crackaddict

Yeah buddy. Looking good for the weekend, not too cold and some fresh snow expected before then. Pray for corduroy!

Yeah, I didn't actually forget my liners. What am I? Some kind of tourist? I had surgery for a ruptured bicep tendon in my front elbow about three months ago. Started out this season with the arm in a sling inside my jacket, riding the kids chair exclusively. Once I progressed to the pocket of course symmetry demanded the back hand be in its pocket as well. So actually I've been working on this all season. But don't tell my subscribers, I wouldn't want them to know what a slave I am to YouTube views...

Right? It doesn't get much better than this. Did you notice anyone else on the hill? That was a Saturday in Revelstoke, yesterday. Tomorrow is Monday, everything will be groomed twice more and it'll be a hair warmer and even fewer people. I'm taking a big board but no cameras. Winter hit late but it hit hard. Damn cold though. Tell me the truth, does that parka make me look fat?

Because I can? I didn't really forget my liners...

Hey @gTa9000be If you haven't booked your hotel yet consider Revelstoke. Only 2.5 hours from Lake Louise, more snow, more vertical and far less crowded. I have hard and soft boot carving boards available to rent, bindings and boots too (in size 26.5 to 27.5). I also do lessons. The boys here can attest to my quiver and my skills. James

There's snow in Revelstoke on the upper mountain. The groomers are in decent shape up there, nothing is open on the mid mountain yet. Webcams here: https://www.revelstokemountainresort.com/mountain/conditions/webcams/ Snow report here: https://www.revelstokemountainresort.com/mountain/conditions/snow-report/

Enjoy the stiffness now, after breaking in they'll be a lot softer. Get some PowerRides from @dhamann

Well he wasn't, until... Once again, I got the widest Coiler ever built. I'm gonna even try it without risers next time out. Both boards are standard CFRs but now I'm kind of thinking I might like the BX shape for a little more g-force and a little less scrub, a thinner track and more conservation of energy. I asked for a smaller, slower board because I'm just 12 weeks out of surgery for a ruptured bicep tendon and I need to be careful with the front arm for a while. I started the season with the arm in a sling inside my jacket to protect it, then I went up to the hand in the pocket for a bit before deciding that both hands in the pockets has a certain aesthetic, even if it's only symmetry. I'm working on it. It's hard to make carving look easy... Here's an attempt to ride the famous Fowley's Lap in that style. Not my best run of the day but the best one we got on video. So my new board is designed for slow speed carving so that when I do fall, at least I'm not moving very fast. I want to see how far I can take the hands in the pockets thing. This board opens up some blue terrain for me that would just be too fast on my 12m plus boards. Fowley's Lap is a classic Revelstoke blue (which means it has a black diamond section, like all Revelstoke blue runs). It bowls out very nicely though for eight of the best turns on the mountain. Here are six of them. The last two turns are steep and fast I couldn't quite make them today. Coming soon though, stay tuned.

Nice catch @slabber, thanks! I messaged him about the Gecko Plates.

Merry Christmas! Look what Santa brought! A pair of Coiler Contras: His: CFR 165cm x 296mm x 10m x 136ee Hers: CFR 161cm x 260mm x 9m x 132ee Graphics by my wife, @Sochca

Well yeah... But I might say 'advanced SB freecarver' or 'advanced pencil line carver'. Thing is, there really aren't that many of us. Outside of this crew, who else is leaving great tracks on real black diamonds? As @Rob Stevens was reputed to have somewhere just yesterday: "The market is perfectly balanced for its needs. Most of the boards made are for beginners and intermediates." I might add: 'even most of those boards marketed to advanced riders'. (How do you quote from another thread?) So that 28 waisted SG (9.75scr right?) would fit an intermediate carver with a size 27 Mondo boot or an advanced intermediate with a size 26 on green and blue terrain. They would both have to get risers and go to steep angles, low BSL boots and low profile bindings to leave a pencil line track on a black diamond and they would both wish their board was wider as they fight hard to resist the boot out. And they wouldn't care how their boards handled in powder because these are serious carvers facing serious consequences with potential for catastrophic high speed boot out when they're carving steep black diamonds and they don't have a lot of room for compromises in their equipment. The point is that yes, that "high performance" SG is marketed as an expert/elite level board but there aren't many expert/elite riders so it's built for intermediate carvers coming up from that all mountain Burton. Those guys are sure to be impressed.

