st_lupo

I dunno. I don't think I could be the guy bringing a caterpillar tracked lawnmower to a pristine winter forest. Maybe around snowmobile tracks, but then I'd feel kinda like I was the frog in frogger.

Oh yeah guilty. And whenever I wind up messing up... well, I hope the kiddies on the chairlift aren’t too proficient in swear words in English.

Can somebody who has participated in ski area demos provide some perspective on wether HB demos actually work at getting new blood into the scene or if it just reenforces the perception that this is hard to get started in?

This is all fine and good, but my understanding is that the "secret sauce" of really good alpine snowboard design harmonizes (V)SCR and board camber. I've assumed that Kessler's clothoid function is a 3D shape that ties the variable sidecut, with the boards camber line, so that at a given inclination you have a very optimized turn radius that can't be predicted by SCR alone.

Not that I am so hard against softbootsurfer's arguments, but this line to me is very problematic. Colorado ( ignoring the traffic, lift lines, etc.) has very good snow that allows very fluid riding from many different sorts of styles. However, the XXX ft. hills of ice are exactly the environments that benefit, uniquely and significantly, from HB equipment and techniques. If I still lived in CO, I would never have switched to hardboots (despite having tried them previously and favorably in '94). If I lived in UT, I REALLY would never have switched to hardboots. Not because they suck in those conditions (they don't, they really really don't) but because I wouldn't have had the motivation to break out from the "mainstream" soft-boot offerings. Moving to more demanding (icy) conditions was just the motivation I needed to migrate to hardboots.

This ^^^^!!! Who, in their early days of snowboarding, didn't have a hero that romanticized their particular style of riding? Craig Kelly shaped the early years of my riding, Shaun Palmer and Missy Giove shaped my early years of mountain biking. Bauer and Nerva shaped countless folks here. If we want to really grow the sport in the US (or lets be honest, it is still a niche sport in a lot of Europe too) we need a high-profile and cool rider in the snowboarding movies. We need a hero archetype that is "mainstream" that the kids can relate to. Maybe we should take up a collection and entice Travis Rice to ride alpine??? (PS, please don't disparage Travis here because he rides softies. He is really an awesome rider that has a huge following and was just taken as an example of someone who could refocus some attention on hard boots if he could ever be enticed to the dark side). In addition, growing the racing community for hardbooting is awesome, thanks @Jack M! It really is crazy. When you try hardbooting, and especially when you get to a certain level of proficiency, this sport IS THE TITS!!! And it gets really difficult to figure out why not everybody gets on board (oh that is horrible, horrible english).

I think I learned to relax a lot more, and I learned that being "mindful" when riding isn't the same as being analytical when riding. Analysis is for the chair up; doing post-mortems and developing a strategy for the next run. Being mindful while riding is picking a line/arc, listening to the board, and letting reflexes react to the conditions; it's minimalistic and avoids the distraction of overthinking. Winter has been crap this year so my first day on the snow wasn't until Feb. 28th. Since it was so late in the season I was really anxious about getting back into the swing of things. On the first two runs I was super concentrated and focused on angulating the board just right, shifting my weight just right, being super aggressive on my transitions and tried carving perfect semicircles while keeping my speed in check. Weeeelll that just sucked. Some turns were good(for the first day of the season) but everything was infuriatingly inconsistent, "forced", and not fun. By the third run I was pissed, but had this intuition that I should throw away my mental checklist, and just try to ride so that it feels right? *Click* by the end of the third run my knees were scraping the snow consistently, my heel-side hip was scraping the snow consistently and I was "locked-in" (well maybe at 75% to 80% of where I was at the end of the previous season, anyway run three was the best start of a season that I have ever had).

When I lived in CO I was always way more into free-riding and back-country and had Craig Kelly as a hero. Went through K2 TX, Craig Kelly Air, Asym Air, Custom and Super Model. I did see the Scream of Consciousness film when Burton had a big party on the hill in Boulder and the shots of Peter Bauer and Jean Nerva laying down carves on the corduroy always stuck with me. After I moved to south-central Norway, where the fresh snow is a lot wetter, the old snow is a lot icier and powder-days are really scarce, I went through a period where I started getting sick of riding at all. After 15 years of hating the terrain parks, hating groomed slopes and hating riding crusty snow and dodging mine-shafts in the nearby "back-country", a friend really insisted that I try riding hard-boots. That completely rekindled my love of snowboarding and I learned that the snow conditions that are pretty ho-hum for free-riding are super excellent for carving. I'm not sure if I was this stoked while I lived in CO. With hard-boots, if the conditions are juuust right I have a hard time even staying on the chairlift all the way to the top. I get this compulsion to hop off the lift and get at it!

