on probation. Might be worth checking on. AS a Mt ski school you either believe in the national certification program as laid out by the national organization or you don't. A Mt can't pick and choose 50% of the national certification criteria and claim to be a member ski school. THat is both un-ethical and illegal false advertising. Think about the ramifcations if doctors or dentists did this. Think about the insurance ramifications. IF Boris's Mt has it's insurance rates based on CASI certification which you can bet they do, then they are defrauding the insurance company by not subscribing to CASI standards of excellence and overall knowledge. One phone call or letter could cost the mountain it's insurance policy. Not to even bring up the liability issue if someone gets killed and it comes out in court that they only subscribe to national standards selectively. That's a main purpose of our national certification/unions in this sport, The maintenance of consistent quality and knowledge from mountain to mountain. It's a standard that is used by insurance and by the courts of our countries. CHase

Hi Blue, Hope you had a good Christmas. My new ski school director (past director at Waterville Vally ( about 400 instructors) likes to wind people up. He's about 45 or so and says hi by saying 'Rock is Dead' to me. Then says 'hard boots are dead too'. Worked teaching clinics sat and sun then taught a beginner lesson on Christmas day to a Korean chip circuit engineer. In softies on my flexy teaching board, Che Qwock and I had a great time. The rest of sun and Chrismas I skied with my son, Sam and rode my Rossi GS board. While skiing with Sam I was helping a couple of the ski instructors on their carving technique. Now four of them have gone to the director and asked to have me teach a ski clininc. Meanwhile six of the mountain employees, lifties and lodge workers that ride have asked for hard boot lessons as my carving down Exhibition under the high speed six pack lift with the Rossi VAS looked "so cool and like so much fun". i don't know about your place but if you free rode with another HB and were doing nice figure 8s and such and talked it up with people on the hill maybe they would ask for hb lessons. THis snow sports industry has always taken a fair amount of shameless self promotion to get lessons and such from the public. I try to make at least three runs a day that all I do is help skiers and boarders haveing trouble and give them a business card from ski school. It helps get the request privates which pay extra. I hope I can get them to give us 10% discount cards for that one as that used to really bring in the private lessons. Keep the faith brother. OK Chase

This is a tough one no matter how you cut it. I have been teaching professionally since 1965. PSIA AND AASI. When I got out of the US Navy in 74 I worked for a ski shop in CT doing bus trips to northern New England. We were combo instructors and entertainers with the guitars on the ride back. We did have insurance through the ski shop. In spite of that we were unwelcome at many mountains Even with four busloads of customers, and PSIA would not accept us as we were not employed by a mountain ski school. I think in todays litigeous society It would be a very risky thing to teach for any money or renumeration of any kind even equipment, without an insurance umbrella. As a staff trainer I am constantly stopping my people and having them re-phrase things in thier presentations just to limit our liability even with the mountain's insurance umbrella. Enisi Waya

Check with Frank McConnell at Bob Skinner's at the MT Sunapee Traffic Circle. Give em a call or just drop in. A call probably would be good courtesy though. They are one of the best boot fiitting shops in the northeast let alone NH. For twenty years I have seen folks come from NYC, CT, RI, and even NJ just for boot fitting at that shop. Frank and his boot techs attend all the latest fitting and training course for boot fitting every year. So they are always up to date on the latest techniques. Foam, Flow, custom footbeds and orthotics, Whatever you need for your feet they can do it. Just tell Frank that Chase sent you. We have been at the same mountains and known each other for 25 years. Grandfather Wolf

b0ardski, Yes, I have as an instructor staff trainer. Was discusing this with BlueB PM. After 4 or 5 years of exclusively riding hard boots eleven or twelve years ago I bought an Arbor woodie with the cap construction at 166 with a special tighter sidecut. This was a special Mickey Munoz pattern so it didn't cost that much extra. I looked long and hard for the stiffest "soft" boot set up avaliable. Turned out to be the OSin/Rossi made by Emory SIS step in "alpine" model with the super highback. Still on em. Now have four sets of the bindings, which are really cool as it is all metal to metal contact. Thing I like is you can twist the high backs another 15 degrees past the boot plate setting for extra leverage on serious heel side carves. I will say this the boots look like a soft boot but are actually almost as stiff as my Technica ski boots. This year on EBay I am hoping to score an extra pair of the boots. Chase aka Grandfather Wolf </pre>

