Mr_Orange

I was deciding between this and the gecko free a few weeks ago and went with the gecko. Snow is too soft right now to really test it though.

Anyone heard of this plate or anything similar? One their site it says the rods give you extra pop in your turns (you have to google translate): http://t-platejapan.com/history.html This is a video of someone riding it: Another video. Wouldn't this be just like have carbon stringers built into your board? Maybe having the split right down the binding center allows you board to bend symmetrically regardless of your binding angle.

From what i remember, when i tried turning just the outer torx, you could see the inner freely nut rotating almost immediately. I have a heel cuff kit from my last boot that had similar teeth which prevented rotation.

didn't even consider just a normal adjustable wrench. I though coming in at an angle, you'd barely grab onto it. i'll try it once i get home. Maybe with a mini one you can actually put it all the way in there and grab it perpendicular. i like the grind down a 6-point socket idea. I though they might've even sold something like that.

Does anyone know what tool to use to remove the cuff from the inside? The outside is just a simple torx bit. Here's the inside nut: I thought a socket wrench was going to work for the inside, but the inner nut is really flat/shallow. The filleted edge of my socket bit doesn't seem to really grab onto it. I don't really want to put in a lot of force either and risk stripping it. Here's my socket bit: There's got to be something for this. I guess i can just drill it out too like i've done with other boots that just use rivets, but it seems with the outer torx bit they designed it with the intention of easy removal.

I thought you guys were talking about this kind of "forward" movement 5:35 mark: You're saying at the 7:41 mark, direct your energy in between your feet.:

Was able to do the half EC butt slide version this weekend pretty consistently. I for sure noticed the arm snag thing mentioned. As soon as you apply a little bit of pressure to pick yourself up, your arm jolts back really hard. I can see someone dislocating a should like this. I ordered this last week: http://www.mosssnowstick.com/accessories/teita This guy uses it: https://www.instagram.com/naoya_moderate/ I'll see if it helps with this issue. So stay even on both feet? Because a lot of those tutorials look like you compress towards the back leg and lunge forward in the extension.

Just did another weekend of AT boots in soft bindings. Here's a few more things to add: One of the key things i did to replicate more of a soft boot feel was getting rid of the AT boot ramp angle. I've tried this in 2 bindings. In my Technine binding, i just trim off some of the heel foam. This was used on a park board. On my other board that i used ride revolt bindings on, i actually had to add padding to the toes. The Ride Revolt chassis (i think a lot of their bindings share the same chassis) is a thin metal u-shaped structure that has a thin/small diameter metal disc. The chassis is carved out where the toe and heel areas are. This combined with how AT boots are carved out in the arch support area, you're pretty much standing right on the board like baseless bindings. This lower stack height effect feels really good. The other thing is on my Sideral I've stripped everything down (cut off all the rear splitboarding walk/ride more stuff). This lets you sit further back into the binding. I'm also going to saw of the lugs too at some point. You end up having a really short bsl which helps with lower angle boot-out issues. The Sideral has a tongue that is super soft because of that hollowed out area in the middle. It pretty much has no flex at all. This lets you get all your toeside flex from your ankle strap (Feels really good with those large rubbert structured burton genesis ankle straps). Otherwise i'd be too stiff. I still fully buckle in the ankle buckle on the AT boot itself though. You want the boot/liner fit to be snug. Another thing that works real well with this setup is having the toe strap over the toes. In soft boots i usually can't stand having the toe straps over the top because it makes my toes numb. I have to go over the front/diagonally. BUt because the AT toe cap area is hard plastic , you can really crank down the toe strap over the top and not feel it suffocating your toes. I still plan to ride plates on a pair of new Atomic Backlands I got this year. I just haven't had a chance to get it punched to my foot shape yet. For now, my Siderals are just going to be a Guinea pig boot. I have to use those battery feet warmers if it gets even a little cold. Works great though just on the medium heat setting. The toes are the only area that get cold. I'm not sure if this is because of the Zipfits or how thin my Sideral AT boots are though.

Going to drop another heavy endorsement for Zip Fit Liners. Rode them for 3 full seasons completely pain free in La sportiva siderals and Phantom splitboard plates. This season i decided to buy Driver X's and intuition liners just to see if there was something i was missing. Used the X's from December to February, For the most part they felt good except for a weird numbness in the front foot toe that wouldn't go away until the end of the day. Then all of a sudden, a sharp piercing pain came up one day in the front foot behind the front ankle bone. It got so bad that day that I was limping after the sesh. I managed to mess around with my j-bars until it felt okay again. Went to tahoe the next weekend and by the end of day 1 at Homewood, the pain started to creep in again. Had another full sesh at Sugarbowl the next day and I just bit the bullet. It sucked. The following week, i put on my Zip fits and Siderals and rode a full day. That's when i truly realized how much more of a superior fit this setup was. Not only was there no ankle pain whatsoever, i forgot how precisely the tongue area molds to your upper foot area. Also, this weekend I ran a weird experiment putting my Siderals (they are AT ski boots btw) into my soft boots bindings (yes you read this correctly). My Siderals are heavily modified. If you look on splitboardforum.com there's a bunch of mods where you can cut slits in the boot plastic sides to allow for much more lateral flex. I'd say it pretty much is a soft boot at this point in terms of flex. I also removed the foam padding on my ride revolt bindings and replaced them with this motorcycle back protector rubber. Ride bindings are great because the base structure is very thin and the disc is very thin too. The stack height after my rubber pad mod is half the thickness of a typical binding. Performance wise this setup was indistinguishable from my Driver X's. Except completely pain free. I'm easily going to ride this way for the rest of the season.

