st_lupo

Correlation vs. causation... However the one interesting and disconcerting tidbit for me was “the rate of helmet use has doubled but the rate of head injuries did not decline.” A missing stastic is if, in general, the rate of accidents/incidents of all kinds are increasing over the measured period? Is resort terrain becoming significantly more extreme in the past decade? Has there been a boom in the off-piste extreme riding crowd? Or could it be argued that over-crowding at ski areas and pandering to tourist-level skiers/boarders is increasing the overall risk of the sport and that helmets are barely holding down the fort? I know I would argue for the later at the local ski area.

I had a stupid crash at Loveland a long time ago where I wound up catching a heel edge and slamming my head into some ice (no helmets in those days). It sure smarted and I had a mild headache after a few minutes but wasn't dizzy or disoriented. I called it a day though (it was close to closing) and after I started driving back to Denver I noticed that I couldn't read my speedometer. Or the license plate on the car in front of me. Or the street signs really. There was a spot right in the center of my vision that was kind of half like static and half like really bad artifacts like poorly compressed DVD. Probably 95% of my vision was fine but right were I would focus for reading wasn't registering right. Needless to say I stopped driving and happily after 5 or 10 minutes it cleared up and hasn't bothered me since.

Maybe the relevant debate is full-face versus non full-face? I don't think any of the FIS approved helmets for speed events have a face guard (due to risk of neck injury) but I know some folks here ride with full-face lids. Are there any obvious positive points for a face guard for snowboarding?

To paraphrase the meme: English in’t a language, its three languages stacked on top of each other and wearing a trench coat.

Stag film.

Looks cool! But kinda miss the distinctive alpine snowboard shape From the original logo. Does the logo on the flex fit cap turn out worse than the other caps?

This one's for @pokkis. Been listening to these guys a lot at work.

Great article and especially appreciated his answers to the question: "What have you learnt along the long and amazing road you have travelled with snowboarding?"

WTF as in When’s The Fracture?

Bucket listed.

I was understanding Arcan's post as pointing out the benefit of base bevel as relates to not catching the wrong edge if you get out of form... Never really thought about bevel enhancing maneuverability, so here I'll have to defer to the expert. As far as general tuning... It really depends on what you need. The three big things you get with a good tune are: Flat base Base structure Edge tune Thankfully for me #1 hasn't been a noticable problem on any of my snowboards. Take a true-bar or something you know is absolutely straight and place it on the base of the board perpendicular to the length of the board. Make sure the board is at ambient temperature and unwaxed! Drag the truebar down the board and look for any light shining through. Some convexity (base higher than the edges) you might be able to fix yourself, concave is a pain in the ass to fix. A convex board is going to be a bit vague when running flat and during edge transitions, it will also "washout" your side edges a bit. Concave is going to do the opposite and make the board squirrely. Concave/Convex problems should be fixed by a knoweldgable professional. #2 depends a lot on your riding conditions, your riding style, and how big your need for speed is. Spring snow (wet) and man-made snow can push you in the direction of wanting some base structure to improve glide. Pow and dry packed-pow reduces the advantage of the base structure. Are you a racer? Then this is something you want to consider (you might then even want to obsess about what kind of structure you get as well ). If you are a recreational carver then ask yourself how often you have the whole base gliding flat on the snow? Here I've got two Coilers without base structure, one F2 with structure and one Kessler with structure and I ride mainly on chalk/man made snow. The Kessler is definitely my fastest board but that isn't base structure. After waxing the board and riding for a day, only the outer inch of wax on either side shows any wear. Even in spring conditions, when I'm riding the un-structured Coilers at a resort (with any sensible amount of pitch), I can't say that I'd be willing to shell out for getting base structure to get maybe a little bit extra oomph when I've got my board running almost flat on a catwalk. #3 again depends a lot on your local conditions and riding-style. For the side edge: Pow: who cares Packed-pow: edges are nice but you don't need to obsess Ideal conditions, ie Chalk/Man-made: trade edge sharpness with maintainability (sharper ie 87deg will give noticibley more grip but it wears noticibly faster) Ice: sharp! My two Coilers have 89 deg side edges and they hold up really well through a whole season (maybe two), predictable grip on pretty much anything. The Kessler has 87 (because that's how I got it) and it really has razor handling on almost anything, but I do touch-up work on the edges every couple of weeks when I'm really riding that board. For the bottom bevel that is dependent how you ride and your skillz. A bottom bevel will buy you a little margin of safety regarding catching a "wrong" side edge. You remember your first year of snowboarding when you were sliding perpendicular to the board and caught an edge then either made you scorpion or slam the back or you head in the ground? Race skis typically have from 0 to 1deg bevel (starting with 0 to a little bevel for slower-technical events (SL) and progressing to more bevel for speed events GS-->Super-G-->DH) , recreational skis/snowboards typically have 1 to 2 degree. If you ride really really fast you might just want some base bevel because the consequences are that much worse. My two Coiler's have 0 bevel and that has worked fine for me the past 3 to 4 years. All of the above is from a recreational carver's perspective. Racer's will have a different view of things.