Full loops Not full circles are not that hard given the right slope and snow conditions. If you think of a real nice laid turn set of Christmas ribbon candy turns, You need to keep the edge pressure constant through the changes in gravity speed and centripital force. Now take it to the next level for a full loop. As you come back up the mountain, you need to keep your speed up to maintain your centripital force. That is what will carry you through the top. This is done by gradually decreasing the radius of the turn. When you first start practicing as I think QueeQueg said, buttonhole turns. I call it a button hook turn. Take the board back up the mountain from a nice long trail wide carve and as you near the top use your legs and knees to bend the board and tighten the turn up as tight as you can while swinging your legs around yourself like extended rotation ( think of the tip of a helicopter rotor blade). That will get you started wqith going through the top. Now add more speed and control. Change the turn shape to a lesser decreasing radius more like the begining of a French curve. When you come through the top at speed you will experince dis-orientation from the changing view of the mountain. My youngest brother a past stunt pilot, fighter pilot, instuctor had a trick that works. As you come up to the top don't look at what you are seeing but hold a vision frame in your mind of what you will see when you come out of the top back into the fall line, like maybe the base lodge! When the vison frarme clicks into place then you are back in control of your gravity and centripital forces and can open the turn up for the next trail wide sweeper on the new edge. They, fighter pilots , use this for learning outside loops. Grandfather Wolf

hard boots in powder........ just go faster...... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3205672351525157456&q=hard+attack Grandfather wolf

In 42 seasons of teaching ........ persimmon is pretty good in flat and low light. the best I have ever found is still Bolle's Vermillon for flat and end of day low light. The big tric is your eyes have to adjust to the light levels with any goggles on. Very, Very sensitive in low /flat light. So even if you take them off to clean them (like during a snow storm) , put them back on immediatly so your eyes stay adjusted. Grandfather Wolf

Yeah I can go along with you guys!!!!! LOL After the first time of the season you drop your but back instead of moving your hips down the hill and "boot" out a heel side turn It starts to come back fast. I tell my staff that if you arn't working up a sweat you arn't working the board. Furthermore if you arn't taking a dump now and then (twiice a day is cool) you arn't expanding your envelopa and developing as a rider. THen I tell them if I can dump twice a day at age 56 in my 42nd season with a bad back bad hip and bad ankle what's your excuse. Chase

The things instructors do when bored mid week is always going to be a laugh!! Ten maybe Twelve years ago When I first had Patrick (my protegee and now snowboard super at Ragged) at the mountian he had early release from High school to teach at the mountain. I had my PJ 63 slalom board and he had a 154 (I think) Rossi slalom. The Famous John Barker was coaching us and we decided to go for full loops on the trail in front of the main lodge. All was going well for the first two weeks in spite of lots of black and blues. His mother, a close friend would have killed me if she knew he was all black and blue. I have always been his "bad uncle " influence since he was in my Cub Scout pack. Now as an aside, early slalom boards had one big problem in those days. If the packed powder had a soft layer underneath you could easily overpower the nose of the board and auger the nose back into the snow as you started to go back up the hill coming out of the bottom of the turn. LOL and Yeah!!!!! We decided we were going to do a video demo for the mountain of full loops side by side twenty feet apart. Doing well for the first week in spite of lots of crashes going through the top and even more black and blues. Then we get some new snow. They groomed it and we got the marketing manager to come out to video us. Well, we made it through the top and made our first loop. Then we went to loop back up on toe side. Just as we came out of the bottom we got confused on who was to be on the outside. The boards clipped edges and we both augered in. Now as you know when that happens you do not fall down the hill. You go straight out then fall straight down. It's the funiest thing I have ever seen on video. It was as if we we shot out of a cannon climbing in altitude at 15 or more degrees above horizontal and then we just fell straight down on our backs side by side ten feet apart. Knocked the wind out of both of us. Barker calmly rides up to us and says neat trick can you do it again on the weekend for the customers? We watched the video for weeks. Loosing it laughing every time. Unfortunately the general manager borrowed the camera at the end of the season and recorded over it. The idiot marketing manager never made a copy. Chase P.S. On a good note for us HBs. Got the Ski instructor staff Really good this weekend. I was clinicing eight of the returning staff members. They were going through lesson presentations on a blue summit trail on the back shoulder of the MT. There is fairly long flat section part way down. So the guy I had teaching says let's burn it on the flat and regroup at the end of it. Well just after The flats start an expert trail called the Headwall drops off the top of the front side and into the Blue trail. I had enough mountain left from where we were and I was on my 173 Rossi GS board. I cranked it up and then turned up straight up the headwall on a nice blistering heel turn. Went up it about 100 ft or so and popped a hammerhead turn at the top. Well just as I went up, a group of 12 clinicing Ski instructors meet me coming up at them as fast as they were coming down. YARD SALED ALL BUT TWO OF THEM!!!!!!!!! You should have heard the language! The head ski trainer ( one of two who didn't yard sale) just calmly said shut up! He was below us on the mountain and HE had the right of Way!!!!! Thanks LT!!!!!!!

