SunSurfer

Your route to here matches mine, except I took the softies lesson, but not before I'd rotated my soft bindings to somewhere in the mid 40's. That earned me some comments from my first lesson instructor. But I'd already decided I wanted to carve my turns rather than kick the tail of my board around. There weren't any more. I started hard booting in New Zealand at age 49, having been on slalom skateboards from my teens and skis from my twenties. Took myself to the top of the beginners slope and learned how to basically manoeuvre esp. braking and skidded turns, principles not really that different from skiing. Fell over a lot, laughed a lot, had a heap of fun enjoying the challenge of learning and progressing. Ten years on I'm still learning, though I can now make cleanly carved turns that cause truckloads of dopamine release in the pleasure centres of my brain. I've had the apparently compulsory arm/hand injury that nearly all 40+ first time snowboarders get. I've met in person a whole lot of really nice people through this website and travelled to some amazing places in search of my "fix". As an ex-skier you will probably feel more comfortable setting your bindings to somewhere between 55-65 degrees. It will likely seem more natural to tilt your board similarly to how you tilted your skis, rather than as the ex-softboot boarders do out of their heels and toes. Don't buy new gear until you've been bitten by the bug. If it bites, it will bite very deep. This forum is testament to the carving obsession/madness. Study up on boots, bindings and boards, then use the For Sale section here for generally very reliable sellers. Stay away from race boards until you've found your feet. Something freecarve'ish in the 165-175 cm range and with moderate sidecut radius, certainly not more than 14 metres. Check out the Ride Board for your area to try and find a local carver(s). You will make far faster progress with a buddy. I have one who made some crucial suggestions early on. Check out YouTube for an enormous range of carving snowboard, Alpine, hardboot videos. Look for smooth fluid style. You could do far worse than look out for Johnasmo's videos. "Carving the Black" is a standout amongst many great ones. Bottom line: To start carving snowboarding straight off from skiing in your late 40s without softboot lessons is possible. As long as you protect your hands/wrists/forearms from the inevitable falls you should have a lot of fun trying. People here are generous with their time and gear. Find and ride with your local carvers. PS: If I was able to reach back 10 years and tell myself 1 thing it would be this. When you, as an ex skier, are ready to start making your first attempts at carved snowboard turns, perhaps doing some of the exercises in the Tech section of the website, and start to slide down the beginners slope - Balance front to back, side to side, over the balls of both feet. Gently lean in the direction you want to go, remaining balanced over that side of the balls of your feet. Look to where you want to go. FEEL your edge bite, feel it with the incredibly densely innervated soles of your feet. Let your board do what it was designed to do. At the beginning this will be enough. ------- A carved turn, on board or skis, is actually a very simple thing. The rider tilts the tool, stays balanced over its' edge, and lets the sidecut and edge bend do exactly what they were designed to do. You don't know me. This is a short video of my riding from 2015. My buddy says I've got better since then. https://vimeo.com/128358242

If you don't run some outward canting on your bindings of course it's going to hurt your knees. Flat bindings and a skwal stance are not natural for normal legs.

@MN Surfer The problem may not be with the binding canting. The problem may be with how you have set up the BBP. My experience with sliding axle isolation plates, inc the BBP, is that for adult size riders the best performance comes from setting the axles as far apart as possible.

Ride it the way you would lean a motorcycle into a turn and you'll soon be ripping. A little bit of outward canting and front foot toe lift and rear foot heel lift will allow longer stances, better balance, and preserve your "potency".

The board will go higher on it's edge when you make tighter turns. When you make tighter turns with good technique the snow will come to you. Look to where you want to go and your body will often follow naturally.

Took delivery @ ATC 2017 of a Nirvana 174 Energy Torsion+ T.4 from Bruce Varsava @ Coiler. Email from BV at the time records the board being delivered with a flat i.e. 0 degrees base, and an 89 degree sidewall and that this was the standard pattern. Despite the flat base I had no problems with sideslipping, catching edges etc. As for the carving (excerpted from my ride report after 2 & 1/2 days) "...The board carves deeper trenches than I've ever managed before. If my technique is good then it will do pretty much whatever I ask. Heresy I know, but I didn't scrape off the storage wax it came with. By the end of the its' first day at Buttermilk, the wax was gone from the whole length of the board for 2-3cm from the edge (i.e. right round the corner of the hybrid nose)."

In the midst of this article about women in sport in 2018, Ester Ledecka gets recognition of her extraordinary achievement. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/dec/26/gymnastics-women-us--court-coacg-abuse-netball-england?

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3b/4d/81/7eaeb6f6d7df14/US9216343.pdf For tech heads, and anyone wanting to try to understand the Kessler "secret sauce".