I’ll back up using 0 deg on the base. I’ve got a couple of Coiler’s that just work so well with the “factory tune” that I don’t want to f* it up. I’m sure things like early rise nose/tail have a bigger helping effect than the base bevel.

That makes me feel old... and a geek.

I'm guessing that the binding suck problem is mainly cosmetic. I mean if we are riding with the style that we have always longed for, the percent of time that the middle of the base is touching the snow is fractional. I start the season by scraping and rewaxing the whole base. But mid-season I usually just need to rewax the outer inch or so, and only rarely the middle.

And how do they still wind up so far in debt?! I mean, when I steal fruit from the fruit baskets of the other departments at my job, I save it in a special fruit drawer in my desk. So that I always have fruit available. Just in case.

#!%@#¤%!!!!! THAT is NOT a SPADE you IDIOT!!!! That is a SQUARE POINT SHOVEL!!!! THIS IS A @¤(/&!"#&!ING SPADE!!!

I don't know if that was a spelling error or not, and at this point I'm too scared to ask.

I had that one too. Sweet top-sheet even if the shape looks goofy in retrospect. That Virus board though... looks kinda sinister.

Definitely skiing. Grew up skiing a bit in NM. When I moved to CO all of the friends I made could ski tons better than me. I decided to switch to snowboarding since not too many were riding then, and so I sucked much less comparatively.

The radius range is pretty much identical to my last NFC-E. You can pressure the nose, you just gotta get used to it (and the amount of pressuring might be different compared to a bigger board). Your experience with going to 10/12/11 is almost identical to my experience with going from 10/12/11 to 7/13/9. I’ve gotta focus on keeping myself more centered and staying there or I’ll find myself flipping over the nose or tearing my quads trying to get out of the back seat. You can still adjust weight fwd/aft but smaller inputs have amplified results. The neatest thing is that your bigger board will feel almost lazy after you get used to the smaller one.

Gotta love that board! This year my 162 became my best friend and is my goto for icey and steeps. I’m a bit worried about mine delaminating too so post your solution when you find one! Right now I’m hoping to hook up with another 2nd hand 162. Do you have the build specs on yours? I know my board is a bit unusual (more taper than standard) and I’m wondering how the side cut radius variation compares with the standard.

Whoa! Yeah, I don’t think I would advocate racing downhill on a snowboard on one of these courses . But for pure freecarving, Olympiabakken (and maybe other dh courses) has a lot of variation as well as a lot of flow and continuity.

Earlier this week I actually got to ride for the second time this season with my wife and she asked me if I had to turn so damn much, all the time? This weekend was perfect for early morning carving with groomed slush that turns to nearly ballistic ice over night. Saturday I rode the chair with an older couple I've seen before and they asked if I was one of the snowboarders that rides all laid out on the snow. There are only three of us that ride alpine so I hazarded a "yes?" (apologies to Tanglefoot or Raph if I stole your thunder ). The literal translation of what they said is that they thought that it looks really "raw" (dette er helt rå!). Today after a run down the show-off trail, a ski coach from one of the nearby regional ski teams walked over to the bottom of the chairlift to say that our riding looks really cool.

FIS regulations for men state a minimum of 45 meter radius and 218 cm length.

Oh man, oh man! Do you think we should be jealous of the jib-bonkers that get their own terrain parks? No way! This year my oldest daughter pointed her finger at me and did a little chicken dance, and finally got me to ride down Olympiabakken in Kvitfjell (the '94 Olympic downhill course, and still on the WC). That. Was. Awesome! It brought on all of the hyper-focus, half-terror/half-fist-pumping adrenaline onslaught that I remember from the first time on hard-boots that I really "got it". Its not a straight running carpet of predictable pitch and width, but a glorious twisting and turning amusement park filled with steep drops, off-camber turns, banked corkscrews, you name it. I had my 162 special-K and that trail got me to finally fully bond with it. Beaver Creek in on the WC with super-g so I imagine it is something similar (never rode it while I lived in CO)? A full impression from top to bottom, definitely not me: