bigwavedave

Here's a nice update on the new chair and a snowmaking report. https://www.snowriver.com/discover/snow-river/bens-blog/happy-thanksgiving

Snowmaking has begun. I saw piles of snow from top to bottom on BindleStiff this morning. The weather looks good for making snow for at least the next several days. Can't remember the last time Spirit didn't have at least one run open by Thanksgiving.

Okay, winter can start now. Hopefully it will next week.

Spirit is open Thurs-Fri-Sat this week for season pass pick-up. Just picked mine up! Last year they couldn't print passes until opening day and the lines were huge. No line today. Russ and I rode bikes up to the base of Spirit to ride the DWP trail yesterday and saw that the snow guns are in position at the bottom of the hill. Unfortunately, there is no sign of winter in the near future. Might be a late start this year.

Yeah, that was me. I sliced the toes of the liners horizontally in desperation after several attempts to increase toe room by heat molding Intuition Alpine wraps. It worked for relief and I don't remember my toes being any colder as a result. Not sure it will help with your situation, but here's my original post...

The Geckos came with soft (orange) and hard (red) bumpers. I weigh 185lbs and found a mix of the soft & hard bumpers worked best for me. The bumpers that come with Virus Isolator plates are a medium stiffness, compared to the Gecko bumpers. btw, the stack height of standard TD3's (with the 1cm thick elastomers) mounted directly on the board is virtually the same as using TD3's & BP base on Geckos. Here is an old thread with lots of Gecko style plate info...

today at Spirit Mt. warm and mushy made for deep tracks...

Saturday Waited til afternoon when the clouds & the crowds dissipated and the temps got up to the upper 30's in the sun. It gets softer every day. Yes, the ice base is still under there if you carve deep enough. Making deep tracks with the 8rw today! Rode for 1-2 hours. It started to get a little busy and I had a couple of close encounters and decided it was a good time to quit. Before that though, had a close encounter (of the good kind) meeting another carver on the hill today. You know how it is, first you see telltale tracks in the snow and next thing you know you've made a new friend on the chair... ...Stacia from Copper Harbor. This may be the last day, I don't know. Gonna get real warm next week. Though there's still a lot of snow, so maybe some hike & ride before the bikes & boats come out? Day 71 at Spirit plus 9 days between Snowriver, Lutsen and Giants.

Friday AM...25° frozen groom like yesterday, maybe a little softer. And like yesterday I went back home to give the sun time to soften the snow. PM...34°-39° A bit softer than yesterday and the crowds had thinned out with no lift line to speak of. About 4-5" of lumpy slush over a hard ice base. Making big slush slarving turns on the 202 TSm² through the lumpy mashed potatoes. Felt smoother than a shorter board with a plate. Rode for 2½ hours, mainly in the PM. It was a nice day, a good Friday.

Thurs 25° am ― 34° pm 1st day after the big messy 3 day storm that in the end gave us just an inch or two of sleet & snow and lots of wind. Pretty sure there was a good dose of rain and freezing rain in there too. AM....The hill was in decent shape with a mostly smooth groom that was hard frozen. The light was flat and it was hard to see the bumps and dips. I lasted an hour and rode 3 different plated boards. I just didn't have it in me to skid every other turn just to have a bone rattling carved turn here and there. So I went home and reshaped my Thirsty-Lizard plates to make them more compliant. PM.....temps above freezing. Ran into Russ who told me to check out the bigair park and BlueRuin for the best groom. There was now a few inches of slush over the bumpy, icy groom and lots of slushy tracks, but there were no crowds or lines. I had some good, mostly carved runs. It was a challenge and tough on the old knees. I rode for another hour until the temps dropped and the slush started to set up. A ski carver stopped me at the top just to give me a fist bump and say, "You look damn good on that board". That felt good cause the conditions were challenging. I seem to get a lot of compliments from ski carvers lately, including ones who tail me to see if they can match my turns. P.S. Rode 3 plated boards today: Geckoed Contra 166, Thirsty-lizard plated 171 XC, 175 Rev with F-plate. The 171 Thirst XC with my home-made thirsty-lizard plates had the best ride. I was kind of surprised, as it wasn't even close. Usually the F-plated Rev smooths out a rough ride the best, but not today.

And, it's as fun as it looks.

Go Jane!!

