st_lupo

If Kessler is following the definition of a clothoid, this should be right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CornuSprialAnimation.gif If I get the Kessler I'm biding on I'll take some side-cut curvature measurements and compare with my Nirvana Balance (really sorry about nerd mode tonight, I had to look up clothoid a long time ago, otherwise I kept thinking of hanging laundry whenever I heard about Kessler snowboards).

F^3 Carving then? Somebody should then definitely develop the perfect cubic sidecut geometry for the ultimate free-form-free-carving deck.

Hey Tanglefoot thanks for the feedback, but you might be undoverstating things a bit. You had tons of graceful carves that had me jealous. @Beckmann AG: Nothing gets by you does it? Yep, I think heel-sides were a visibly shallower that night (if I'm totally honest it's probably persistant issue). That portion of the trail runs a bit off-camber so not sure if that is going to exaggerate or reduce the visible effect. I'm gonna have to get my datalogger working again to get that confirmed. I think the board decision might be made by my wallet. There is a slight possibility I might have the chance to buy a new Kessler Alpine 162 for really cheap. And one last question regarding applying a small weight shift towards the back of the board during the turn to improve stability... Is this equally applicable to single radius sidecuts or is it just for variable radius sidecuts?

Thanks Corey, high five back 'atcha! Conditions tonight were typical night-time local conditions with hardpack snow with a fair amount of chop. Fast snow. Met up with the local carving guru and we rode the same run all night. While continuing to focus on the boot-cuff drills, I also tried making a few minor adjustments to where I was reaching (ie. just ahead of the cuff), and this started feeling a lot more natural right away. I had also changed my back binding/stance setup (because isn't debugging more fun when you change everything at once?) Beckmann's website had some really good tips for this. Back binding is now increased to 60deg (while front is still at 65), and I removed my small inward cant shim (they are F2 race-ti). Also, I adjusted the front boot cuff to zero lean while the back foot has one click forward lean. Standing on the board felt different but not unnatural. The front leg felt more comfortable with the zero lean, and taking out the back cant-shim made the stance felt wider even though the bindings were mounted to the same holes. I think this got rid of my Craig Kelly knees and I probably have better mobility and balance. I also have the impression that it equalized the flex on the boots when reaching for the cuffs in the turns. This was still an experimental trip to the mountain. Drill, drill, drill... try pushing some boundaries... profit! (and screw-up/wipe out lots.) First of all... consistency isn't there yet. I've got good runs, I've got bad runs (on the exact same trail), and I've got chaotic-neutral runs. But they were mainly good runs, and those good runs were orgasmic/snow-cave/15 foot snow-wiener good (by my standards anyway)! I was definitely in the driver seat tonight. The best thing was feeling the turns slow down mentally (despite the snow and board being pretty fast) and it become possible to focus on a lot of the other suggestions in this thread. First of all I tried assessing my hip twist according to Corey's initial input. Yep it was there without thinking about it, the cuff-drill seemed to inherently enforce it, and that front knee drove into the hill without having to think about it. Second, I tried to actively play with the concept of feeding the board into each turn (or modify my fore/aft weight distribution). This I found could actually be adjusted depending on how the conditions/turn felt (I'm hardly optimal but it did have a noticeable effect). It started becoming really clear to me that the fore/aft weight distribution is a significant tool to controlling the stability of the turn (right after angulation and inclination) and that it is something that can be tuned and optimized given enough experience and practice. Next up is position, balance and control inputs to the board. Taking tips from Beckmann I've changed up my stance a bit and I think it really helped with my endurance. Normally the turns I was doing tonight would have completely blown out my leading quadriceps by the end of the night, instead I've got lots of turns that I am really satisfied with, and will be quite fresh and ready to attack the hill tomorrow morning. I always thought that my sore leading leg was because I was soooo agressive and tough, but now I'm starting to think that it was probably because my forward weight bias was overly exaggerated and I was also fighting against my boots/bindings. Finally, the last big realization of the night was that the cuff-reaching drill had me a lot lower on the board so I actually had a lot of room to do a "push/pull" on the transitions. I guess push/pull might not be the right term for bomber style, but it was a "push" against the board towards the end of the arc, and a "pull" to let the board come up under and continue past my center of gravity, dragging me through the transition and into the next carve? The whole maneuver kind of felt like stomping on my front foot (which seems odd?) and then releasing the pressure, and then as my CG and board crossed by each other I try to push myself towards the nose again(?) and grab for my boot cuff. Okay the exact transition is a bit muddled in my head still, but it involved a bit of up/down motion generally initiated from a push with my front foot. Sometimes I get a bit of what I think people refer to as "pop" out of the board but bugger me if I can do that on demand (it is more pronounced the further aft I get on the board at the end of a turn?). Getting low and brushing snow wasn't a priority tonight but my knees wound up scraping the snow regardless. The coolest thing was that for a few runs I could about do it on command. The cuff-drills force me to have a much lower stance and while my head doesn't think its as flashy as lay-down carves, damned if the snow isn't too far away if I have to occasionally "dab" a hand down to correct a flaw in my balance. Sooo... Many thanks and appreciation to the BOL community in general and especially to the Carving Mega-Gods that seem to always be willing (if not downright eager) to help. I'm pretty sure I've gotten some unique insight from everyone that's contributed to this thread, and have profited greatly both in my riding and my theoretical understanding of the bomber carving technique. Some of the input hits a chord immediately and works so well that I'm almost whacking myself (it's sooo bloody obvious!), and some advice is a bit more arcane, but really stimulates the self-analysis process and leads sometimes to less obvious (but equally powerful) insight. Wait wait wait! One last question so I can keep the top-most post on BOL... That local carving guru I was riding with tonight... He was on an SG slalom board. I've always equated slalom/turn-eager boards with good speed control (of course I form an opinion without ever having ridden one). But... he was just obnoxiously fast tonight compared to when he's on his Swoard, and more importantly he was sooo much faster than me (and I was just managing to hold this freight train in check). I really want my next board to be something optimized for riding steep slopes on hard snow with good speed control with minimal skidding. I thought that the Donek MK would be perfect for my goal... but if that rides like that SG slalom board I'm worried I'm gonna hit warp-speed. I think I looked like a proper cow doing full speed-control "C" turns on my Coiler, compared to the spastic parentheses that the SG SL board was cutting (note: local guru was riding proper; each turn had him dragging a hip on the snow in a physics defying stance that left me gobsmacked), but I was just barely holding my momentum in check. I realize that tackling the steeps on a carving board while attempting proper carved turns requires a bit of mental (and bowel) fortitude but seriously: that SG SL board was ridiculous and I'm not sure I want a board like that right now. So: 1) is the Donek MK a spastic-hyper-puppy on the steeps? 2) If the MK requires too much of a pucker-factor, is there any other board that folks would recommend for narrow(ish) steep black trails, beyond what my Coiler Nirvana is capable of? A series of carves are as good as any selfie on BOL?