sports medicine snowboard just googled this was the second one to come up. http://www.postgradmed.com/issues/1999/01_99/bindner.htm the end of the artice metions specific sub-talar injuries. Chase

BlueB, That sounds ludicrous to me. Requiring Duckfoot is no different than requiring all ski instructors regardless of ability and body type and size to be skiing in the most expensive top of the line RACE BOOT made by thier choice of brand. Most of teh top riders have bios in the magazines that include thier stance angles. I think you will find that amongst the top riders they are not all duckfooted. Hell most of the pipe and park tricks go back to the time of mike Jacoby and others of his time and I can guarantee they were not duckfoot. In your situation I would go to the library and do some research on this one and make copies of a bunch of top freestyle riders that are not duckfoot. Get into the (in my mind siliness of park and pipe) by picking one top liner who rides with your chosen angles and make a big deal out of emulating such a hero. How can they make you change your angles when you are studying a top 20 rider as your guru to learn freestyle? Just outsmart them let them think you have gone over to park and freestyle. One other thing is to spend $97 and join AASI. Then get the AASI manual and sturdy the "Y" model. level 6 is where the rider picks his or her type of snowbaarding, Freestyle, Freeride, or Alpine. The acknowledged but unwritten level 7 is when you have so thoroughly mastered your choice that you go back down to level 5 and 6 and learn one of the other diciplines. You might also want to get on line and research the sports orthopedic body of knowledge on peoples age and damge to the sub-talar joint from riding duckfoot. Under most employment laws they can not "order you" to do something that is physiccally long term damaging to your body's joints and flexibility of movement. CHase

hey Eric give me a call at the fiddle shop no. CHase P.S. yeah I'm still trying to recruit you as a carving trainer for the MT. LOL

Dating myself there a bit I guess!!!! LOL ERIC WHERE ARE YOU? CHECK IN PLEASE! :D Give me a call on the land line 938 5282 CHase