Absolutely yes. I bought a pair of the Flow NX-2 Carbons this fall because I have an arm injury and I thought a binding that I could operate with one hand would be best. It's a good binding, not my favourite, but it's very stiff with boot crushing ratchets. Excellent choice for SB carving. Also, and importantly, this binding has the best clearance of anything on the market with a very high highback, no heel cup at all, and an over-the-toe configuration up front. Not even close. That's a good fast transitioning waist width for BX but not for freecarving. I suggest 1-2cm wider in the waist than your Mondo Point size for intermediate carving and 3-4cm wider for advanced/elite carving. These figures can be adjusted for things like the firmness of the surface, steepness of the slope, stance angles, and whether you plan to use risers. You'll be disappointed very quickly with a waist smaller than your MP boot; it will severely limit how tight you can turn.

Same. I think I'm more approachable in soft boots even though I wear the same F#$% off beard with both setups.

Softboot carving makes me stronger. Besides the added ankle strength required it's generally more physical. My core gets worked as much as my legs, whether I'm riding soft production boards or super stiff custom wide boards. When I go back to hard boots I find it's smoother riding and easier on the body, though it does recruit slightly different muscle groups and I get soreness in some small weird spots until I adapt. I think the techniques are very similar, the main differences being the stance and the fact that I can lean into the hardboots and relax my feet more. Also, my shoulders are less vulnerable in soft boots, particularly the front arm that tends to get left behind in ruts and snow piles in hard boots. The soft boot stance is more natural for all mountain riding, and more comfortable for falling so when I **** up it tends to be less catastrophic (for a given speed). I find soft boot carving more challenging and more satisfying, plus, I fit in better and don't look like such a freak. (No offence to hardbooters.) Most people don't even recognize that I'm on highly specialized high performance gear; I like to think that maybe it opens their minds to what's possible instead of dismissing my carving as some foreign niche sport.

Beautiful work @jason100! Looks great, much simplified and much lower profile. Can't wait to test ride the prototype. Question: how much angle can I put on the front binding before the heel cup starts to push the boot heel forward? And will I be able to compensate and center the boot over the board so that the toe and heel are equidistant from their respective edges at any reasonable angle? I usually run about 27 to 33 degrees on the front foot but some guys in Asia are running upwards of 45 degrees. Maybe this can be accomplished by adding some additional holes on the heelcup so there are options to line up the heelcup pocket with the boot. From the drawings it appears the boot heel will sit on one side of the heelcup and there will be a void created on the other side, potentially creating the opportunity for some heel movement within the binding.

Yes you do. I put Martina on a NeverSummer Ripsaw x-wide 162 last season and she loved it! 5'4" 114lbs. This confirmed my suspicion that most manufacturers are terribly undersizing their boards. That Ripsaw is marketed to big men wanting a fast board but actually it's Martina's size (for carving). This is her rocking it on a real Revelstoke black diamond (sorry for the poor quality video). The Commissioner is not an all-mountain, it's a directional carver. You're gonna need the extra width and you're going to love the 12m sidecut. You're a harboot carver, not a buttering fool. The 165 is not too big for you, don't be afraid. 1253mm effective edge is not a big board. I also weight 155lbs, my soft boot carvers are 1400 to 1500 effective, 12-16m. Opening day is Saturday.

165cm. No question. @slabber

This is great riding but compare his heelside to his toeside turns, especially in the first sequence: The toesides are smoother with less chatter (almost none really) and he's staying longer on the toe edge too, kind of hopping out of the heelsides early before they're fully finished. Hard to tell but the run looks like easy blue to me. Your turns look great too @Xargo, but your toesides are also smoother than your heelsides. This is especially noticeable near the top of the run where the slope is steeper. (Find someone to film you next time out, with helmet cam and selfie stick video there is a lot of distortion which makes it harder to see the riders body position.) Everybody can choose his or her preferred stance, there are no timers or judges in this sport of free carving so there's no official "right way". My personal goal and aesthetic preference is to leave the thinnest track possible behind me, maximizing g-forces by minimizing snow displacement, controlling speed by finishing my turns. On real steeps this is much easier to do with a posi/posi stance. The best steep turns I've seen with a duck stance are down-unweighted, extremecarve style short and medium radius. Looks awesome but it's not the same kind of smooth high speed, high g-force turns that I'm addicted to.