Awesome night; hard snow, locked in turns, starting to wear out the knees in my pants. Stoked!

Ok I finally got up to the hill the other night to try some of this stuff out. The snow was really nice but really soft as it's been cold here lately and we've had a good amount of new snow. It was only a short night so I wanted to keep things simple and only concentrate on just a few things: #1: focus on the drills of reaching for the boot cuffs during the turn #2:focus on rotating my back hip forward #3: observe how my weight shifted fore/aft on the board during the turn (but don't try to actively control it). The first I'll admit is that #2 flew right out the window (I'll try to be a bit more mindful about that during tonight's ride though). As far as doing the drills about reaching for the cuffs... that was an eye opener eventually. I'm 6'1" with pretty long legs so in order to touch the cuffs of my boots I was pretty hunkered down, and it felt a bit "forced". It also initially felt like it was pushing my weight distribution more to the back of the board, this was mitigated by putting in one click of forward lean on my front boot. I can guarantee I wasn't as upright and rigid on the board. The first few turns went "ok". They carved and it was obvious how the drill forced my to change my body angulation and got the board a little higher on edge. My balance however felt weaker and I could tell that my upper body rotation just kept lagging behind the board. I kept plugging away at it and tried to focus on getting my head and shoulders squared up to the board again. Eventually that finally started to settle in and on one particular transition to toe side the board came around really hard and my back knee wound up dragging through the snow. (Probably a bit because of have a deeper than usual bend in my knees, and a little about better inclination on the board?). I eventually got to the point where I stayed squared up to the nose of the board. Just to compare, I took some back to back runs where I was doing the boot-cuff drills and some where I was riding more like the video from Gaustablikk. It felt like there was a definite improvement to the turn radius and that my usual runs out here started feeling a little bit wider. However, while I started feeling pretty comfortable and aggressive on the toe-side turns, probably only a half to 2/3s of the heel side turns felt "natural" for some reason. For the runs where things did seem to fell into place it was a really nice feeling, I think I just need to be more mindful of anticpating where my body should be going when diving into the turns. Needless to say it was a pretty "experimental" night with numerous falls and wipeouts. I think alot of the discussions above about the forward/aft weight distribution really helped with analysing the cause of some of the crashes. Most of my blowouts were typically heel-side, usually after already establishing a carve but then swinging my leading knee further into the heel in an attempt to squeeze just a little more out of the turn. Also on occasion it felt like some of my toe-side carves were "drifting" (as in the fast and furious car type drifts). Not really skidding or blowing out, just kind of weird. The tracks on the snow looked ok, but the seat of the pants feel was like something wasn't tracking 100%? It will be fun to get back up tonight and keep plugging away at it!

