OhD

A few more from the intermediate clinic today. http://eaud.smugmug.com/SES-015-Sunday Corey / Instructor

Here are some shots from the hill and the Bumps party. Laying out a nice carve is one thing. Negotiating the Bumps is quite another. Conditions were excellent today. The Tiehack side was very quiet. Grooming was superb. Cover was adequate - a few thin spots and holes but a lot better than feared, and the snow held up well, outlasting a lot of legs. The demo tent was stocked with even more fabulous gear than last year. If only you had been here it would have been perfect! http://eaud.smugmug.com/SES-2015-Saturday

Pyramid bistro, I believe it was. Well worth the money. Thanks again, Mike.

The one upstairs from the bookstore? That was really nice.

I meant this. New forum seems rather less than phone-friendly and tapatalk is no help.

This has to be good, eh?

I haven't figured out yet how to sort the messages within a thread in Most-recent-first order. The threads are presented in most-recent-post order in the forum, but I still have to click to the last page of a thread and scroll to the bottom. I hope there's some simple way to set the message sort order as was the case in the old forum (once you found it), but I have yet to find it. Anybody have a clue?

The hold-down points look about the same distance apart as the original Clickers. The moment required to edge the board is transferred to the board as pressure down on your toes or heels and pull up on the hold down points, primarily the one farthest from the edge you are using. The distance (moment arm) between the pressure down area and the hold-down is shorter than it is on conventional strap bindings (although with straps the pressure points on your feet are perhaps closer together on toeside), so the forces are higher. Simply put, the boot side of the connection has less leverage, just as a strap binding would if the straps were closer together.. Two ways of dealing with it are available: 1) Make the moment arm longer by lengthening the binding so the hold-down points working in tension are further from the ends of the boot or the pressure pads, or 2) Make the boot/sole plate stronger to cope with the high forces. The actual hold-down cleats are plenty strong. The force is transferred to your feet through the boot structure, and can be distributed over a larger area of the top of your foot than most straps can manage, so foot pain or strap breakage are less likely. In my case the sole plates were too small or the sole material too weak or too thin, and that irreparable connection was the weak link in the system.

You can rotate the baseplates to trade off some fore-aft cant for transverse cant. Might help if it feels like you're straining one foot to get an edge set. or if it feels like your feet are always trying to twist the board about the long axis.

Maybe Bomber and Intec should print up some stickers to provide a clue, although they probably wouldn't be noticed or read on a board crusted with snow. I'd kind of like to see something more flexible for the pulls, that won't cause flexing and fatigue of the cable guides. Maybe a flat tab with simple instructions printed on it, articulated at the cable connection and provided with some sort of keeper to inhibit flapping. It's amazing how few pants are set up to accommodate a release knob sticking out of the side of one's leg! It's not that easy living and playing in a niche!

I used to ride Clickers with the Sherpa boots (external highback, somewhat adjustable) and loved them until I stuffed the nose into a bump and suddenly had a really phat pair of high-heeled sneakers. The boot plates had pulled halfway out of the soles and stuck there. I looked really sexy strutting around in them, and had killer heelside angulation, but couldn't walk and carry a drink to save my life. K2 replaced the boots with a pair of their first Boa Transformers, which prove to be remarkably olive green for a pair of buckets, and after loaning them to a friend who got himself locked into one boot and had to cut the cable I gave up on the system and bought Burton stuff. I liked the elegance, the compact and lightweight bindings, and the general ease of use (except when icing, when the teflon-coated version proved better but not perfect). The boots were the weak link both structurally and ergonomically. The Sherpa boots were pretty damn close ergonomically, and I was really sorry to have them fail on me. The Clicker had a pretty small footprint on the board, minimizing the impact on board flex pattern, and relied on a stiff boot sole to transfer force from the small binding engagement length to the toes and heels. The stress in the boot sole was pretty high, hence the failure in my case - the plastic sole failed and the steel cleat chassis in the insole just ripped right through it. It wouldn't have taken a lot of reinforcement or a much larger chassis plate to make it stronger than my legs. I think K2 was really close and bailed too soon on the Clicker, but the strappy sandal bindings were cheaper, universally adaptable and looked big and robust so I think K2 just decided not to fight the juggernaut any longer. I have a newer pair of K2 Boa boots that felt great in the store and for the first few days of use, but are already getting limp and bony in all the wrong places, but I ride softies so infrequently that it might be that my feet are getting out of shape rather than any real inadequacy in the boots. I'd like to see K2 succeed with the renaissance of the design if only to be able to lose the massive bindings on my softies. Those are a total PITA even when traveling in a car, not to mention flying. Intuitively obvious gadgets but pretty dumb in many respects - guaranteed to be the commercial success!

