Ondrej

I was one day riding in one almost empty place in up here, while sun softened the hardpack. The trenches were really deep. Then it got cloudy and the snow froze. I sat down by the lift, eating a snack, while a ski instructor girl came down all white and banged up, clearly frustrated, yelling right in front of me at the liftie nearby, that ""some f* asshole destroyed the slope..."

@Buell, this turned out to be a gem. I played with stance on my Prior, after riding the same for many years. It turned out I was for some weird reason having a bit too much setback. I made the stance lot more aggressive by moving stance 1cm forward, removing toe lift in front, adding heel lift in back and locking my rear UPZ as much forward as possible. And oh boy, it never was so good. I don't need to force it to do anything. It worked before, but I apparently had to use a lot of effort to compensate. Had few days on it now, just came back from a few hours run, and I could throw it around just about any way I wanted. Now it's really just that flipping the board, so effortless, and with consistency all day long. So thanks a lot, because I would have taken ages to figure it out otherwise, and with uncertain result. By the way, this is what's ordered, arriving after summer, just in 180

Thanks for good answer and posting the manual. It seems like it is the 5mm they talk about. Those screws are original, so I assume as long as it's possible to use both lift and cant on same foot, it has to be that way.

Can I ask one more thing within this thread? I have now set up my intec titaniums in a way that I have both heel lift and inwards cant on the backfoot, and plain flat on frontfoot. (this one pair of lift plates and one pair of cant plates came in the package) My issue is that there are the total of 8 screws, from which 2 seem to be short, 4 mid length and 2 longer ones... And while it looks fine everywhere else, those two long screws on the heel back (where it's highest) don't go very deep into the threads. Particularly the one at the highest point goes perhaps some 5-6mm in... It this enough or are there supposed to be any longer screws? I suppose I'd have to get them somewhere else as I don't have any longer ones. Thanks

Ok, thanks, I'll read through the post Corey shared earlier today.

This is really interesting, if you only want the easier getting in and out, is it enough to buy the alternative tongue and strap kit, or do you still need to cut and drill?

Hi, I already mentioned it to Rafal, it's piteraq shop in Oslo, I can really recommend it. http://www.piteraq.no Parkveien shop in centrum, not the one in Sandvika Storsenter. I hope to meet the rest of your team soon

Thanks for the correction, it does make sense, need to load up the brain Saturday morning. 4mm would have been one heck of a metal plate indeed :D I believe it should be a good thing. The prior has a titanal layer as well and I bend it a lot- not sure how thick it is though, but likely thin.

I might actually get the inserts for the very reasons you mention. Seems like the 50€ extra isn't that big of a deal anymore :)

I haven't ordered the extra inserts (yet) and I have so far decided to drop the plate. But I'll still give those inserts a thought. Well, I went for a metal board. It was a combination of all the info around, the little testing, the really good deal, and most importantly, a gut feeling :)

That's interesting and certainly possible. Thanks for the update. What difference does the 4mm titanal make in your deck? I believe it should be good either way. Had a chance to still get this year's deck, but I'd wait a month and only use it 3 days in April, or snatch the new model for same discounted price :)

Final update, decision has been made and 2018/19 SG Full Race 180 is pre-ordered with arrival in October. Guys there say it's improved construction for next year, with thicker titanal plate for better weight transition and vibration dampening. SG team has tested it and it should be one heck of a deck, just not easy to get hands on those test pieces this year. Too bad, but I'm no big fish :) Thanks everyone for all the good input

Hi Jim, Thanks :) I was preparing myself for the same process you described, with the addition of ordering overseas. But went through Intuition website to dealers, was a bit surprised to see Europe and then Norway. That dealer pointed further to few shops, and one happens to be not far from where I work. Pretty lucky there :) I ended up getting Luxury in the low volume variant, pretty thin, yet warm and comfortable liner. Quite tight kind of under or around the bottom of the heels, where I need to use extra pair of soles to keep my heels from falling into that tight bottom. I have generally low volume feet, so the soles help a lot overall. Got the liners heated up and molded on feet, so the fit is great. It feels like whole different boots. Worth the cash for sure.

Found a local shop in Norway with Intuition liners, dropped in today with the shells and after some good deal of testing (even the low volumes are really tight) walked away with heat molded Luxury Low volume with extra soles. Enormous difference and I was already pretty close to tossing the whole boots. All I can say is that I could bang my head against a wall for all the voluntary suffering during those years. For some reason I thought it was supposed to be that way. Well, the most important thing is that those days are now over. Thanks for help

And how much room in the shell do you have without the liner? I'm just curious since I don't have very much at all.