Sunday After a great day at GR a few days ago, it was hard to get motivated to get back on the ice at Spirit. Even after a skiff of wet snow this morning, I wasn't planning to go up, but then the sun came out and temps rose from 20° to 45° by mid afternoon. As often happens, one thing led to another and... I found myself slarving on an inch or two of slush over a softened ice base. After one run on the 166 Geckoed Contra, I decided to go to the other extreme and rode the 202 TSm². Sooo fun. I think 45° & sunny is the magic combo to soften that ice base. It wasn't too crowded. Barely a lift line, but no empty chairs either. Lots of folks up from the cities. Sounds like everything has closed down there. I rode for an hour until clouds moved in and it got cooler and harder. The tubing hill is now a ski run again. Remember that? Looks like Lutsen got a few inches today. Talked to some folks that said it was good yesterday. I might go up there tomorrow. We're still on track for a big, intense and messy storm t-w. Could be interesting. day 68 at Spirit

You never know what to believe on April 1st

Ha!

10 or 15 yrs ago I was on a chair with 3 preteen kids. One pointed to my board and said, "what's that?", and without skipping a beat the kid next to him said, "It's a snowboard for old people." I was almost insulted and was about to go into my usual explanation, but then realized he summed it up perfectly. And they had already moved on to something else. Not long after that I was at SES and I overheard Fin describe it as "adult snowboarding" to someone asking how it differed from "regular" snowboarding.

Fri Big surf on the lake today. Spirit was closed due to the high winds. We only had 1 inch of wet snow last night, not enough to cover the icy slopes and tonight's snow forecast has been downgraded to less than 1 inch. It looks like another big one heading our way next Tues-Wed! Winter is not done with us yet. The birds know it's supposed to be spring. Canada geese started showing up last week. I saw a big beautiful swan flying over the frozen river this morning. He made a u-turn right overhead and flew back to the south. Bald eagles arrived last month.

There's a whole thread worth reading here. It's not just TD3's. Racers break F2's often enough to routinely replace them every year or two. I have several pairs of td3sw's and went through them all. Any with a frozen lug were dealt with. A few of my sets were used and I think Cory's observation that the bails get stepped on and weakened is very likely. Any of mine that failed were 2nd hand and I can easily see someone being tempted to use that upright bail to clear snow from the boot sole.

Thurs 5° at start and warmed to 20° There was a dusting of snow last night. The groom was classic Minnesota extra firm―¼" deep trenches becoming ½" deep when the sun softened the snow. Acres of wide open seamless groom, the best I've seen all season. Caught the 1st chair and made 1st tracks on Sarajevo, then over to the sunny south side to make 1st tracks on Olympic Valley, Helsinki and Grenoble. I must have made 25 runs over there with virtually no traffic. The snow was hard and fast, so it was nice to have lots of room to complete turns across the hill. Riding the Superconductor like it was a GS board. Big, strenuous turns. I could feel my mitts getting hot from the friction on the snow! Then back over to the express lift and some green runs to relax before lunch of onion soup and stout. After 4 hours my legs said enough even though my head wanted more. More snow tomorrow? P.S. A liftie riding the chair down passed me riding up and said, "man, you make that look sooo easy". A good compliment when each turn had me grunting with the effort to hold my edge. I had to pause for a breath before compressing into each turn.

We had a burst of snow for a couple of hours late today. Nice big flakes, but it didn't amount to more than a thick dusting. Maybe this next storm will have enough snow to soften things a bit. I'm heading up to Giants Ridge tomorrow. They got the same skiff of snow from the clipper today. Since they didn't have the rain and melting we had, I'm hoping to find some soft seamless grooming. It's gonna be cold, but sunny!

@Kneel I used an extra set of stand-offs I got from Virus. They are virtually the same as the Geckos―1cm tall standoff with a 4mm high collar. It was actually cheaper than getting similar ones from McMaster-Carr that didn't have a collar. As is, the stack height of my setup is virtually the same as standard td3sw. I also got extra bumpers from Frank. They are a bit harder than the soft/orange (70dur) Gecko bumpers and definitely softer than the hard/red (90dur). My homemade plates might be a bit small for F2 bindings, but they might work mounted asym. I rode the XC and the Contra back to back today with plates as pictured above. It was rough ice and they were equally uncomfortable. Had to pull out the F-plated 175 Rev (EE 164.5/ 11-12scr) to make the ride tolerable. P.S. I still want a tighter sidecut (10.5ish?) Thirst with a longer effective edge comparible to the ee of the K168 and XC 171 (ee ~157). I have come to the realization that a longer EE mutes out vibration & bumps and is an important factor for a smoother ride.