Hi Carvedog and Rob, sorry gang I did not mean to upset anyone or to put anyone down. I still have my 1993 Professional Ski Instructors of America "Snowboard Skiing" manual along with most publications and videos and manuals that have come out from the "American Association of Snowboard Instructors since it began in '98 or so. With regard to the clinicians broken gear, stuff rarely just breaks in an instant. They may not have checked thier gear out for the season. AS a hard booter I hated and still do most soft strap bindings. You tighten them up enough to do some serious carving on anything let alone hero courderoy and your feet go to sleep. Plus the bindings need constant care. So I am on your side on that issue. LIke I mentioned I have cornered the market on NOS Rossi and O Sin metal to metal high back step ins. The boots are almost as stiff as my ski boots, the bindings are super reliable. They really should get Emory (the actual manufacturer) to put them back into production. When I went back to boarding in the 80's I had to learn to ride regular instead of goofy as my right hip that I dislocated and broke the ball and tore all the blood vessels and nerves out of the socket on in a car crash could not stand the vibration from being the lead foot. Then there is the constant problem with keeping my right foot sub talar joint working ( the one that alows foot inversion and eversion) as when I shattered my heel four years ago they screwed it up while rebuilding my heel with 11 screws and a metal plate. That was the only season I've missed in 42 years. It took a year and four sessions of 6 weeks each in PT to get back. Then there is the Thoracic Degenerative Spondyloisis from a 1973 NAVY back injury that I struggle with for body movement. Compouding that is that my right leg is 1 inch shorter below the knee. Yeah I don't skate very well in either kind of boots but agree skating is much easier in hard boots. I teach beginners to skate both sides before straight runs. I do tell them that one side will be easier but it depends on the person. When making first J turns I get them to skate into it both heel and toe side as appropriate starting body position for the turn direction. Carvedog and Rob, we older guys just have to keep going anyway we can. On my SIS bindings I have the High Backs cranked around 10 to 15 degrees more than the foot plates for carving on the Arbor Woody. It gives a whole lot more power on the heel side carve. I have never seen a strap binding you can dial in like that, have you? In both hard and soft boots every season I have to fight to have muscle memory remember to relax and stand flat on your feet. The soft boots cause one set of muscles to over tense and the hard boots (especially if a take the Rossi monster out) cause a different set to do it. I have yet to finds pre-season exercises that elimanate this one. I just remind all our returning and new hires each day it is a long season and I need every one of them for lessons so take it easy for the first couple of weeks. Chase

I've been teaching since 1965, had a marine ply home made "snow board" with two used rear slalom water ski bindings for slush days back in '66. Got back into snow board in the early 80s when King Ridge was one of the first in NH to allow fulll mountain access to snowboarders. I did spend 4 years teaching all my lessons on hard boots only, then I bought an Arbor woody and the super high back SIS boot/bindings. Found out it helped with the beginner lessons but for upper level hard boot was good. Now I have collected (as Burton's always broken plastic step ins killed the step in market) several SIS pairs of boots and 5 sets of bindings all metal to metal contact. I use them on my Arbor (fun board), and on my trees and woods board, and on the ancient Salamon rental board with my new graphics that I use to teach beginner lessons in out Burton LTR program. The Arbor is to stiff to demo properly for the soft LTR boards. Then I have several Rossi race boards for carving and trench diggging. On those I use my Technica mid range slightly soft ski boots. For most riding and skiing the technicas are left in the "walk" mode for all but really screaming on my Dynastar Omecarve 172s, or if I'm on the custom 172 Rossi GS monster board. My stance angles are almost the same for all setups, a tiny bit more towards 0 on the teaching board only. Most skiers are in boots way to stiff for their ability especially most instructors! I teach level 9 plus (woods bumps and all kinds of off the groom stuff on skis. Snow board I 'll teach any thing but park and pipe but I do coach them occasionally. A good properly certified ASSI jor CASI instyructor should be able to teach on anything including skis. Yes we still have to be bettter than the skiers! If we work at it then maybe, just maybe for level 3 PSIA they will have to pass a level 1 ASSI exam. At Ragged MT Resort Pat and I try to require our snowboard staff to be able to teach a level 1,2,&3 ski lesson as part of the preparation to be certified on our mt. to teach upper level snowboard lessons. Since 1965 the no. 1 rule always has been and always will be: The most valuable instructor on the MT. is the most versatile instructor. Chase "Grandfather Wolf"