This is a picture of me "one place" in the middle of Norway by the end of April few years ago, where I met 4 skiers in 3 days, one of them being a ski instructor, one was working in the pub, and the last two were on holiday and clients of the instructor. Where else do you rent a private ski resort for about 38 USD per day? :) As to the steepness of the hill, look at the opposite side of the valley, and imagine that kind of angle all the way down... Might be a bit out of the hand for most, but if not, send pm :)

Hopefully, I can pick up on this thread again. Exactly same problem, got in my UPZ's last weekend after 1,5 seasons off and after first run thought there would be no second run. Feet were absolutely killing me and I was swearing all the way up the hill with all buckles open. Feet sit tight, but freeze easily. After few runs it got better and at the end of the riding, I barely knew about it, but don't need to experience it next time. Enough of this stock Flo liner. I have boot shell 5,5-6,5 US, with exactly 1 (rather skinny) finger space behind the heel. Pretty tight from the times I cared about best performance and not so much about comfort. My feet are rather low volume. Intuition says that this for this little room they advise low volume liners, but there aren't many of them - for example the Luxury Low Volume. Those who use the alpine or powerwrap liner, do you think it would be too thick? They also say if you have boot 1/2 size (this Luxury LV), round up size of the liner.... Should I then get size 7 or will it be too big? thanks in advance

No worries, I'm not taking any technique pointers as any offense of any sort. That's valuable input and how you describe it with staying over the board actually corresponds with how I eventually got it to work the best when trying to flip it faster. Just not the way I used to ride the prior but I suppose that's not strange either. I got some nice runs out of it for sure, and perhaps more time on it than those 8-10 runs would help to adjust.

I wasn't having issue with speed, even though the deck was speeding up the turn more than my Prior for sure. Not so easy to describe. Could be me, or the stance I didn't have any time to adjust, not sure. What I meant is the edge lock, or concrete grip all the way until I was able to get up and over the board, which took longer time or more effort than I would have liked. Initiating the turn with weight forward and mid section was no different, but on the exit, normally, I would have shifted weight a bit back to "unlock" the the nose (or front third of the board), and could get up and over with weight forward easily or jump fast into next turn as needed. On this Kessler, the nose was gripping quite a bit longer (what I mean by that commitment), and it has one heck of a grip. It took some effort to dig it up when I didn't have time to wait. If anything, I am wondering if I should have moved the stance even more back in fact, as the initialization was almost too easy. I just mounted it centered on those inserts, no idea what the setback of the inserts was. Just to say it, I had fun with it, it didn't spoil my ride or anything and worked fine, I just wasn't sure I was 100% able to change anything until I was up and over the deck again. If it makes any sense...

I cannot unfortunately test the SG deck, it would be ideal. Guys, can I ask you one last thing? How are those decks in terms of exiting a turn earlier? What scared me little bit on that Kessler I tested was those committed exits. It wasn't the speed that was any issue, more like the noticeable extra effort it took to initiate next turn earlier than what would have been natural to it - like in case you need to react fast- other skiers, etc. It was just hooking that fraction of a second extra. I pushed it from forrest to forrest on not very wide slope and didn't really feel all that comfortable in this regard. If you even noticed it, is it any different on the SG deck? I have talked to one SG dealer and managed to pull a good deal for a new 17/18 Full Race, if taken with a Vist plate and F2 intec titanium bindings, about USD 1350 for the whole package, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

Ok, that's good to know, thanks. Does anyone know any difference between the K180 and SG full face 180? Is the SG deck just as committed and the Kessler or easier to exit the turn?

Little update, Today was lucky to get hands on and test a custom Kessler alpine 174. Unfortunately no specs available, but will get nose/waist/tail width and try to check with Kessler as to what SCR that probably was. Stiffness pretty good I think. I had about 8-10 runs with pretty good variety of terrain, hard pack snow, great conditions, and can say three things: 1) the deck grips and commits like crazy, the first run (rusty after long break) I managed to go 2x uphill at the beginning :D before I figured out the behavior. But soon after beginning the deck felt predictable and the grip felt like being glued to the hill - The Prior is really good, but this was yet another level. 2) I loved how friendly it is for just easy cruising, but give it some hard work and it answers right back. However, committing too much was a little scary with small room for error before forest started. 3) the main thing though, turn radius, was noticeably, but not much bigger than the Prior I tested right after for comparison. Should this be my only deck for everything, I'd take it. Quite coincidentally, the guy who let me test this deck was himself on a Swoard mentioned here earlier. It seemed like a great deck for freecarving, but he told me himself that it didn't have the ability of the Kessler in 2) I wonder if K 180 behaves similar, just a bit longer turns. Could it do what I was hoping for? I assume the SG decks will be very comparable if not better from what others say, I hope that I can take a look at them at some point.

Thanks for the info. I have checked here and it seems like I have the newer type: https://www.priorsnow.com/products/wcrm, mine looks like this at least. Perhaps it was the metal top BlueB talked about that had the more round nose. (unless they have some completely new board that is not on the website here) I'll try one Kessler tomorrow or on Sunday, but I have had a chance to ask few people both racing and freecarving SG boards about the bigger radius turns and I might be leaning towards SG Full Race 180 with a Vist plate, or something similar. 19 meters radius, but still should be able to turn pretty fast if needed. The 170 boards look awesome, but like checking the Sigi "ride with me" video, there isn't enough difference from the Prior in terms of bigger turns...

I made a request to one Czech store, where they seem to have good deals on SG decks right now, to find out what they have... If the Full Carve is like the Full Race without the metal plate, I can imagine both performing similar on good snow, while the metal holds some extra on ice. Seems really interesting. I'll check out the custom Kessler next weekend as well, see how it rides. And I'll keep looking for alternatives :)

Was it stiff enough? What conditions? Any ice? :)