Sunday 35° at opening, sunny and warming up. Not as busy as yesterday, about like a weekday morning. The Spring Fling party seems to be over and everyone must be home with a hangover. Conditions looked promising, but under 2-3" of soft slush was a crunchy hard and rough ice base. I was beginning to think my knee was healed until I rode this stuff today! Gecko style plates weren't enough. Had to pull out the F-plated Rev. That muted the pain from the bumps, but my knees still got jammed up and I was occasionally bounced airborne from hitting unseen ice features. The snow (ice) was fast and I couldn't push hard to tighten my turns, so I was making large across-the-hill turns and going pretty fast. I had a skier drop in behind and start tail-gunning me (2nd time this year). After a few turns, I slowed and waved him by. Rode the chair up with him later and he apologized for getting so close. He said he had been watching me for years and always wanted to see what it was like doing big turns. I had 2 close calls on the next run with people bombing the hill from different directions, so 1hr and done. Snowriver looked quiet on the webcams today. I wonder how the conditions are? @Algunderfoot Russ gave me a pass for Giant's Ridge. Maybe tomorrow. I've heard the grooming is the best in the upper midwest.

I had an old, well worn 180 Donek Incline (maybe the 1st Incline of that length, called "the DelRossi"). It was a killer soft snow carver in hardboots. It was also good in powder and a great slush slarver too. Mine had a single scr of 11m or 11.5m. I missed buying the one for sale here several years ago when dropthebody got it. Seeing it brought back memories, but I've moved on and am not interested now. Just sayn', it's probably a good board.

Saturday 25° and forecast 40° by noon, so I went up at 11:30 hoping to aviod frozen groom. It was busy, lots of costumes, rental skis and careless riding. The groomers left hard curbs at the seams. It seams their attention was focused on turning the small jumps into the approach for the skim pond and turning the tubing park into something resembling a banked slalom. Costumed races on Gandy. I made 2 runs and left after having a close call with a distracted skier. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, but I had such a good time yesterday with no crowds and carvable snow...

My experience with Geckos and Gecko style plates. FWIW Asym doesn't make sense to me, especially with a circular BP base. It might make sense if you're using F2's that have a large asymmetrical footprint. I've tried Geckos asym and symmetrical, with F2's and td3sw, with reg (1cm) elastomers and with BP bases. Regular td3sw's with the thick yellow elastomer felt wobbly. Maybe a hard elastomer would be better, but the stack height was unwieldy anyway. td3sw with BP base plates had the least effect on changing how the board rode and still provided the vibration & bump dampening I sought. Increasing edge pressure was not my goal. I've had on & off meniscus issues that are sensitive to rough conditions. For me, both Asym or symmetrical setup with F2's changed the ride more in comparison to td3sw's with BP base, making the board ride longer and feel a little less responsive. BTW Geckos work great on my 2 yr old (3rd gen?) Contra 166 . They stay there. It's my ice board. I use hard bumpers under just the middle fingers, the rest get the soft bumpers to keep the flex and dampening softer. With soft bumpers all around, the ride felt too squishy & wobbly for me. Red bumpers under just the middle fingers fixed that. Red (hard) bumpers all around didn't filter bumps and vibration as much, but it might be the way to go if your goal is to modify flex and increase edge pressure, or if you're @lonbordin Geckos on a Thirst I rode the Geckos with the end bumpers removed on a Thirst XC and it worked great. Dampened bumps & vibrations without changing the responsiveness of the board. So, I made a smaller footprint (6 bumper/3 to a side) version using 5mm G10 plate. Kind of a cross between Gecko carve and the Stealth. I've had a few days on them and I'm very happy. Very responsive, dampens bumps/vibration similar to the full size, yet does not noticeably modify flex or change how the Thirst XC rides. I've been talking to Mark at Thirst about making a metal XC with a slightly tighter scr, say 10.5m to go with these plates for the ultimate ice board.