Just so we aren't discriminating, I'll put this here.

Wow, thanks Corey, Beckmann, Neil and Eric! This is exactly what I love about carving and BOL in particular! 1) This motion, is it like twisting my hips around the board's vertical axis so that my leading hip comes back and into the hill, and the trailing hip rotates forward? 2) All information is greatly appreciated as it helps me with the larger perspective. Not everything makes sense all at once, but as I progress the more arcane points start making sense. 3)Yeah, that's hard. 4.)wadded up kleenex it was, to be sure. 5.) Is this implying that I am suffering from toilet butt and hanging my bullocks over the heel-side of my turn, or is it not toilet butt but that it is generally a no-no to bend forward at the waist (even if the direction is towards the nose of the board)? Is an upright posture from the waist up what I should be after? 6.)This is why you're the interpreter of maladies! For the times when things fall apart, this is bang-on! Reading further on your website guidelines for setting up bindings, am I right in thinking that forward biased weight favors agility at the expense of edge-hold, while back-biased weight favors edge-hold at the expense of agility, _and_ that is the reason that turns are initiated with a forward weight bias and finished with a back biased weight distribution (sorry if this was obvious to everyone else it just never clicked until now)? 7)Any tips for this? Not really sure how to achieve this? 8)Bummer, no free lunches... 9)Amen to that, but work and family can be damned inconvenient sometimes 10)Drills it is tomorrow! 11)This and 10 is what I'm going to drill on tomorrow. Postscript: I guess what I'll be focusing on in the near-term is repeating the reaching for the boot cuff drills to get body stacking better (10) and shifting from fwd weight to backward weight through the turn (2), (11). I also had a few emails with Sean at Donek around the MK, and I'm a bit unsure about ordering an MK-ish board but wider. I'll try running with narrower angles on my Coiler (similar to what I would need on the MK) this weekend just to see how it feels. Again, Thanks for the input its really appreciated!

Hi BOL! I recognize I've got two wholely selfish questions here so I'm hoping you can cut me some slack. 1.) Around these parts there aren't exactly a lot of (if any?) instructors to teach carving. I've read through all of the tech article here several times and a couple years ago I got some fantastic info from Beckmann among others that got me off to a great start. I'm hoping that maybe some of y'all can give me some feedback on my technique as it stands today? Basically the following link is a video from Friday when we had some pretty epic conditions at a nearby hill (Gaustablikk) and I was out on the Coiler NFC. The riding is on the conservative side of how I normally ride (didn't want to f-up completely in front of the camera) but is definitely a typical example of my cruising technique when snow is heroish and I want to last all day. I see I'm reaching for the snow a bit too eagerly on the front side turns but what I'm really hoping for is maybe some input on: a)Overall riding position (I think it might be a bit too upright, but I remember reading some posts about avoiding a stance that is ridiculously low "folded over like crumpled up tissue" I think was pretty close to the line that was used). b)how to improve the transitions (if I remember correctly some of the ones in the video felt kinda wooden, whereas later in the day I had the sensation that I was getting a _little_ air at the start of the transition, which was cool but really unexpected) c)look at my butt, is this acceptable placement on the back side turns? d) how can I work at getting better inclination (I wanna wear out at least one set of pants per season)? Is the secret to laydown carves just to set up an good initial carve (angulation/inclination) and then just "fall over"? d)I think I understand that weight distribution for/aft is a dynamic thing, but how does that effect transitions? For example I think my transitions work best when I have my weight quite forward on the board, but... edge hold seems to be more powerful through the turn when I have my weight centered or event aft on the board. But when I end a turn with my weight very far aft, the transition to the next turn feels really weak and ugly? 2.) I'm probably going to be making a trip back to the US in the summer and would love to pick up a new board (there is bugger all to choose from in Norway, and freight/import costs are a deal killer). I love my Nirvana to pieces 172/(12m/14m), and my Silberpfeil is now my rockboard, but I want to change things up. I would really like to add something more agile and spastic that is still suited for hard snow trending to ice. Narrow steep blacks with hard snow or blues with ice is what I want to tackle without skrensing. That and $1000 is the absolute limit that I can spend without too much damage to my conscience. I got to borrow a Swoard Extreme Carve 168 board this last week and enjoyed the completely different rhythm of the board. When I got good inclination on it, it would really turn inside of my Coiler, had good edge hold and overall felt like a more agile board. The downside was that I'm not ready to hop on the EC bandwagon and the width was way too wide (I still rode with my usual binding angles 65/55). The Donek MK on the other hand has me nearly convinced that it is exactly what I want, but the narrow width has me a bit freaked out (my boots are Mondo 29 RC-10s). This next board is going to be my last board in a looooooong time so I want to do what I can to assure that it is as excellent as the Coiler. Ok three questions. Not two but three... How do folks improve consistency? Some days I feel like a god on the local hill, other days I want to go whimpering back home. I know (generally) what I should do to have a good stance and most days everything falls in place and it feels natural. But there are always days where I can go through my mental checklist of carving do's/do-not's and nothing works. Are there any tricks to mentally reset when things go til helvete?