Gee - they look like regular people. Really happy regular people, but not all that God-like.... You sure they were snowboard instructors?

Mission's not bad, when they get enough snow. I prefer White Pass for better lift capacity and a little bit steeper groomers, but Mission has some long cruisers and is really nice on a quiet day.

62 going on 27... Happily retired but almost too busy to ride yet this winter.

I'm hoping to hit Schweitzer 1/31 on the way (sort of) home from a week at Whistler, for a USASA Alpine race day. Sorry I'm going to miss NICE again. I'm thinking I might try staying closer to home next winter, so may make it then. Have fun!

Good job. That message about backing up the database is amusing. It forgets to mention that you should never restore from the backup before copying the backup, just on the off chance that the coders didn't do any better on the restore program than they did on the main program. If they hosed up the backup program - well, too bad... If possible, copy the database with somebody else's software or your OS utilities. Is it possible to sort messages in "most recent first" order? Want ads seem to be that way automatically - a good thing. Thanks again!

Housing secured! We're coming, barring premature decrepitude! Retirement agrees with us, but aging isn't for sissies.

Late last April - last good storm of the season at White Pass. I got a nice clean pumping run under the Basin chair in 6-10" of pretty heavy powder. My Venture Zephyr is a really efficient pump board and I could keep enough energy and flow to make the whole run one long Wedel while skiers had to straightline it (and most of the few who tried bogged down and tipped over). The crowd was minimal early and the tracks lasted for a few hours until the madding herd thrashed the run.

USASA is fairly active here - Inland Northwest Series. Loup Loup hosted a USASA race meet in March the last couple of years. I hit Mission Ridge and Stevens now and then. Mission is the better hill for carving, IMHO. Just over the border (eh) Apex has some great carving terrain. Panorama, about 4 hours further north has similar but bigger. Sun Peaks, Kimberly and Silver Star are worth visits, but I haven't been to any of them in years. Over the other border you have Schweitzer (also hosts a USASA meet and has a small community of carvers) and Silver. There are a few of us at White Pass, but that's getting to be a longish haul, albeit to a very nice carving area, especially later in the season. Where in WA are you living? I'm in the fourth or fifth Tri-City, West Richland.

I'm planning to go, and my wife Karen will probably come and try out this strange passion of mine. She'll probably excel at it, too. She's a fine skier and has been dominating her age category in NW triathlons this year. We're working on housing before we order tickets. Planning to take a leisurely drive from WA to CO and back, with a week in Tahoe on the way home.

Gene I intend to be there. The Loup really does put on a good race weekend - not a big fancy resort, but a great community-owned little area with some nice terrain and a real pleasant vibe.

I may have an AirBnB room lined up. Anybody else coming from the Northwest who might be interested in carpooling via the Tri-Cities? I noticed a guy in a black coat and brown pants on hard boots today at JH.I was scarfing down 1.9 slices of pepperoni pizza in the Bridger deli (top of the gondola) at about 2:20 when he went by outside, mounted up and disappeared down the hill. Anybody I should know? Looking forward to the COW! Bringinga powder board just on the off chance that it keeps snowing...

So it's Targhee the weekend of 3/15? Any good ideas on accommodations? How's the cover? I just damaged my AM VSR rather badly in Black Iron Bowl at Telluride. I should get some consumer boards for that kind of stuff, but the Coiler was great on God's own grooming at the top of Revelation bowl.

I'll be there 2/18-24 with 9 skiers.

Sometime between March 9 (racing at Loup Loup) and March 23 (Nastar and/or USASA races on Co.) would be good for me. Assuming I survive another day of SES.