Corey

No experience with the go pro, but I've been trying to use a bullet cam for weeks now. I just can't get any suction cups to stick. The clear vinyl ones get too stiff when cold, and I always have little grains of snow breaking the seal with more flexible ones. I hope to try again at SES.

That's stunning!

On the way back from Glenwood Springs stop in Basalt for supper at Smoke - http://smokemodernbbq.com/ If you like BBQ you'll love this place.

That makes a lot more sense. Must be an old forecast cached in my iPhone... It still says well above freezing.

How is the snow in Aspen? I see a daytime high of 64*F and an overnight low of 37*F on Thursday! Will there be any snow left? Locally, our season is over once it gets up to a daytime high of 40*F. There are huge rivers running down the hill and all kinds of mud rising to the surface. :(

Thanks for all the opinions! I think I'm going to talk with Bruce at SES and get on every board in the demo tent. Steep isn't a concern for me. There is exactly one run within a 5-hour drive of home that is something I'd consider steep, and they usually let it go to bumps after Christmas. Bad, irregular, icy bumps. :( Most runs around here are mild blues, after all we ski on the sides of river valleys! The challenge isn't to control your speed but rather to not scrub all your speed in any given turn. I had a hard time at SES last year as I had to learn to finish my turns to keep speeds reasonable.

A 178 GS is my favourite board when conditions are decent (for reference I'm 205 lbs). Try moving your bindings a little bit forward of the center of the inserts. I have mine shifted about 2 cm forward of center, it made a nice difference. Be confident, tip it high on edge, load the nose, and feed the board forward under you through the turn, and hold on!

Hmm, a custom Coiler with a magna-traction type of edge for the first half/third/whatever of the running surface to get the groove started in the ice... That sounds fun too! I don't want to be the first person to try it though. ;) It's funny that it's not that much extra money for me to buy a custom Coiler than it is to get a used Madd once I factor in duty/taxes/shipping from the US.

I've got to ride more metal boards. I should be enjoying a demo about this time next week at SES. :D :D I can hardly wait! My metal test rides have been limited to the Madd 158 (holy camber batman!) and a Prior WCR (felt completely numb to me). I need to sample more boards. Thus far I've enjoyed boards like race cars - rewarding if you use proper technique and punishing if you make a mistake. You learn quick with this kind of equipment! But I'm mellowing in that view after a few brutal ice days... In the meantime, I put my name in the list of people wanting Big Canucks (was nekdut's) Madd 158 in the classifieds. These don't come up very often so I figured I should jump on the opportunity.

I had a frustrating day yesterday. My local ski area has narrow runs, iffy snow conditions, and questionable grooming. Tack on nothing steeper than a blue run and I question why I even go some days. When everything lines up right it can be quite fun even on something like my F2 RS 183 on the one run that's about 4 groomer passes wide, but on a bad day it's like a skating rink. I spent yesterday on a F2 SL 163 doing small/slow carves/slides through the icy sections and playing in a section about 1.5 groomer passes wide of good snow, it was about 250' long. I rutted up that section so bad that no one else even went on it as the day progressed! ;) But the sections leading up to and after this were horrible, you could see the groomer tracks in the yellow ice. There were at least 5 people (only ~100 paying customers - it's a small hill!) that got treated by ski patrol for simply falling on the ice. Lots of injured wrists and one particularly nasty faceplant. :( I want something that can go slowly and turn tight radius turns on ice. But it would be very nice if it also could handle a bit of extra speed when conditions are nice. Is the legendary Madd 158 the board for this? Or would a metal Coiler built specifically for this be better/equivalent? They seem to be close to the same price... I rode a Madd 158 metal at SES last year that felt great, but it was in near hero snow so I don't think it was a representative test. Any opinions/suggestions? Other than "move to the mountains." :p

Wasn't someone here desperately looking for Burton Skyback highbacks for soft bindings? I recall reading something about some top boardercrosser wanting them but can't find it in a brief search. I saw some in Scheels Sports in St. Cloud, MN. They had two pairs at $29.99 each. Pictures below, they're camera phone pictures so they're not the best. They also were blowing out Sportube 2's for $109.99 and 1's for $79.99. I got one of each for my wife and I to come to SES, nice timing! This is not my stuff nor do I work for Scheels, just passing on a deal I happened across while traveling with work. Scheels can be reached at 320-252-9494 or www.scheels.com.

I'm in, sounds fun!

I'm curious why edge sharpness matters when you're in stuff that you leave 2-3" deep trenches in. You're effectively creating a ledge that you stand on, who cares how sharp that edge is when it's not supporting much load anymore? Not being argumentative, I've genuinely wondered this before as well. (I'll keep sharpening my edges, I'm happy when I can leave 1" deep ruts in our 'snow' around here. )

Holy crap, that would be fun! Is the mish-mash from previous owners or did McLaren make it that way? The best power:weight ratio car I've driven had 500 hp and 3800 lbs, and that was a bit scary at first. 700 hp in 1500 lbs would make me question my inner strength.