Jeez, next you'll want us to expect the Spanish Inquisition...

Hi 1xsculler! Different strokes for different folks I guess. In 2000 I moved to Norway from Colorado and pretty much gave up on snowboarding, since I was frustrated with the kind of snow out here. In 2015 I saw a Russian video called Lock, Stock and two Snowboards and that is what got my blood pumping and got me into hard boots. I've since focused primarily on learning the North American "Bomber" style, but I totally owe EC style a huge debt for rekindling my stoke in snowboarding (and that EC stuff aint easy; or maybe it's just me).

I sympathize. The one thing I was looking forward to with global warming was that Norway was supposed to become colder. Not this year! This is the worst winter since I moved here (17 years ago). Predominately temperatures over freezing since November.

I think there is a difference between pride/satisfaction derived from achievment in a fairly demanding sport and narcissism. I also tend to think that narcissism is more of a personal character flaw rather than a hallmark of an entire sport. Yes we beginners can be absorbed in our own riding, but that is mainly introspection and out of necessity if we want to progress without many opportunities for organized instruction. And of course we all get a kick out of laying down som sweet tracks on a steep slope in sight of the chairlift; everyone has an ego and most people manage to keep their ego in check. We all have our motiviations for pursuing this sport and based by the fact that you even broach this topic, I would tend to think that you are more introspective and less narcissistic that you think. Like kiteparsons said have fun BRUH! There is only one person in all of BOL who I identify as a narcissist: lordmetroland . Don't be like him.

PM'd OP. OP delivered. Ewww...

I thought all of the Dakine tools had a PZ3? I've got the fidget with me all of the time and it is a lifesaver with the F2 Race Ti bindings.

Hey Najserrot my biggest suggestion for your video is that you should have been in Kongsberg this weekend! No way I would have felt comfortable doing full c carves with that many people around! The conditions on sunday were excellent up at Funkelia and the crowds were pretty manageable. Give me or tanglefoot a note if you get a chance to come up. Not sayin' that we'll have much input to improve your skills but maybe you'll look just that much better in comparison? @nitroAre slalom courses for skis comparible to slalom courses for snowboards? There are always courses set up at my local hill and I'm somtimes tempted to give one a try when they are using short gates. I'm assuming the technique for riding gates is different then just pure carving?

The Black Snowboard of Death?

Thanks for this! Took a quick look and looks like a great supplement to the tech articles on bomber.

Good grief, did you have hard boots on the k2 tx?! I learned to ride on that board and kept pulling out the bindings (and I was only using Sorrells). At the end of my first year I wound up drilling out most of the boards pre-drilled screw holes and epoxying in blind nuts. It was not a very fast board after that :(

Darn tough over the calf light ski socks.

Hey how do those boards ride (pow versus ice)? A friend showed me their website a month ago and I totally want one, even though it would be a completely ridiculous board where I usually ride.

The following article focuses mainly on toe-side toilet butt, but has some great pictures. Anyway on the heelside, the butt still looks the same; unbalanced and aiming the wrong way. As I understand it, the problem stems from the angulation. Toilet butt bends your knees and places your CG i a way that reduces your heel-side edge's inclination against the snow. You want to drive your knees and hips into the snow and stack your CG near over the turning edge. On heel side the two things I revert to when I need to reset my back-side turn are: 1) pretend I've got a steering wheel over the nose of the snowboard and I have to hold onto it with both hands. or 2). Tuck my front hand (left if you are regular footed) behind my front knee. This at least gets my shoulders squared up and by extension my hips.

I can't be the only one here that grew up with cant plate on my back binding and idolizing Craig Kelly? Man, those knees have got to TOUCH if you're gonna look like one of the cool kids!