Hi guys and gals! :) Just copying some of my note to Michelle to you all. Eric where are you buddy? Carvers and want to be carvers are welcome at Ragged we have two new grooming machines so I hope we will have good courderoy this year. Well my move to McCall ID got sidelined by the insane tripling of housing and real estate thanks to Tamarack. So we re-thought and planned to go to southeast KY where my tribe has a land base (I'm half Native American). I had planned to go 4each on weekends and just drive our new domicile a self made 40ft Prevost LeMirage bus conversion 2 hours over to Beach Mountain. Unfortunately, the house sale fell through after we were already moved into the bus in the middle of Nov. So It is one more winter in NH. The new owners of Ragged Mountain Resort, Danbury, NH are doing a good job of bringing the MT back up to snuff at the cost of millions of $$$$$. I see that the last update for carving board lessons in NH was 2005. Pat Burdick, My Protege is back as snowboard supervisor and I am there also. He and I will ride trees, race board, carving board, barrel staves, flying discs, tele-boards, whatever, and can teach at all levels and are ASSI certified. Last year I had 6 recruits for my carving team but Ragged's rubber paychecks and bankruptcy kind of squashed that. I hope to re-start the carving team after I get our snowboard staff through the required season start clinics just so they can teach lessons. Sincerely, Chase H. Kenyon P.S. My name tag at the mountain has my Native American name "Enisi Waya" on it and most of my under 17 year old students just call me the English translation of that Cherokee which is "Grandfather Wolf." I'm really happy to be starting my 42 professional snow sports teaching season. I will try and get some pics of us and email them in the next few weeks. :D

Welcome to the fold! I've been riding Arbors for 10 years plus. My first one had to be special ordered the shop folks did not know what it was nor that thier owner had singned them up as the only Arbor dealer in NH. They are great boards and probably the toughest most durable borads out there. Never heard of anything else that can survive five or more full time teaching seasons on New England hardpack and in the woods riding. That said I'm planning on replacing my Woodie with a Donek Sasquatch as soon as funds are in. max out your Arbor ride! Take your Arbor crank some serious alpine stance onto it (not as much as on a hardboot race board but maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of the angles. Open your stance up as far as is comfortable ( it will take some getting used to). Now take the Arbor and put it right up on the edge like an extreme carve Swoard. If you use your legs (drive the back knee hard towards the back of the front one) to bend the board you will be able to put the whole edge on the snow while laying out to the side of the board. You CAN extreme carve an Arbor on soft boots. We have five of us instructors at Ragged Mt that do it all the time anywhere from the beginner slope to the toughest we have. One thing I did that helps me is to crank my highbacks around another 10 to 15 degrees further than my bindings are set for. My softboots are the high O'sins SIS step ins with the ten inch or so highbacks which are easy to twisst the back further on. This gives me the extra leverage to really hold a laid over carve on the heel side as well as the toe side. Now with that in stock, Try it out! If you like the feelling of being way over sideways with the board up at close to 90 degrees to the snow Don't buy a typical race board. For laid out/over carving you will need a board with a much wider waist. If you just want to go fast get the racer. I run a Burton 163 for most hard booting but it is not enough anymore ( an old slalom board). sO i'M TRYING TO PICK UP A 173 TO 178 with a 24 cm miniumum waist and a 13.5 to 16.5 meter sidcut. Wish I could afford a Swoard to try but will probably go to a Donek pertersen 170 FreeCarve by the end of this season. As to boots i go a bit against the flow on thisboard as I teach advanced carving on skis as well as teaching both hard and soft boot snowboarding. So for me the challenge waas to find a boot that I could go back and forth from skis to the snowboard with. Although i ski alaid over like on the carving board i prefer a boot with a softer for and aft flex. So I'm using a pair of Technica Rival X7 boots. For normal easy snowboarding I run them in Walk mode. If we get some good stuff for extreme (euro) carving then I hook them up . hope this helps a bit. chase

The Ragged Mt carving team All four of us, and hopfully EZE will be joining us, at Ragged MT Snowsports School will be available for lessons through the school. Don't know the cost yet but figure the same as regular lessons. I'm trying to scout up as many board and binding setups as I can. Most beginner carve board lessons can use our soft ski boots. We already handle rental boards on snowboard staff with our Burton LTR boards. Even old Burton PJs will work to get the program going. We have always had hard booters on snowboard staff the ten years plus iv'e been here since I left Mt Soonipee. So if anyonoe has stuff out in the chicken coop (loaners or real cheap is what we need) that we might be able to put to use let me know. I hardboot, softboot, and teach extreme carving on skiis too. Chase

:) do ya still have the board? I'm trying to put a quiver of loaner boards together At Ragged Mt. where I teach and am the senior snowboard staff trainer. We already handle our own rentals in Snow sports SChool withthe Burton LTR boards. So we might be interested.