Puddy Tat
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Posts posted by Puddy Tat
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So after reading through the "Technique Question - Getting Lower" thread I figured out out to toeside EC this weekend. As such I was throwing them down every time I found a steep enough pitch, wall etc... Super fun and a really cool feeling extending downslope so early in the turn and getting my chest, hips and both arms onto the snow.
Anyways I came into the liftline at Wawa chair, and a guy tells me he saw the "face washer" carves I was laying out.
Dave
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I was there yesterday, snow conditions are great bout I think they have races there for the next three days?
Dave
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I have discovered that if I am physically incapacitated, I become a grumpy. My wife and kids have had about enough of me.
+1 to this. I start getting irritable anytime I'm not getting enough physical activity period. In the summer I need to be out cycling, rock climbing whatever. In the winter snowboarding. Working a desk job during the week doesn't exactly help out here.
Cheers,
Dave
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I didn't get the typical high-drag feeling of boot-out, it just levered the board off the snow.
I've had exactly the feeling you are describing but only from burying the heelcup while soft booting. Either I'll have a problem with this and up my angles again or it'll work out fine. Either way I'll let you know I'm a couple of weeks.
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http://www.extremecarving.com/photos/0405html/j6_0405.html
http://www.extremecarving.com/photos/03html/p13_03.html
http://www.extremecarving.com/photos/swoarders/s01.html
http://www.extremecarving.com/photos/swoarders/s19.html
In most cases you won't be at 90 degrees, however for EC, it's not unusual to be at some point close to 90 degrees, and esp. if you digging trenches in soft snow, you'll be below the actual snow level so it would not take much to boot out.
In soft pack the board and boot both sink into the snow. I'd say on hard pack you're more likely to boot out. Anyways I'll give this a shot and see how it works.
Cheers,
Dave
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If you ride steep terrain with hard snow, you may wish to consider that excess overhang at 90 degrees may preclude self arrest in the event of a fall.
As usual nicely put and a valid point.
He was actually recommending only turning the back foot further out. Currently my stance is 65/60 (F/R). I need minimum 60 to keep all parts of my mondo 28 boot within the edges of a 21cm 13.4 SCR Schtubby. He was suggesting dropping the front to 60 and the back to about 45 which would allow me to direct more power to the edge of the board.
I found his comment interesting mostly because I recalled this thread, and really we don't tip our boards up that high. I figured I would give it a shot because I'm not all that sensitive to binding angle, and the way I've been riding this year it can't hurt.
Dave
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Not here to argue but the irony here will be BlueB having to delete this thread due to this silly cr@p storm polluting the end of it.
And I'd like to say that there are some good points that were raised at the beginning that are getting lost now.
My $0.02
Dave
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I'm going with John on this one.
I was talking (briefly) with a L4 instructor who had seen me riding this weekend in Jasper. He's a hardbooter who used to coach PGS/PS as well. He also gets cred for identifying my entire riding set-up including calling my step-ins Fintecs. He suggested I back off my angles as it would allow me to pressure the edges by driving more directly with my knees.
I skeptically responded that the bindings were set up so that the boots were inside of the board edges as I didn't want any drag. He said the board won't get that high. Looking at the photos in the "Personal best carving..." thread he's right. Even that heelside shot of Casper Carver laid out with his chest fully down his board isn't past about 60 to 70 degrees to the snow.
I'm going to try pushing the angles down to where there is some boot overhang and see how it works out.
Dave
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Best feeling ever - that weightless instant where you pull out of the trench and float across the snow, before diving back in ...
Yeah day one at NES this year. Those first couple of barely tracked runs with 15cm of dry champagne powder over groom. The turns felt rock solid with these floaty airborne transitions...
When it finally got chopped up I eventually went to an AM board and went surfing. Hats off to everyone there, including you, who still made it look easy when it was chopped.
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Had an amazing day at Marmot Basin on the weekend. I was running down Paradise (a blue) and carving nicely on pretty much hero conditions under blue skies. And unlike what seems like the rest of this year I wasn't sucking at all.
I pulled up to stop near a snow fence to catch my breath and this guy on a K2 Fat Bob looks down at my feet and says "How do you snowboard in those boots at those angles?" to which I replied "Fast and in control."
I then dropped down a short choppy section to build some speed and did a couple of low carves and popped a 180 off of a slope transition. Once I stopped again I told him to go look up Bomber Online.
Great day.
Dave
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On Nidecker ACTs not at all. At least two years ago the option was no longer there.
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- Go new school and get the most forgiving hardoots and step in binding.
I went this route with T225s, and TD3 step-ins with the yellow elastomers mounted onto a 165cm long 25cm wide custom Donek at 50/45. I dropped a cliff for about 10'-12' of vertical into 21cm of fresh powder with no issues last weekend. I'm 6' 2" and 215 lbs.
I think you would have trouble on any modern softboot board with hardboots just due to the board width. Personnally if I buy another board to replace this one it will be around 23-24 cm wide (for my mondo 28 boots). As soon as your angles start coming down the lateral stiffness of the boot (even my T225s) starts allowing you to quite easily overload the nose of the board. And modern freestyle boards are getting really wide, short, and soft which will make it even easier to do this.
