st_lupo

I’m pretty much a lifetume user of Hot Sauce. How does Dominator compare?

Hey that's not nice! I've been on the receiving end... of course it was I that was the cause of said carnage too.

They just haven’t figured out yet that you are doing the equivalent of running your mitts over a belt sander every winter. My biggest requirement for mittens is to have the fewest number of seams on the palm.

@lonbordin is absolutely right, but neglecting to learn complete turns is done at your own peril.

On a flat horizontal surface you can use an equilibrium criteria to establish the correct force balance. Knowing the gs and picking a speed the you could also calculate a turn radius.

Rap, heavy metal, thrash, Manilow or Mozart, there is a time and place, and the hill isn’t the place. Still, at least its not the German oompa techno that they play at every European ski area. Ooooh ladeedadee ladeedaaadeee Hey! Hey! Hey!

I think for me it was a lack of motivation/necessity. From 90 to 00 I rode soft boots and carved pretty well given the gear (I always wanted to snowboard well). But I mainly chased pow and rode back country in CO. I did try an hb setup around 94 and was kinda shocked at how well it gripped, but without proper instruction no real perceived benefit for my riding style at the time and no local hb community it just remained a curiosity. If I had stayed in CO I probably would still be on softs. In 00 I moved to Norway where the powder is less frequent and not great, and pistes tend to be hardpack or icey. Off piste around my local is riddled with mine shafts going back to the 1700s. They do however groom the shit outta the entire hill every night. Luckily a compadre at work was already regularly on hard boots, and after hearing of my disgust after demoing a Burton Custom Flying-V he went on the charm offensive to get me on hard boots too. I’m an engineer and generally frugal so I had access to disposable cash. A few weeks of research and calling around got a pair of UPZs in the mail plus a Silberpfeil+F2 race Tis from Slovenia. After that there was no impediment. I’m typically tenacious on things I’m passionate about, and with access to BOL, I had all of the technical riding info/help I needed to figure out what to do.

10 or so years from now one of my kids will be asked what they are riding and the rest plays out like this in my head where my kid replies: "It's my father's Kessler. It's the ride of the alpine snowboarder. Not as clumsy or random as a twintip. An elegant board... For a more civilized age." Then she'll slowly lean back while stroking her beard and looking introspective.

I started on an F2 Silberpfeil and that was perfectly adequate and a lot cheaper than the alternatives. I think it works ok bomber style. Got a pretty good deal in a package with F2 race bindings from http://carver.si Bluetomato always has tons of older F2 gear on sale. If you are like me you might want to consider a metal board if you’ve had positive progression after a year and are feeling the addiction take hold. A lot of people stress that they are too forgiving of sloppy riding and can encourage bad habits, but if you are a bit disciplined, they magically slow down time and allow you to more accurately pick apart your riding and figure out what you need to focus on. Lasly, I find freeriding carving boards to be perfectly happy in a wide range of conditions. Last trip to Utah I was riding my Coiler Nirvana in bowls, chutes, trees, bottomless pow and groomers. It was of course a master on groom, but if you adapt your technique appropriately it will slay everything.

*shamisen plinking in the background* Snow falls, Winter’s gift. Show thanks by perfect turn art. Slarv is man’s weakness.

Warning, lots of overgeneralization in the following paragraph. Could be a lot of cultural influences that shape that? One karate trainer that I’ve had used to teach in Japan also. He often highlighted how you can’t train typical western-hemisphere folks the same way as they do in Japan. Typically, Japanese folks expected and accepted a lot of repetition, just training a certain movement over and over and over until the sensei accepted it was good enough. Whereas westerners required more explanation around the hows and the whys and the whats in it for me. Westerners also got more easily frusterated if they didn’t perceive advancement quickly enough. You know, if we could get some footage on one of the “People Are Awesome” videos on You Tube, that would be gold. I’m pretty sure there must be some hardboot riding that is objectively awesome for 80% of the folks that don’t have a preformed opinion. Not just carving or even technically good carving, but that antigravity how the hell do they do that kinda riding. I’ll volunteer... ...for selecting the soundtrack.

Good video. You've seen the Carving Plugin videos, right? Ohhh mama, I love those!

I guess not everybody reads that first post in John Cleese's voice . While trying to be a complete noob I googled ski boots on snowboard and those links were at the top and I thought they were kida wack. The video on Mad Jacks doesn't really inspire awe in the product.

I've always found that around 4 to 6 inches of pow over hardpack is the sweetspot for me. I stay on my NFCs (but take the longer board) keep the high binding angles and let it just rip. Stay in the driver's seat (keep square to the board); you gotta float through the transitions but once you get over on edge you should be able to knife that board down to the hardpack and really throw up a rooster tail of snow. Stay on the steeps, stay off of the brakes and keep the speed up (big swoopy turns). Mix it up with some surfy moves on embankments and features and then hop back into the driver's seat for some big swoopy carves. If the pow get deeper shift your weigth back and backerer. 4-6" of pow lets you play around a LOT and mix up techniques, think of it as your chance to play freeform jazz as opposed to the 4/4 øøøns øøøns øøøns øøøns of hardpack carving. If its crappy hardpack under that pow, its just as important as ever that you ride loose.

I was just reading Jack's thread on outsider perspectives, and became curious as to how easy it is to arrive at our forums when google about hardboot snowboarding (without using the TM "Alpine Snowboarding"). I didn't find ASB in the top five, but I do think I CAME ACROSS THE SOLUTION TO GROWING OUR SPORT! It solves the problem around the biggest hurdle to hardbooting, namely finding the boots. The answer is so obvious, so simple, and so elegant I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned before. Granted the linked pages reference skiing applications but why not something similar oriented towards hard-booting? This is going to appeal to everybody! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/ski/articles/new-envy-ski-frame-snowboard-boots-sore-feet/ https://www.madjacksnowsports.com/ Genious!

But that's a good thing, right? It's up to us to keep up a Hunter S. Thomson vibe in snow sports! On thing I thought about is that some people must come across those old threads while trying to find information about hardbooting, and alot of those threads have references back to the old bomber forums which currently just yields a 403 error. I've seen that the current bomber owner does have a link to alpinesnowboarder buried in the newbies section, might it be possible to ask the current owner to update the forums.bomberonline.com link with a page that at least mentions that the spiritual successor of the BOL forums is now at forums.alpinesnowboarder.com?

Get Bruce to make a Travis Rice signature carving board! My own modest contribution at the local hill is just being friendly to the people on the lifts and try to remember the faces of the folks who have expressed any interest at all, and talk to them when I see them again. I'm also out riding my NFC in pretty much all conditions so that folks can see it isn't just for perfect groomers; pow, slush, runs that have been tracked out from SL/GS courses, ... With the sport growing in the Asian side of the world, maybe North America might see a K-Pop/J-Pop type follow on effect? That would be kawaii! *shudder*

Thanks Jack! I totally wasn’t expecting the stickers to be sent out of North America, but just got the envelope here in Norway. You’re awesome for supporting the community and this gesture won’t be forgotten!

+1 on the Booster straps. I got the world cup ones and use them to strap up the liner not the tongue and they rock!

LOL

I’ve got almost the same exact Coiler, just a tad shorter with a tighter radius. I love that board and it is my daily driver, but man... I didn’t need to read this review. Hopefully a beer will scratch that itch for now.

Ramen noodles. Without those I would never have been able to afford my first snowboard.

Maybe you shoulda tried a hearty "THANKS!!!", with a very chipper smile?