Can confirm. This is by FAR the crappiest winter I’ve experienced in Norway. My first day of riding was last thursday. Otherwise, it has rained a whole heck of a lot. We had almost green grass in late january!!!

Not an expert but here are my imptessions: Your stance looks kind of narrow to me resulting in an upright riding position. What is the center to center distance between your bindings? How are they mounted relative to the board's hole pattern? A wider stance will make it easier and more comfortable to adjust your weight fore/aft on the board and allow you to depressive the nose. Also the video gives me the impression that while your shoulders tend to be square to the front of the board, your hips are quite parallel to the side of the board (especially the first half of the video). Maybe it's just me running higher angles (65/62) but I need to square up my shoulders and hips to really get in the groove, even just gliding straight I the catwalk.

Where I live we have a bunch of ski swaps a couple of months or so before the start of the racing/competition season. There is always really well maintained stuff with plenty of life left for racing events, powder, and park. Typically skis that have seen one season of use are about 1/2 price or less, two season old skis are considerably less. Maybe picking up a couple sets of lightly used park skis at a big discount would be the way to go?

This is what I’m going to start using for this purpose. Rylo just got bought up, so all cameras are at a serious discount (got mine for $187 including stick and protective case).

All further posts on this topic must be in KTAS.

This was what I thought a uniboard was.

Interesting question! I’m probably on the low side here. Checked through my data and I guess I’m nothing if not consistent. Cruise speed is typically 35 - 40 mph and max is pretty much 45mph regardless of mountain, slope, conditions (given good enough visibility and sufficient pitch).

That isn't overkill, that is BOSS! I'll bet with an rear facing radar, you could get that cannon to take out the straightliners before they become a danger.

Helmet, back-protector, hip-pads, and elbow-pads definitely. I ride at higher angles so knee pads don't really offer much protection for me. I usually wear a Sweet Protection Bear Suit as insurance against straight-liners but it is way overkill and makes me sweat right up despite way sub-zero temps. Next time around I would opt for a back-protector alone.

Just wait until you try it in not so great conditions. You'll be wondering why everybody else is packing up and going home.

Good gravey!!! Sorry to hear you’re off the snow. 90: Broken tailbone on day one 92ish: Broke riding buddy’s finger (he claims) 93-97: A couple of consussions, bloody noses 98: Had a crazy wipeout while trying to keep up with my girlfriend (a DH racer, and now wife). Tore up something pretty good in my groin (SNOWBOARDING!!!) and nearly passed out when we were walking from the parking into Tommynockers. Things were an ugly purple, yellow and black mess for months. 03: Smashed up a bunch of bones in my ankle (wakeboarding) 15-19: Switched to hard boots and earned assorted shoulder cartilage damage and concussions. Seem to rack up more injuries in a shorter period carving than I ever did freeriding?

As much as I am jealous at her early start and want to say something funny about not riding fakie... Just look at her smile and look at how engaged her mom is! That is awesome parenting right there, and one happy kid! Kudos!

Happy New Years everybody! This one has enough Mother F-bombs to accurately describe how I feel about the winter we're having in my area of Norway right now.

Ooh! You didn't just go there?!?

If those SG bindings are like the F2s, could you mount the binding base plate to the board using the farthest out screw holes (without the heel/toe sleds installed on the base, but with the t-nuts captured between the board and baseplate), and the install the sleds last?

I'm with Jack in regards to the palm patches. I've had two pairs of gloves where those kinds of patches just open up and turn into big scoops. Of all of my mittens/gloves, the failure mode has always been tearing open a seam that has made contact with the ground (not that the thread splits, but the leather always tears around the seam). I really wish someone would rethink how the leather palms on mittens were cut/sewn so that the seams were moved farther back on the hand and away from the palm. Seems like it should be doable. On another note when looking for durable gloves I always try to find out what kind of leather the palms are made of; goatskin is awesome. My Hestra Army Leather Heli mittens have performed better than anything I've tried and on the palms you can see a lot of superficial wear, but the goatskin holds up really well (and these mittens have the fewest seams on the palms of anything I've seen). https://jtillman.com/material-safety/tillman-university/material-science/leather-breakdown/

I’ll be that guy