st_lupo

Hey, what gives with the taper on that thing?!?!

Hey, if he’s already living in a box and eating house brand ramen what’s to loose?

I agree, a very good rider and closer to what I am aspiring to.

Hoping we eventually make it alpinesnowboarderonline.com so we can have ASBO.

This is pure gold. I’m guessing there are plenty here that are old enough to relate.

Nice riding! Looks like Klaus didn’t get the memo that it was extreme carving?! The little hops at the ends of his toe side turns was nice.

Thanks Jack for stepping up and protecting what have arguably been the biggest assets of BOL (for me at least): the community and the accumulated trove of wisdom written in countless threads. I’m assuming the old BOL database and articles made the transition ok? Thanks Fin for freeing up the community and knowledge. Sucks about BOL the business though. Thanks for Corey for the continued hard work, and to the new mods! Just wondering what the official charter of ASB is going to be? I’d be more than happy to kick in some dinero and donate some online storage space (for backups or failover solutions, or whatever).

This was my source of inspiration!

Here's a picture of Bruce hard at work on a new nose concept for my next board...

I'm not really sure that you can (or should) manage this any differently than you have. The community has certain _well_defined_ guidelines about unacceptable posts and you hold them to that standard. Some people are jerks unfortunately, and will dance that line like Travolta, but without moderating according to well defined and impartial rules that define what is allowed and what isn't allowed, chaos is likely to ensue. People have to take responsibility for themselves to weed out the hearsay, opinions, and general dickery from facts and useful information. However... a company posting info about themselves in the forum is nearly like free advertising. Maybe there should be a locked forum for company announcements? Companies can post announcements there (for a price, ie advertising) and nobody can comment on the thread. Then that "premium" can go to maintaining our hosting fees?

Absolutely enjoyed it and will hopefully be back again. Great variety of terrain, great snow, and really nice folks. It has a "keeping it real" vibe, and is aimed at maximizing the skiing experience instead of upselling luxury features that I couldn't give a rat's butt about (ghetto, in a good way, like Loveland in CO). Went back up on the following sunday to whiteout conditions and had to spend most of the time in the trees just to get some contrast and sense of depth. There wasn't much carving but it was still a blast. I met up with a fellow hardbooter and took a couple of runs in an area that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere (Mary's Bowl?) with tons of pow.

Women are great, but getting a WHOOP from the chairs when tearing up a diamond is better. imho. (nobody tell my wife. please.)

Definitely this. My daughter’s alpine group set up a GS course one day and then immediately went in for lunch. I couldn’t help myself and had to give it a go or two. I’m not going to beat anybody in a race but I was surprised at how doable it was to complete the course with mainly carving. It was interesting how it involved a whole different set of problems to solve, especially regarding which line to take to be fast, but not so fast that you can’t make a hairpin or two.

Also you mentioned that you were riding fairly fast on the hardboot setup. Don't do that! A lot of hard-boot setups will feel really stable at high speeds... until you try to turn. As a beginner (or intermediate for that matter) turning on a fast hardboot setup can be an "Oh Crap!" moment regardless of what kind of board you are riding. Do the norm like everybody mentioned above, and do them slow so that you can start building an understanding of the mechanics that are required without making a mess in your pants. And don't cave into peer pressure to keep up with your friends. When I swapped over to hard boots, I was suddenly the "slowest" person in my group of family/friends and got a lot of ribbing for it.

In a word: AWESOME!!! So much stuff went just right that made today one of the best days I've had on the snow in a long time.... Free from work. Check 10" fresh pow the previous day/night. Check All Norwegians awake and loaded in the cars by 8. Check (God bless jet-lag) Temperatures below freezing. Check Sunny, nearly cloudless skies. Check. Awesome terrain. Check Honestly, so many things came together at just the right time to make today the perfect boarding day, that I wouldn't be surprised if I was suddenly killed by a grizzly bear falling out of the sky. You know, just to restore some balance to the universe. Didn't see any other BOLers, which was the only bummer. We used Hidden Lake lift as our base and I rode the hell outta Mainline and Whiskey Springs. Perfect steepness on the top of Mainline given the snow conditions. It got tracked out pretty well through the day but was still a blast. Whiskey Springs was also a blast as it got to be a narrower run that at times had me carving almost out to the trees on either side. Definitely recommended as it gets your pulse up and hones your ability to focus! Also rode a bit on the Timberline lift with a few trips down Dynamite, Runaway, Squirrely Early and Short Snort. Great terrain but a sllloooowwwwwww lift. In Norway our chairlifts pretty much all have a nice safety bar that lowers over one's lap. Not the timber line lift, and it must have been funny for the locals to see the Norwegians riding up Timberline lift with a white-knuckle grip on the edge of the chair. The Coiler NFC just ate up and carved on everything the mountain had to give (granted a soft hero snow day; oh man the snow spraying everywhere was great). On the steeper floatier pow, over by Timberline, it was just as playful and reliable as I remember my Super Model being. Looks like it's gonna snow again tomorrow (and stay cold). Gotta find something to do on Sunday though...