Being nervous is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy: When nervous, most people tend to lean back - making the board turn like a supertanker. Then you gain too much speed and get nervous and skid to control speed. Skidding an alpine setup feels very different to skidding a freestyle setup, which makes you nervous. ;) Give yourself a half or even a full day to just get used to the feeling of riding the equipment, then you'll start to pick it up quickly. Think of it as learning an entirely new sport and you'll be suprised at how some of your previous skills cross over.

This is in the running for the 'thread of the year' award. About 15 years ago I hit a 20' along the top, 6' high tabletop on the first run of the day. I had last hit this on the final run the day before. As I was mid-air I watched the landing ramp pass under me while I was still pretty far up. Uh-oh... I managed to lean back enough to not eat my knees, but it still hurt a lot. It turns out that a bunch of kids had complained to management the day before because it was too hard to make it all the way to the landing ramp, so they cut it way back to about 12' of flat deck overnight. One day on playing around on the hard setup, there was a nice natural spine that I was trying to carve up and over on the toeside edge. Someone had formed a little jump on the highest part closest to the edge of the run. My goal was to carve a foot or so inside that jump. I hit some stutter bumps and popped into the groove/trench leading up to the jump. I landed on my chest on the other side, to very loud cheering from the lift. Luckily the landing was steep so I just got some minor bruising. ;)

I was in the same situation 5 or 6 years ago, though with only 15 years experience. I tried to go fast on softboots so I could turn harder and harder, but it never quite worked. I applied that same technique to a hard setup and found very little change in my path down the hill. That was a rude awakening! I had to really slow things down and work my way through the drills listed in the articles on this site before things started to click. The funny part? I got on my softie board to help someone learn to snowboard for a day about 2 years after my conversion to hardboots - all the same carving principles worked! But it turned a very short radius and took a lot of work to keep from folding up under the techniques I learned on the stiffer boards. What I thought was substandard equipment was mostly my improper inputs and me trying to carve too fast for the relatively small sidecut radius. I became a better snowboarder all around by practicing what is in those articles! Try demoing hardboots though - you'll probably never look back!

If you book early enough you can get $69 rooms in Glenwood Springs! We splurged on the kitchette suite for $99/night. :) Also, don't buy lunch at the hill. Your head will spin at the prices! A local guy bought some of those for ice racing - they were slightly better than an all-season tire and a bunch slower than a true winter tire. If I remember correctly, they're actually re-treads from used tire carcases. That makes me nervous. Note that 'good' winter tires last about 1/2 to 3/4 as long as an all-season in identical conditions. I feel it's worth it for the added safety.

My wife and I stayed in Glenwood springs last year for SES. (hotels are WAY cheaper!) Most days it was a short drive but we got stuck twice on the way back to the hotel over the week when the road was closed for accidents. We just stopped for supper at whatever town we made it to, by the time we were done the road was re-opened. We witnessed one vehicle per day on it's side or roof or way out in the ditch in that relatively short drive - no idea how they managed to do that as the roads were never that bad. We were in a rental FWD with all-season tires. The snow clearing crews do an amazing job on that stretch of highway. There are tons of reviews at www.tirerack.com and even a full-on snow tire test.

How about super soft purple E-rings?

Haha, I was already doing just that! The picture gets pretty fuzzy when you zoom in enough to see anything useful. Looks like large surface area toe/heel blocks with rubber pads? The center disk is also black so it may be different.

I got the "Do you snowboard too?" comment this weekend. Haha, that's awesome! Timing is everything.

Is that your sock showing in the first picture? You definitely should have your entire foot covered by the liner! No idea how to fix that, sorry. :( Also make sure your foot is evenly weighted for the entire cooling period when molding. I somehow managed to lift my arches subconsciously the first time I did it, that meant that the liner hardened narrower than it should have and left too large of a pocket above my foot. How do your feet fit inside the bare shells without liners?

Nice work Fleaman! Can you or Bruce tell us more about the "flame treat" part of the process? Do you just slightly melt the Ptex before bringing the parts together?

I'm not sure if that's a joke or not... In case it isn't: Make sure there's some kind of washer with the correct angle cut into it to match the pocket that the screws sit in. Bomber bindings are designed to use flat-head fasteners with an angle cut into the bottom, that angle matches the shape of the aluminum so that there's a nice wide contact surface. The screws you have in the picture will have a flat underside, they'll have only a very thin line of contact on the aluminum. They'll gouge the aluminum quickly and loosen shortly after. They'll definitely damage the toe and heel blocks, and possibly loosen or even fail while riding. :(