Dave
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Cool imagery.
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Freezing cold and crappy grooming.
I took the Schtubby and couldn't put anything together. To top it off in an hour and a half I got some frost nip on my toes. Nothing like yours but was painful when it thawed after about twenty minutes. We left at 2PM via the gondola, snow was so slow I wouldn't have even wanted to try the ski out.
Saturday was great at Sunshine 21cm of fresh on the shorter twin Donek with my T225s dropped a large rock (mini-cliff) for about 10'-15' of vertical on the Standish headwall. That was the first cliff i've been off in about 15 years and the first cliff I've dropped in plates.
Sorry I got veto'd and wasn't able to come.
Dave
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My family and friends looked at the weather report for Nakiska this morning (-24C) and vetoed going to Nakiska. I'll be at Sunshine. Stupid nature.
Apologies,
Dave
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Thaks Allee,
It'll be great to ride with you guys again. Blair said he might make it too.
According to Blair I'm hard to miss what with the "British Cop Yellow" jacket. If you don't see me in the lodge first thing I'll be out running laps under Silver chair. I'll come into the run just under the black face.
Cheers,
Dave
PS hope the toe is getting better, you should pick up some of those Thermic boot heaters. They're not cheap but my wife swears by hers, and she's in sorties.
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Yeah it's sexy.
One of the guys at NES had one and I was amazed at how cool it looked.
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Look when I first saw it, it was standing straight up and stuck in a rack and honestly I wasn't all that impressed.:p
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"Corey I expected your monster to be bigger than that."
Everyone in earshot just stopped walking. I think a tumbleweed rolled between the open-mouthed skiers!This whole sorrid tale is only made funnier by the fact that I just just been introduced to Corey about 15 minutes earlier.
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Thread jack?
I'm thinking I didn't just jack this thread so much as hit it over the head, dragged it down a dark alley, and took everything it had.;)
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Now I don't have BTS but....
Installation of BTS removes the boot hardstops at positions 1 and 5 and allows the boot to freely flex (albeit under spring tension) between some unknown positions as you ride. Therefore as you hit the end of the ankle articulation swing the springs should be slowing you down, so perhaps you don't hit the "boot limiting point" quite as hard. But a rider with weak springs installed in their BTS for their weight/riding style etc is going to hit the same range extremes I do with similar forces that I do by riding in walk mode.
As a counter-argument to this installation of BTS voids the warranty on the boots. I'd argue that this is only because no OEM is going to support a product that the end-user has modified (regardless of what Microsoft is doing right now).
Dave
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But I'm not sure of the problem with riding the Deeluxe T225 boot in walk mode.
Deeluxe boots (T225 and T325 anyway) have (from the documentation I got with my T225s)
- a locked mode for positions 1-5 (where 1 is most forward and 5 is most upright).
- a powder mode allowing free flex between positions 1 and 3 (which kind of blows as I'd like a more upright position for powder)
- walk mode allowing free flex between positions 1 and 5.
I'm not sure of the problem associated with this. The boot is already designed to be ridden in a free floating flex (powder) mode, and even in walk mode it isn't designed to travel outside of its flex range. Even in powder mode it hits one of the extreme end stops (position 1) and a temporary stop (position 3).
We can say that it is called "walk mode" because the intent is to only to provide a position for wlking in. But the reality (from a static viewpoint anyway) is that that mode isn't actually allowing the boot to operate outside of any normal riding position (1-5).
In a dynamic sense the only difference between riding in walk mode or any other mode being that you can hit the end hard stops (position 1 or 5) with more force than you could in another mode due to the longer swing allowed in walk mode versus powder (possibly moving through 5 positions rather than 3). But the reality is most times I have some flex in my ankle so I'm living between 1 and 5, so the throw distance is shortened.
Now if you want to talk about the forces exerted in a crash versus the length of the throw all bets are off. But the reality is that even in walk mode the boot is still flexing within what are normal riding positions for its ankle joint.
Perhaps Fin (US distributor) or YYZCanuck (Can distributor) or someone from Deeluxe could chime in with an official response from Deeluxe here. Because this comes up once in awhile on the board and from looking at the boot I don't get what the problem with it is.
FWIW I only ride my UPZs in a locked down "ride" mode.
Cheers,
Dave
- a locked mode for positions 1-5 (where 1 is most forward and 5 is most upright).
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I like wearing my hard boots everywhere and usually ride with them in walk mode. They feel just like softboots to me, but with more control.
+1. This is what I feel like when I ride my Deeluxe T225's at 50/45 in walk mode. Surfy.
Hardbootin with kids
in The Lodge
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Three years ago I started my two daughters on skis and a board. The youngest was three and skiing, the oldest was six and on a board. Lessons for both of them. This year has been huge. The youngest at six switched to a snowboard, and is ripping down blues, the oldest at nine will run moguls on her softies under the chairs. Life is great the runs have hit the level I can carve hard on and everyone has a great time as a family.
Only problem the oldest one is starting to love riding the trees. We have to take a run for me, then a run through the trees then back to some groom. Apparently they are forcing me to be a more rounded rider again.
Dave