Just to throw my 2 øre in the ring, whatever size board you get, if you do go the hard-boot/alpine board path you want to start on a free carving board as opposed to a racing board. You want something that is willing to turn but without immediately accelerating to Mach speed if you are uncareful. If you are coming from a rocker-dominated background, maybe you want to consider a board with decamber in the nose and tail instead of a pure camber board. Lots of good late-night reading here, and welcome aboard!

Hi all. I’ll be heading up to Powder Mountain with a gang of Norwegians (skiers) this friday. Anybody going to be up there? Would love to meet a fellow BOLer.

I'm really considering going whole hog on the liners for next year and finding a boot fitter to help me get everything setup. Luckily Intuition, Palau and ZipFit all appear to be available in Norway. Surefoot foam injection liners also look really interesting, but I'll have to see what the price is on that.

I love a lot of the riding coming out of Japan! Maybe if we keep having good winters at the local I can justify trying to pick up a Moss. + Just wondering one thing though... In the video of Katsugai Naoto there appears to be a lot of Craig Kelly knees-together riding going on (around 3:24 for example). Is this making a comeback? If so, I'm set and going to dust off my old Burton cant disc!

Ronald McDonald wants his shoes back.

The heelside observation is entirely correct. Based on feedback from last year I've been focusing on squaring up my hips into the heel-side turn and then driving the inside hip to the snow. It seemed effective at establishing a solid turn, but I guess it is an incomplete solution. Yeah, ouch! I see how that is probably contributing to my other heel problem. I didn't mean wobbling by chugging. When I am turning at near maximum effort (for me) the board is really slowing down (like a heavily loaded steam-train; choo choo chugga chugga....). The result is that I have to do two or three short turns every now and then to get back up to speed. I think the problem is like you describe with a single "oomph". I've read that one needs to turn with one's feet, but still haven't come to grips with the concept. It seems like it takes a lot of strength to deflect the boots a very little and its hard to envision how that will translate into a solid turn. It's funny you mentioning riding light... I was just talking with Tanglefoot the other day and comparing how we ride. I mentioned that my goal has really been to inflict maximum carnage on the snow. I'm guessing now that it winds up being a short lived dead-end. There are a couple of other activities where I get feedback that I need to dial back speed and exertion and focus more on smoothness and flow, guess this is no different. Thanks!

Thanks! The heels of the boots are pretty solid on the bindings. My heels in the boots seem to be held pretty solid, no obvious heel lift bothering me. The boots are RC10 with neutral lean on the front boot and one click forward lean on the rear boot.

Bindings are F2 race Ti, with the big wedge on the back heel and two cant shims stacked together under the front toe.

That is interesting feedback and I'll try to be a bit more aware of what is really pressing on my heel while riding. I'm not sure I quite understand what is meant with the last point of "or you're flexing into a 'fulcrum' rather than an 'area' of contact at the boot tongue"? Also I posted a couple of videos from this year to the Videos section in the off chance that something wonky is identifiable in my stance.

Instead of spamming carving central I'll post a couple of video here in the hopes of getting some critical feedback from the experts. I was lucky enough that Tanglefoot was on the chair lift a couple of times this year while I was riding below him so I've actually got pretty good footage of my riding during early season and recent footage. This is on a run that is labelled as a black, but realistically is a blue anywhere else. I can't point to anything that is really plaguing me this year as far as grip goes; the snow has been hero and I'm putting my turns pretty much where I want them. However one big issue I have is that every year my back heel gets destroyed and I develop a pretty large callous on my heel that almost goes away during the off-season. Is there anything obviously wrong about my stance that might be causing this? Also lately I've been experiencing that the board in the late-season video is really slowing down and chugging in the carves, something I'm doing wrong? Also any style pointers (yes, yes don't touch the snow)? Early season on the NFC-B 12-13ish SCR Late season on the NFC-E 10-11ish SCR