SunSurfer

2019 my sister (a keen skier, so keen she came to MCC with me in 2023) and I were spending some time in Aspen. We were riding separately because she was exploring and I was chowing down on my favourite trails. I rode the Elk Camp gondola with a couple of middle aged male skiers who were Black Americans, rarer in my experience of Aspen than carving snowboarders. Great chat in the gondola, but later at lunch with my sister we met them again and shared a table. They'd ridden the gondola with my sister a little later after meeting me. Our NZ accents gave us away and they recognised me from my sister's description.

Spent an afternoon a few years at Cardrona in NZ riding, and talking, on the chair with a paraplegic adaptive skier. A pair of misfits amongst the softbooters and skiers. He had been a farmer, injured in a quad bike crash, and now earned a living as a motivational speaker. He needed no assistance to get himself and gear onto a chair but it was certainly easier if only one other person rode with him on the 4 seater we were using. Lots to talk about with our different equipment, and just enjoying the snow.

https://www.segno.co.nz/shop/product/warning-i-turn-often/ Tankers collecting milk from dairy farms in New Zealand often have a sign like this on the rear. Fundamentally the same problem we have. The company selling the sign are located in one the most intense dairy farming parts of NZ.

If your angles equal your age it's a coincidence, just like shooting your age at golf. There is no mechanism tightly linking age and angles. Angles are clearly linked to boot size, board width, and riding technique preference. People carve at every angle between "duck" and "Skwal" setups.

The number of skiers and boarders who don't ride in a way that they are able to stop within the terrain they can see! So many people come over knolls and drop offs at speeds where if there is something there they have no chance of avoiding a collision. You wouldn't drive your car that way, so why ride that way? It's all part of a mindset of "I enjoy going fast, get out of my way!"

@Ladia good to read you are finding ways of making it work.

Shot 1993. Apart from needing an advisory about stances, so much good stuff here in terms of drills and technique. Riding early 90s boards these guys are carving up groom yes, but also lumpy stuff, off piste and handling real moguls. Great to see much knee shock absorption is being used to handle these varied conditions. I will be adding this vid to my YouTube collection.

"felt too soft and lacked some kick." Getting a board built for the appropriate weight range is key to getting appropriate flex. Titanal wasn't around when your Burton was built. Titanal boards are built not to be as resonant with the rebound older all fibreglass boards had. On the other hand, a modern Titanal build will carve and edge hold better than your Burton ever would. Another factor to consider is whether you want to "race" carve with turns uncompleted and pivots/jumps between turns, or freecarve with completed C's and clean transitions. You are also getting older, so reflect on what your legs and core will let you do before fatigue sets in. A modern freecarve board will give you a longer day than a modern race board. Some builders are making good resonant boards without Titanal that may give you the rebound you got from the Burton. Lots of good reports about the Kessler 168 Jack recommends.

@Corey I love music enough to want to properly hear it, not have it in the background. Different folks... Now, for those who do like to have music as they ride, apologies for the thread diversion.

It's a sound that scares the shit out of me. If I can hear them over the wind speed and the roar of my own edge, then they are too close. I love music, love Hendrix (esp Johnny B Goode off Live in the West), but don't ride with music. I want every clue to help me protect myself from others who may ride poorly, make a mistake, or just lose control.

The scratching sound of skidding uphill riders.

You need to improve. People apparently orgasm watching @dredman. ---------------- If you didn't see it at the time.

There are a range of views on this topic. The problem is that the moldable liners are generally made of EVA foam. The foam specs generally show softening starts to be significant when foam reaches 60-70 Celsius, and the foam starts to progressively degrade with gas loss from the bubbles in the foam the longer and hotter it's heated. People generally get 3+ moldings out of their liners before foam degradation means they need to buy new liners. Work out for yourself why the shop might recommend what Jack has linked above. Myself, I set my fan oven to 70 degrees C and check the temperature with my wife's cooking thermometer after about 20 minutes. Adjust the temp till the measured temp is a stable 70, then cook the liner I'm molding for 10 minutes. Then do the molding procedure with my foot.

Was watching a YouTube discussion last night between a couple of expert softboot carvers James Cherry and Lars Horstman. James was suggesting holding the ends of a piece of elastic band / shock cord type stuff as a way of reinforcing the idea of keeping shoulders level in the turn and both arms forward. The elastic property gives some flexibility to hand position but still a constant reminder.

Yeah, the bindings in their original format have very little rotation capability. I recently drilled my Skwal USA bindings to allow me to run angles into the high 70s. Need to make some alloy discs to get the screws to apply pressure properly with the extended slots. I have access to a modestly equipped workshop (drill press, jigsaw, files etc) to make that a pretty easy task for me. The Deeluxe boots should have significantly more fore and back flexibility and look for something like a BTS spring system to give you really controllable fore/aft flex.