Having ridden an MK I wouldn't put a plate on one either. They're a frisky, lively ride. But maybe not all day for me at nearly 60 years old.

No need to answer this question. How old are those knees? There's a reason isolation plates are popular with older riders. Christmas, amongst many other things, reminds us of the inexorable passage of the years. Hope you all have a great Christmas.

UPZ RC10 ramp angle - 2016 model, pivoting/gullwing tongue. 303-324mm 10/10.5/11 shell. Measured the difference in sole thickness between heel and toe while checking Intec cable integrity and that all the sole screws were corrosion free and tight. With F2 Intec heel in place 52mm / 22mm, i.e. 3cm. The heel units the boots came with are 3mm thinner than the Intec heels. To put that in context, I have some home made lift wedges in my F2 Intec bindings producing approx. 6 degrees slope. The higher side height of the taller wedge is 2.7 cm. The thin end of the thinner wedge is effectively 0 cm. So 6 degrees of toe lift under my front boot gives me a close to flat ramp angle

I am worried about the amount of silicone that has been injected into the top layer!

Barry, Do you use Intec heels? If so, is the painful area where the Intec cable in that boot runs past your heel?

Men http://skiracing.nastar.com/index.jsp?year=2019&source=selectrankings2&pagename=viewrankings&overallsnowboard=Y&male=Y Women http://skiracing.nastar.com/index.jsp?year=2019&source=selectrankings2&pagename=viewrankings&overallsnowboard=Y&female=Y No names I recognise as of Dec 19th 2018.

Question about non-paying member privileges. Just had a currently non-paying member be unable to download a .pdf file I'd uploaded. Is that related to their subscription status or should I look elsewhere to understand the issue? I plan to email the file to them directly so it's not a major problem.

FrankNBeans wasn't far off. Darts anyone? Has a fiercely contested World championship (spectators threw beer over one of the contestants at the most recent champs) and is played widely by non-Americans. However, many more people play darts than ride Alpine snowboards.

And it went the golfer, Molinari. Again, remember it's the BBC and Britain. In a country where winter sports are strong Ester would likely have won.

2018 Infinity above. Liked the section where skier and boarders carve together.

Something not quite right about those snowboard bindings.

12 out of 20 from the USA. American magazine with an American worldview. Where's the surprise? Probably better in The Lodge.

A few years ago now I got some good hints from another rider on this forum. They were clearly a better rider than I was then. Fast forward till last winter here in NZ. In between, as well as free riding, I've spent some time in deliberate practice, by myself, on Green/beginners runs focusing on technique for clean carved turns. A couple of clinics at SES have provided progress jumps and Aha! moments, but to my mind deliberate practice has been essential for me. Over the time my early tutor and I have got to ride together. My tutor is stuck in their style, having been taught a way of doing it which isn't working for them. They have noted my progress, but seem unwilling to change. And that's my point. If you want to progress you have to be prepared to change. As @Kneel said above, you have to get out of your comfort zone. You have to be prepared to try something different. I described some progress I made last winter in a thread "Old dog learns new tricks from an old board". Go back to some of the drills in the Tech articles here on ASB. Look out for the Intermediate and Steeps Clinic videos from SES on YouTube. Absolutely spend time with better riders. But be ready to change.

I saw this on the BBC website. Climate change is 'shrinking winter' - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46547064 Article includes photos of changes in California snow coverage over the last 30 odd years.

Intec cable (bust one at SES riding with Corey and Riceball and was back in action in about 45 minutes), spare F2 Intec toepiece, a range of tools, spare M6 screws, solid and liquid fast onset calories, tape measure. Current minimum board set is like my coffee. Long and black. Kessler KST162, Rad-Air Obsession Extreme, Coiler Nirvana Energy 174.

Barry's experience is entirely consistent with the plate experience of many riders with older knees. Reduced fatigue improves your ability to control the board and extends your riding day.

Hi @daveo I'll search out the link to the post/thread where this was discussed. Doing this is absolutely not recommended for boards with Titanal construction. My memory is that when a board is constructed the holes for the inserts are already made in the Titanal before layup and are a little wider than the inserts themselves. Drilling holes in the Titanal layer and then placing inserts snug up against the Titanal creates pressure points, extra weak spots and the risk of core failure. Edit: All my additional inserts have gone into glass construction, non-Titanal boards. I had Bruce Varsava put an extra set of UPM inserts into an NSR 180 for me in 2012 as part of the original board construction. I utilised those in a plate that had hinges at the ends, rather than underneath, and achieved a 72cm interaxle distance with about a 21mm stack height. Unfortunately the board core failed in use at the front outermost UPM insert on my heelside. Unclear if due to crash damage or just to the plate allowing me to ride rough snow too well. It was a rocketship while it lasted, incredibly stable at 70km/hr plus speeds.