For the official record... 12 degrees in my back foot is my minimum carving angle. At 9 degrees rear I start to get a little chatter on heelside so 27/12 is the all-mountain carving stance. I go steeper on dedicated carving boards on groomer days when I won't be all-mountaining, I like about 15 degrees of splay so it ranges through 30/15 up to 36/21 on boards that lend themselves to boot out. 27/12 is a good place to start though for smooth heelside carves. Duck stance carving works too - on green runs. I don't know why the Asian carvers ride 45/36, especially when they're riding so much switch and doing all those ground tricks. Obviously this incredible style is possible with such steep angles but I can't imagine it's better. Maybe it's because their boards are so narrow? Maybe it pairs well with the gorilla stance widths? Or maybe it's just the current trend? (Lots of things in snowboard carving gear that don't make sense from a performance perspective are perfectly justifiable to the marketing and sales departments.) I had tried for years to carve with these super steep angles on 26cm boards but had to give it up until wider boards became available. I experimented with all different combinations of lift, cant, and forward lean but could not get comfortable while avoiding boot out and so stayed on hard boots for carving until I met the visionary pioneer himself @RyanKnapton and started buying wider boards. So to me those Alloy boards look beautiful on the carpet but I wouldn't dream of trying to carve any of them on anything steeper than easy blue. Other riders may be able to pull it off; there are ways to mitigate boot out (like bending the knees more or keeping it slow and tight, monster lift and steeper angles) but these assuagements don't appeal to me. Straight legs and tons of board angulation is where I find satisfaction. Speaking of satisfaction... Mark Miller has finally agreed to make me an extra wide WARP soft boot carver. Keep an eye out for it - coming soon to New Board Porn 23/24.

I can probably get it to Calgary before MCC, lots of people drive up there from Revelstoke to pick up basic necessities like wheat flour and light bulbs...

Of course! Maybe less if I don't have to ship it... You still in Calgary?

I'll be there with boots on!

Nope. Still in perfect condition...

When you figure out that cross border shipping costs more than the risers do, I'll take them... Second in line.

It seems to me the big snowboard manufacturers remain stuck in this "one board quiver" mentality, much of the riding population too. This leads to the production and marketing of compromise boards. Have a look at the websites, almost every board is marketed as "rips the corduroy, floats in pow, turns tight in the trees and flies in the park too!". (It would be interesting to see the mean quiver size of ASB members vs the overall snowboarding population. My guess is triple or quadruple: 4-6 boards for ASB members vs 1-2 boards for snowboarders generally.) So to address the OP's original question: if you want a dedicated carver you go to Thirst, Coiler, or Donek (or even a stock model from one of the Euro or Asian manufacturers). If you want one board that does everything poorly just get one of these wide waisted offerings from Jones or NeverSummer. Best bet? Get both. There's a place for each and it's so awesome that my all-mountain boards can now carve the cord without boot out when I come out of the trees and hit the cat track. Ten years ago this was not possible, unless you happened to be @Ryan Knapton. So I do see progress: wider waists, stiffer and longer camber boards for sure, and I'm delighted to see manufacturers listing their widths underfoot in the spec charts. Maybe carving is finally making that comeback that we've all been expecting and prognosticating since it's decline? If so it's happening pretty slowly, and that Jones Freecarver 9000 160 with 134ee and 9.4m sidecut is still an "all-mountain" from my perspective, and it's still a ways off from the specs I would like to see on a board marketed as "ideal for ripping huge turns at speed" but it's definitely a step in the right direction. (Those of you who know me probably recognize that my perspective may admittedly be a hair skewed towards the dangerously fast end of the spectrum.) And also, since we're addressing the OP @Neil Gendzwill, I have to respectfully disagree with his assertion that the big manufacturers have tech that the small guys don't. While there is some truth to this statement, Bruce and Mark each have proprietary technologies and manufacturing processes that production boards can't touch. I would suggest, for example, that Bruce Varsava has ridden more different boards than anyone else on the planet, and if you've ever had a glimpse of Mark Miller's core construction you might start to have some idea of why Thirst boards carve so well. Both of these guys are many years ahead of the big manufacturers when it comes to carving performance.