bigwavedave

I'm planing to be on 1st chair Sunday morning and ride til I can't walk or til it gets too crowded. Thanks for the heads-up JoeD, will you be there on Sunday as well? JOlson must be waiting for the MardiGras pool crossing? Is the snow getting slushy during the day with these warm temps? I'm bringing the ATV just in case.

Spring conditions? Anybody been out? Thinking of coming up on Sunday, everyone should be inside watching the big game leaving lots of room to carve. Anyone else? Found these custom gopro camera-mount inserts on my board (I suppose they could also be used for hengle plates). The Gopro rear-view-cam:

Want to buy 6 and/or 3 degree cant disks with or without E-rings for TD2's.

Thanks Boris, pretty flashy board compared to my basic black boards. Can't wait to ride it in some powder. Rounds out my quiver nicely:

Hey Buck Hill, Nice vids. A longer pole would give you a better view. I got a lightweight 5'7" telescoping Vivitar monopod from Walmart for $12 last year, works great. Also, try mounting the camera under the pole and filming in upside-down mode for a boards eye view. http://youtu.be/TQ_xqDtN5sY You guys should consider coming up to Spirit Mt sometime, there's a lot more room to carve (as you can see on the above vids) and the runs are 2-3 times as long as anything near the cities.

Russ, Ken...Gort, Klaatu barada nikto?

Thinking of coming up Sunday, early, the forecast looks nice. Anybody else planning to come out and play?

Sale pending. I'll let you know if it doesn't go through.

Yup, send me your postal code by email and I'll see what the cost is. A quick check with the usps online calculator gave me a price around $45-50, proirity mail to BC, not including the insurance. Not having shipped to Canada before, I don't know if that's the best price, but from what I understand the postal service is supposed to be the least expensive way to go.

If I didn't already buy two Kesslers from you in the past year I'ld seriously consider this deal. A Kessler with a boiler plate for a little more than the price of a new plate is like getting a free board to go under your new plate! Here's one way to help support our US alpine team--buy their used stuff.

Plan to come up Tuesday AM, with this new snow and a sunny forecast for tomorrow, it should be better than better.

Purchased new from Bomber 2005/6? Recreational riding 10-15 half days each year for 4 years. Hasn't been ridden for 2 years. Original base grind, edge bevel 2 degrees. Except for the dark surface stains from Catek bindings, the board has little evidence of use, no visible nicks and scratches etc. $200 plus shipping SOLD

A great day! Near perfect groom and lack of typical weekend crowd more than made up for a cold start and flat-ish light. Rode til I could hardly walk. What an addictive sport...left, right, rhythm change, repeat to bottom, take a breath, get up and do it again til you can't anymore...Ahhh...what fun!

Thanks for the suggestion SBF. The Dupraz has good reviews on this forum and they sure look nice. It's hard for me to justify the expense for something I might use once a year, but one wants to have the right tool for the occaision. I'ld seriously consider one for under $300., but... I'm gonna go for a Dynastar 3800 from Boris. It seems close to what I want, and I can get it right now. Haven't heard anything but good things about them. New board, good price.

Anybody been up there this year or planning to go? I've never been, but it looks interesting and the lake effect snow is finally kicking in up there. <IMG id=thumb1 border=0 alt=" " src="http://www.mtbohemia.com//images/rsgallery/display/3-12-09%20179%202.jpg.jpg">

Looking for dedicated resort powder board to use with hardboots. Most of my riding is midwest groomers, but I would like to have something (used/inexpensive) for those rare powder vacations. I am 5'11", 180#. I have a 167ATV, which is a great AM board and really shines carving in soft snow and crud, but not as much fun in deep snow and trees. I'm thinking of something like a 4807 or pow-stick. Something that could also be fun riding to and from the powder areas.

