Dan

Yes, that's right.

Awesome! Welcome to hardbooting! I recently spotted 8 carvers in one day at Mt. Hood Meadows, so there is a little bit of a local crew in Portland for you to ride with. Hope to see you up there this spring; post in the Rides section when you're heading up. As far as getting set up, you can buy boots mail order from yyzcanuck.com, upzboots.com, or blue-tomato.at. Hopefully you already know the brand and size that work for you from your lesson with Boris. For a starter board and bindings, I would probably just look in the classifieds on this site. I would suggest a freecarver as opposed to a race board; if you post your height / weight, I'm sure you will get some recommendations. No need to spend a lot of money at this point, save the brand new customs for when you have a better idea of what you like / dislike in an alpine board.

Update: Max/grayontray found a great place at Sun River, with hot tub and grill. There are still beds available for anyone interested - the reservation is from April 2-April 8. It's a 4-way split right now, coming to $300 per person ($50 a night, cheap!), but that will go down more if we get a few more folks in the house.

Thank you, I didn't know that!

Good question - they're Deelux Indys. They're from the age of zip straps, not real buckles. The liners are Deeluxe Thermo liners.

Resurrecting this blast from the past. I'm not sure if my liners are packing out, my style has changed, or what, but I noticed substantial heel lift on my back foot (right foot) in my last two sessions. The boots are definitely not too big: I measure around 27.5 cm and I'm using a 27.0 liner which fits very tight, but maybe I have skinny ankles? My liners don't have a ton of days on them, maybe about 100, but they have been molded twice. Is it worth molding them again, keeping the buckles a little looser this time, or is it time for new liners? Sounds like there's consensus that is a better option then using more heel lift on the binding, right? I use 3 degrees of heel lift (TD2s) on my right boot, and would consider trying a 6 degree disc, but of course they are not so easy to find these days.

So I was not riding great - the mountain had melted and refrozen overnight and there were lots of death cookies on top of the groom - but the on-slope photographer saw the hardboots when I passed by as he was setting up and thought I could put on a show. He waved at me to come around again and I did -- he picked one of the results as the headline photo for his gallery for the day -- immortalizing my meh riding. Oh well, maybe I'll have better luck next time.

Where are folks staying? Want to rent a house or try to all stay @ the same hotel?

Then Timberline? $139 and it's good until May 28!

That makes this session a pretty screaming good deal!

Look for the rider making B- carves on an A+ Thirst board!

Nice! I'm locked in for Tuesday - got dog care lined up and moved my dentist appointment, so now I _have_ to go. Have not had nearly as many days on snow this season as I would like, but hoping to make up for lost time. Probably won't get up there until after 8:30 though, so I'll look for you on the hill in the regular spots. I'll have my phone with me.

You're welcome! You're right that BOL folks are good folks...those of us on the dark side gotta stick together!

That's great!

Those are incredible - I've never seen them in real life, so thanks for the detailed photos!

Nice Bryan! Is that at Meadows? I'm trying to set things up so I can play hooky on Tuesday (March 6), any chance you might be heading up then?

Ah, I was wondering about that - I've stumbled on that page a few times myself, it's the first result for "Mt bachelor Spring Pass". We have had a great storm cycle in Oregon / WA lately that brought us something like 4' of snow, which should support riding into April / early May at Bachelor, so I think it's likely that there will be some kind of spring pass this season as well. They are always a little coy about making the announcement though... Not sure what the price difference is, but flying to RDM will save about 3 hours of driving each way (might be a longer wait in the airport though, which could make it a wash). If you go PDX, the Breeze is fine and roads shouldn't be a problem at that time of year. I may be able to offer you a ride out to Bend from PDX, still trying to work out the details, but if you lock in a flight, let me know your itinerary.

Bob, come ride Bachelor on April 3-7! I'm heading out for most of that time, Keenan will be there that whole time, and Mark from Thirst Snowboards is going to be there, I believe with some demos, and some other Schweitzer locals are coming out as well. Any chance you can make it out there? It will be a great opportunity to see other carvers and talk about carving.

Anyone want to car pool up to the hill this Sunday (March 4)? Leaving Portland on the early side, like 6:00 or 6:15, and parking at HRM, heading back down the mountain by 1 p.m.

Hey Don, yep, I'm in Portland. That could be pretty cool and there might be some other folks interested too. What part of town will you be in? Sat/Sun will probably be good carving on Mt. Hood and I'm planning on heading up Sunday -- any interest?

D'oh! A number of guys from here will be riding at Bachelor on April 3-7, and would love to demo your boards. Don't suppose there's any chance you'll come back?

Looking forward to it! Not sure if I'll beg the guest room from my in-laws or find a place in town. Looking like I will be able to attend most of the session...maybe even the whole thing. How about Kram? He better not say that work is getting in the way!

Yeah, the apparent disparity in blue and red courses was very disappointing. Agree with 1xsculler that running the same course for time would have been more fair. Would also like to see courses with more variation: a difficult left turn could be balanced by a difficult right turn to keep things even for both regular and goofy riders. The r/l symmetrical courses are kind of artificial IMO.

TBH, things have gotten so much crazier since the days when I bought a pass every year (2001 - 2006 or so) that I had pretty much given up on powder days. I hold out for bluebird weekdays in January when no one else can be bothered to drive up...but crowds on the hill on Saturday weren't bad! My first MHM powder day in 3 or 4 years, and it wasn't as horrible as I expected. I am surprised by the extent to which people drive like fools though. I mean, after one trip up in white knuckle conditions, surely you 1) know what to expect 2) will get some damn traction tires or chains. However, that's not the case, and there was a lot of headshaking idiocy on display.

Made it up Saturday! EPIC day! (As I explained to a coworker, that means "If I had been up there anytime before the 20th century, I would have been convinced I was going to die.") Riding bottomless powder, I think they only claimed about 10" overnight, but it was much deeper on wind loaded slopes. Got first tracks on 2 Bowl and Roach Bowl, fresh tracks in Jack's Woods, and a long, slow, hot and technical trip out of PR. My bad, I hadn't been down there in a long long time. It looked like a lot of people collected over on Star waiting for Heather to open, other chairs were not bad and overall the hill was less crowded than I expected. We left Portland at 6 a.m. and traffic was not a problem; we pulled into HRM around 7:45. We headed down the hill around 2 p.m. and hit some very slow traffic but were ahead of the worst crappy driving and the semi that apparently blocked both lanes at some point behind us. Saw a pickup truck with Texas plates in a snow bank on the way down and smirked in a way that I have to admit wasn't very friendly. Very slick conditions for driving and lots of people were having trouble.