I remember seeing that video. The superman carve is a pretty sick carve and at this point i'd be happy with any of these. But the swoard guy's faces are for sure closest to the ground. The ease of exiting the turn seems way more fluid with the more forward facing stances. Here's a nother duck EC where you can see he gets nice and flat but has to push himself up at the end. The forward facing swoard dual guys come out of their turns better. Here's 2 more. I think their stances are in to the 30/33 and 45/0 range: I've been watching a lot of Rama's stuff too and there's a recent one where he tries to go deep and he has to do the 180 butter exit like you mentioned. I really like doing fs 360 nose rolls on my park board so i'd have to try this one out for sure. Here's a pretty steezy heelside to butter tripod exit. Wait till the second carve: Here's the rama carve i was talking about:

I've saved a few links oof heelside EC carves. There's a few distinct variations. I guess this would be a good place to document a few of these. Seems like it's possible to get deep in any stance. Maybe the bigger difference is just how easy it is to do them and how much speed you can exit the turn. I think this weekend i'll test out a lower angle for sure. I listed them in order of the most forward facing stances (33/30), to the snowsurf guys (33/6), all the way to Knapton's full duck stance (15/-15). Enjoy!: Snow Kiss Swoard guy: Probably the most laid out legit backside: Funcarve: His body is pretty straight but not fully laid out. Korean BX board extreme carver. This one's unique because he rides a really wide forward stance (60cm). He does a few EC variations. Kotsugai naoto. Not quite EC butt slide? A lot of the japanese Snowsurf guys do this one. Narrow stance, +6 back foot, and I think this guy rides a huge rear cant too. Seems like this is the style you can get away with if you got a very low foot angle and have boot out issues. The Korua guys ride a similar stance too. Naoya Wada. This one's pretty unique. It starts out Snowsurf butt slide and then transitions into an upper torso EC. Knees are still really bent on this one. Tyler Chorlton duck Elbow/Plank EC. This one looks like its a lot of core strength involved keep his ass off the ground. Lots of variations on his gram. The planking thing really allows him to drag it out pretty long on some of them. Kohei Sugiura. Duck stance Superman Carve. Both hands out front. This is very similar to your style Scottishsurfer. Ryan Knapton. Duck stance fully laid out EC. Very similar to the last one but notch deeper i think. Why isn't he doing more? The videos:

My Coiler board finally came in. This weekend was my 2nd attempt at learning to EC. I was able to get the toeside laid down pretty good. Backside still needs work but it's already getting deeper than it ever was. For the last few years i rode in La Sportiva AT boots and Phantom Splitboard Plates. I told Bruce (Coiler) that I wanted a board that i can EC in with both soft and AT boots so he built me this sort of hybrid board with that in mind. Here's the specs on this Coiler: 12-14M sidecut, 145 effective edge, 173 total length, 262mm width I'm trying to settle on an ideal soft boot binding setup so here's my main question (keepin in mind that this is my 2nd EC attempt and i can't actually do fully laid out heelsides yet.): What is the lowest binding angle you can set soft boots at before your heelside EC is compromised? The reason i ask is because i initially looked into typical softboot EC stances and went with a 36f/27b stance. This is what i experimented with a few times last year (just on a regular park board though) to get use to foward stance riding. It felt pretty good. This past weekend, i decided to try something a notch lower at 30f/24b half way through the day. I instantly liked this a lot better. The board felt "less wide" with the feet getting closer to the edges. Better for general freeriding. I went home and ran the Arnaud 85 degree boot-out test. It seems like with my board width and 8.5 size boots, i think i can get down to even a ~27f/18b stance without boot-out. Has anyone here EC'd with angles that low or even lower? I initially ran the Arnaud test last year on a similar width board so i knew what width to specify when ordering the Coiler. Since then though, i've gotten 2 new things. 1) an Atomic Bbackland Ultimate boot with an even shorter BSL than my Sideral. 2) Technine hibacks which allow you to sink your boot way deeper into the heelcup. Both these things allow me to get to an even lower binding angle without bootout. Seems like having a higher angle means having to rotate your body less during a heelside turn? My main priority with this board was to learn how to EC, and 30f/24b actually felt pretty decent, but it would be awesome if I could settle on a stance that's even more dynamic.

Been watching a bunch of the Rama videos and noticed that he's got a pretty versatile bag of butter tricks for a forward stance like that. In this video right below he even does some jumps and jibs too. Not exactly the high speed long distance Ryan Knapton butters but still pretty cool stuff. I really like the way switch tricks and tail presses look too with forward stances. Here's some more examples of butter tricks in his channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3pAET6r_Jc&t=20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pua6t8nByzQ Another thing i noticed is that if you translate the comment sections, he mentions his stance/angles in a few of the videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSTfFxK3gb0&t=1s (60cm, 36f/27r) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v72DvZ7FFWU (33f/27r) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=EwInSHpR40U (33/33) 60 cm (23.6")? Isn't that pretty wide for the type of angles he's running? Unless this guy is just really really tall. His feet do look like they're just really far apart though. Does anyone else here go that wide on a forward stance?

Going to squaw early june and possibly even again later. My brother ski's there. Read something about them opening all summer the other day. Is that really going down? How much of the mountain is open this late in the season? Interesting how that zardoz site tutorial recommends non-flourinated wax in contrast to the other high fluorinated recommendations i've read about for spring. Might have to test out a few different cocktails on different boards. ..and ya, always been doing the summer wax storage.

that was a really good read. thanks.