SunSurfer

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/27327309" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" width="500"></iframe> Glad to see you were OK. Not often we see & hear raw action cam video. The roar from the standard mike at almost any speed is usually quite unpleasant. I modified my Contour to have an external mike mono socket (cheap lavalier mike from budget electronics store) which I mount on the back of my helmet with a dead cat wind shield. The video demonstrates the sound I got as a result. To my ears it's not far from what I actually hear as I ride, right down to the scuffed turn of the snowboarder I pass and the snow guns roaring away. Some of the later Contours actually have an external mike socket fitted.

NZ prices at major fields are heading towards NZ$90-100 per day for an adult pass. Current conversion rate is around NZ$100 to US$86. And we don't have the litigation prone law that the US has, we have a no-fault compensation & treatment scheme for treatment for injury with a public hospital system that does not charge patients to any significant degree, so that's not the driver of the cost. Our season is relatively short, and because of our temperate island climate lots of snowmaking is necessary, so these may be part of the reasons locally. We also have legislated minimum wages, both for staff in training(NZ$11.40 per hour) and for staff 20 yrs or older(NZ$14.25 per hour), and a business culture where tipping is not the norm. Lots of things potentially drive a lift ticket price.

Scott, Making plans for SES 2015. There is a work related conference at Snowmass at pretty much the same time each year as SES which got me there in 2012 & 2013. Hoping to earn some more NASTAR gold and maybe a first platinum.

Your recovery from injury and return to racing is giving me hope as I rehab from, fortunately, more minor injuries that have had me off the slopes since Feb 2013. One of them happened while riding fast & taking chances in the NASTAR course at Highlands. Hope someday to pick your brain over a beer at a future SES!

Not quite the king. Mark Hogan (50-54 class) was the fastest snowboarder at the NASTAR championships, beating Scott on raw time in both the snowboard race course and the Race of Champions. Mark is an Aspen local I had the pleasure of meeting, and having my butt whipped by in the Snowmass NASTAR course, in Feb 2013.

The difference in pressure between the edge of a single ice skate blade and the base of a snowboard, each bearing the weight of the rider, has to be several orders of magnitude different. Science of all sorts advances by currently accepted knowledge being challenged.

Are you really looking for an answer as to why you end up with problems keeping your edge engaged throughout the whole turn? If that is the question, then I suspect the answer lies elsewhere than changing your natural stance. Lots of points of view to be found on solving this across many Bomberonline threads.

The video is proof of the concept that you can heat a board's base. You can potentially reduce the variability in wax requirements with different temperature snow. I would have liked to see a formal trial of matching prepared boards with power on vs. off to see the actual performance gain too. But the concept is possible. That said, I think that the research to make it work to the optimum would be beyond all but the larger companies. The effect on the cost of a board would be likely to be considerable, and the effect of heating/cooling cycles on durability could be a significant issue. On the other hand, maybe Fin could develop Powertec heels that only deliver power to the board when you click in, within a battery back pack you wear under your jacket!

<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/-nOMcl_rbgk" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe> Wax techs might well have bad dreams tonight. Heating the base of the board to ensure a water layer underneath appears to be within the FIS rules (p81). They don't seem to have ever conceived that someone might try this! Have to think it will be banned as soon as the FIS sees someone trying it. http://www.fis-ski.com/mm/Document/documentlibrary/Snowboard/04/36/62/SB_FIS_ICR13Snowboardincludingprecisionsfall13_clean_English.pdf

Monoski - binding centres on a single line perpendicular to the length of the ski. Alpine snowboard/Skwal - binding centres on a single line along the length of the ski. "Plankenstein" concept - binding centres on the opposite corners of a rectangle approx. 50cm long and 6-8+cm plus wide (how wide depends on your board/plate/bindings). PS: I can't figure out what to call this hybrid/chimera/cross of snowboarding and monoskiing.

Softbootsailer, Funny you should ask that. Sitting in my garage, waiting this season's snow, is a snowboard with an isolation plate on it. The plate has extra binding inserts significantly offset from the centre line. The bindings are set up with the feet front and back, but also side by side rather than one behind the other, and with the binding angles at ®87.5 and (L)92.5 degrees (I ride regular normally). I plan to ride it with and without ski poles. I anticipate it will carve beautifully, be able to be poled easily along cat tracks, and will be an awful lot easier to ride on T-bar and platter lifts than a standard stance alpine snowboard. Come July-August this year I'll find out. PS: The forum seems to be getting posts out of order. Starting to wonder if it's due to a problem the software is having with international time zones and computer clocks.

My impression is that most people who ride isocline/isolation plates mount them up with the sliding axle at the front of the board. The poll is here to see whether that impression is correct. I'm interested in the reasons people come up with for why they mount their plate the way they do. For now I'll keep my thoughts on the topic to myself.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MDuHvELIJnE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Skwal vs. Directional vs. Duckfoot. Thought provoking.

1/ Kessler 2/ Sigi Grabner 3/ Vist as far as I can see from the TV coverage.