Bump. Thanks to all who have replied so far!

A few things. 1/ You have a regular stance (left foot forward). On your heelside (or left turns) you are allowing your trunk to rotate so that your right arm trails and your left arm leads, rather than both arms to the front. It's been said you want to be able to (figuratively) pee on the nose of your board on both heelside and toeside. ------------------------------------- These are suggested setup tweaks. 2/ Try some outward cant on the front boot too. 3/ A longer stance will make it easier to get lower. Get those bindings as far apart as your skwal will allow. What angles are you riding front and rear? Both rotated a little to the right and a little splay with the rear foot, a little more (say 5 degrees) across the board may help. Maybe 85 front and 80 rear.

16 replies with data as of 8 March 2024. More replies please. All born male. Heights ranging from 168cm to 195.5cm. 8 wear UPZ, 3 Deeluxe, 2 Mountain Slope, 2 a ski touring boot, 1 Head Stratos Pros. Across the group, Leg inseam varies from 42 to 49% of height. Stances range from 25 to 31% of height. Stances range from 56 to 68% of inseam. Splay: 11/16 have 5 degrees of splay or less. 5/16 have 10 degrees of splay or more (max 21 degrees). Canting: 4 riders report using canting. 3 of these have splay angles greater than 10 degrees and use it on the rear binding. 2 riders use front foot inward canting, 1 of the 3 with splay >10 using rear binding canting. The other is a stance outlier, 55 degree binding angles with 0 degrees splay, and front foot only inward cant. This isn't to say this is for "wrong" for them, just that this setup pattern is uncommon. ----------------------------------------------- Recommendations for stance is one of those perennial questions for newbies, and sometimes for more experienced riders. This thread is to gather data about what people actually ride in 2024 for free carving in hardboots I ask that each post includes a) sex at birth b) height (socks or barefoot) cm/inches. c) inside leg measurement (socks or barefoot, floor to pubic bone) cm/inches. d) binding centre to binding centre distance for hardboot free carving, cm/inches. e) binding angles front and rear f) front toe lift and rear heel lift degrees g) boots: Deeluxe, Mountain Slope, UPZ, Other - specify If you ride a different distance for other styles of hardboot riding, please include that data. I'm thinking of things like extreme carving, racing, skwalling, Pureboarding, riding powder etc. A month on from now I'll crunch the numbers and give a report on the distributions and average ratios. So to begin. Male, 182cm tall, 88cm inside leg, Freecarving 56cm stance, 65 deg front, 60 deg rear, 6 deg front toe and rear heel lift. UPZ

@slabber I've seen the Nidecker knee height recommendation. My reasoning against that is that the middle of the knee is not a hard end point, it's open to user interpretation. Floor to pubic bone has hard end points for the measurement. Secondly, while for the majority of people their lower leg and upper leg length will be in roughly the same ratio, not everyone is built that way. The whole of your leg connects your hip to your foot to your bindings. In the end the measurement is only a guide and a means for comparison between riders. Any riders stance needs to be comfortable, allow balance to be maintained, and allow centre of mass movement forward and back, side to side. Rider flexibility in the lower back, hips, knees and ankles is a crucial factor in effective movement and not easily quantified.

Which is the worse sin that BarryJ can commit in Father BlueB's eyes? Underhang or bias? Warning for younger and impressionable viewers. The wide board in this video is being ridden with high angles and lots of binding bias.

@barryj Have you tried some binding bias? i.e. use higher angles but move your front foot heel closer to the edge and your rear foot toe closer to the edge.

Everyone thinks of themselves as "normal" be it proportions or opinions. Leg length is the key measurement, not your height. In my own experiments with hard boot stance distance I increased my length incrementally until I got to a point I was so stretched out I found I was having difficulty moving my centre of mass forwards and back. Then shifted back a step. What will be your limiting factor in soft boots? Be observant in your riding and think about what you feel and achieve. Experimenting is sometimes difficult cos it takes you away from the familiar. I enjoy the process of discovery.

Only 2 months! When I broke the index finger on my dominant hand a few years ago and had 3 screws put in as part of the surgical repair, it took 12 months of daily motion exercises to regain full mobility and for the swelling around the joint to finally settle right down. Finger works 98% of what it used to, just a few degrees less motion the the joints alongside it. Do your physio and be patient. Tweak your settings in the meantime.

Both the question and any answers should make some reference to the relevant riders leg length. Inside leg length (pubic bone to floor in bare feet) is a reasonable proxy for the actual length of hip joint to floor.

If I was buying (and I'm not) I'd want to know the distance between the inserts and the waist width.