jburrill, You've raised a number of issues. The bottom line is funding. All the other countries, including Canada (since the run-up to the Vancouver olympics) have full government support for their teams, whereas the US gov, apparently for philisophical reasons, does not. I read in an interview with Jasey-Jay that funding made all the difference. Although there are competing claims over who "invented" snowboarding, I believe the "alpine" refinment of the sport came from a couple of European guys, hence the "euro-carve". So, in a sense they had a head start and have dominated the sport, just as the "skate-board" style had it's start in the US where we have dominated. One could make the same argument for BX (an X Games invention). I think the reason you don't see more FIS races in the US is because the USASA currently fulfills that entry level competition. The way I understand it is USASA exists because the USSA (a ski organization) was unwilling to recognize snowboard racing early on, probably hoping they would just go away, so they did. The USASA manages to partially fund a team of their top young riders through corporate sponsorship. The continental cup races; ie, NorAm cup, Euro cup, etc, are coordinated amongst the countries participating under FIS (international ski/snowboard federation) rules. The NorAm "race-to-the-cup" alternates hosting venues throughout the season between the US and Canada. There are two east coast NorAm races coming this Feb (Le Relais, Quebec and Holimont, NY) as well as the Canadian stop for the World cup at Stoneham, Quebec. NorAm races are used as qualifiers to compete in the world cup. Also, note that in the US stop for the world cup in Telluride last month the top US finisher in alpine (men and women) was a woman, not Tyler or Trappy. The US women also filled out the upper ranks in the two US hosted NorAm races so far this season. FIS results: http://www.fis-ski.com/uk/disciplines/snowboard/results.html?place_search=&seasoncode_search=2012&sector_search=SB&date_search=&gender_search=&category_search=&codex_search=&nation_search=&disciplinecode_search=PGS%2CPSL&search=Search&limit=20 A thankyou should go out to local vendors, like Bomber and Doneck that support our alpine racers.

Persona non grata, the mantle previously worn by all snowboarders, is apparently now solely owned by the alpine division, at least as far as the USSA is concerned. To my knowledge, there is little or no financial support directed to the alpine snowboard team through the corporate and private funding the USSA recieves. Why? That would be a good question to pose to the USSA, maybe make them aware that we are out here by asking via their website. Likely it's a reflection of the percentage of hardbooters out there compared to everyone else on the snow. But, still, on their website they don't even acknowledge that the alpine team exists, never mind profiling the team! They do exist, barely, on passion for the sport and their own funding efforts. Interesting too, in world cup snowboarding, there seems to be a greater number of athletes competing in the alpine events than in either halfpipe or boarder cross, especially in the womens division. Why is that?

Rode from 9am to 1:30, near perfect firm groom for first two hours then softened in the bright sun, crunchy stuff about 2" underneath, but still great carving. Russ showed up about noon.

Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday morning, forecast looks better.

summary of last season's morning carving sessions at Spirit Mt edited by (Jolson). Nice job Jim! This video shows typical weekday morning carving sessions throughout the season with lots of room to "express yourself". It's like having your own private area for the first few hours. MN riders should consider having a weekday morning MES at Spirit. Discounted 4hr tickets and senior discount age 55 makes the drive well worth it.

Met up with Russ Thursday AM for a nice session. Thanks for coming out before work Russ. Great (perfect) carving conditions with warm, hazy sun. Mostly rode 4pipe plus the 2 adjacent runs. Other runs to the north were a little chunky/washboardy and one could detect the icey stuff underneath when in full carve mode. Not as much fun. Started to get a little busy about noon when I quit. One tends to get spoiled having the full width of every run to yourself all morning. Got 22+ runs in with my 4hr ticket (less than a buck per run!).

Great smooth-carving soundtrack! Your vids are always a pleasure.

Hey Russ, are they still making new snow to cover that ice? Might be able to come up Thursday AM if conditions are good.

Had a nice session Thurs morning. Also, detected the icy crust under surface hardpack when carving hard. 4 Pipe open about 1/2 width plus the next 3 runs north of that. Gandy Dancer had large piles of man-made snow turning it into onehellofa terrain park (if it was open). Hope there's some accumulation with today's snow.