This is one of the best stories of the Olympics. It has politics. This is Putin's absolute biggest nose thumb at the Americans. It has the overcoming of difficulties and the realising of potential. It has the husband & wife both winning medals. It has the riders respecting Vic's win and what he's had to do to achieve it. And the aspect of the underfunding of alpine boarding in the USA keeps coming up, in pretty much all the news reports I see. For alpine snowboarding in the US, Vic Wild's victory may the best thing that ever happened. Some people say politics and sport don't mix. At Olympic level, politics and sport are irrevocably intertwined.

FIS and USASA rules basically prohibit snowboarders from having anything on/in their hands that may decrease friction or improve balance. Hence you won't see any top level racers with wrist brace protection on the outside of their gloves, nor sliders, nor any kind of hand armour. The details can be found by going to the respective organisations rules pages. I suspect NASTAR is much more relaxed about the issue.

My bad. I wasn't meaning to refer to you lonbordin, more to the original poster, john. Hardbooters aren't quite as slow as some skiers would make out.

Until you learn how to carve the gates properly, and you leave a few of them in your dust. At which point you start getting respect.

Thanks John, Watching you all in Aspen while I'm here in Wellington is such sweet sorrow.

Modified Head Stratos Pros. Buckled up as if riding. F2 Intec Race - 60 degrees rear with 6cm (oops 6 degrees) heel lift, 65 degrees front with 3 degrees toe lift, no canting. 50cm C-to-C. Photos are screen shots from a single video. Reference points: The Intec mechanism pin on each boot. A mark on the roughly middle of each tibia facing the camera. Position 1 at rest, relaxed as if just sliding along. Position 2 dropped down but balanced over both feet. Rear lower leg moves through 13 degrees, front lower leg through 4 degrees in these photos. After these photos I'm starting to wonder if I need red BTS springs on my front boot, or maybe ditch the BTS altogether and just go back to a variable position lock.

Not quite a skwal, something a bit more substantial. That's another project currently on the go......... More info when I get it onto the snow in July/August.

Kipstar, I ride 65 front & 60 degrees rear, and yes I do ride with my pelvis and upper body aligned so that my whole trunk and head is facing forward. I feel like I drive my edges with the sides of my boots from the knees, rather than with my heels and toes by ankle movement and fore/aft flex.

Yeah, plenty of limitations but getting a clear series of pictures with sufficient reference points that would enable you to compare the various angles while carving a turn in real life is way beyond my technology. The pictures come as screenshots from a single 1920x1080 video to keep the view/background constant. Boots not worn to try and show what's happening to the joints, hence also the markers drawn on my skin before I shot the video. Oh, and my rear ankle is still quite stiff after I ruptured my Achilles 6 months ago. The point I'm trying to make is that while over a pair of linked carved turns a skier's hips/knees/ankles will both go through the same range of movements this is not so for a snowboarder. My impression is that my rear ankle, in particular, flexes more than the front. The pictures are there to try to make that single point more clearly. So for a skier having both boots with the same flex makes sense. It doesn't necessarily make sense for a snowboarder. If I remember correctly, you're a ski and snowboard instructor, so I'd value what you have to contribute to this discussion. I'm aware that I often look at the same stuff as other people, but frequently come to different conclusions from the "received wisdom".

from a current thread about BTS setups.I'm not the only person who thinks the front and rear boots should be different stiffnesses.

I've come to the conclusion that for me I need my front and rear boots to be set up differently. The front relatively limited in forward/back motion, and the back with much more movement available. Both boots need lateral stiffness to drive the edge into the snow, but for me to move my weight up and down, while remaining balanced over my feet and the middle of the board I need to move my lower legs differently. Above, I am in the at rest position, a slight bias of weight to over my front foot, standing upright with a degree of heel raise on my rear foot. My normal stance is about 50cm C-to-C and my feet are just under 30cm long. The white lines join dots I have drawn as fixed markers on both my lower legs to give reference points. Next picture shows me crouched down with my weight balanced and centred over the board, with roughly the same weight bias to the front foot. The angle between the initial white lines and the new ones is around 30 degrees for the rear, and 17 degrees for the front. Last picture shows me now crouching but also leaning forward. I am now unbalanced, with my weight over, and forward of, my front foot. I am putting tension on my lower back. But only now do the angles of movement for front and back match at just over 30 degrees. Some riders will say they really put weight on the nose to initiate their turns. They may well feel that the third picture represents how they initiate their turns. For me, I try to remain balanced over my feet, with my centre of gravity always within the span of the two balls of my feet. I heavily weight the edges to commence my turns, not the nose. If you watch the Vimeo video on how I've modified my Head Stratos Pros you will see that the two boots are setup to move quite differently. This does indeed show the range of movement possible, but it's also the actual way I have set up my front and rear boots. It works for me. <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/54657654" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" width="500" frameborder="0" height="281"></iframe> Head Stratos Pro Mods from Alan McKenzie on Vimeo. So then, having both boots as loose as the rear wouldn't allow me to put adequate pressure on my front foot without becoming seriously over balanced to the front. Having both boots as tight as the front wouldn't allow me to get down as low, I'd either have to stop or bend up the rear of the board to get enough forward inclination. Having different stiffnesses, rear loose, front stiff, allows me to do both.