st_lupo

I'm with the not clicked in crowd. I'm also typically doing Bobby Buggs' thing in that I typically use dismounting and puttering around in the lift line as practice for balancing and riding on only my front foot. I could never have done that in soft boots, but in hard boots its... doable. Now regarding the suckage of tbars and platter lifts... I was riding in a small but really cool ski area called Raudalen a couple of weeks back and the only lift that was operating was a clapped out platter-lift (tallerkenheis). The springs on most of the lifts were shot and had just enough tension to hold the lift contracted without a rider onboard. However when attempting to start from the bottom the transition from standing still to full lift speed happened in a fraction of a second. The take-off was pretty much that, everyone caught air every time they started from the bottom, or they crashed in front of everybody. I agree with darko714 that some of the worst lifts are the long and near vertical (it feels that way at least) ascents on t-bars. The feeling of not being able to keep your back foot planted on the board (along with the sensation of your uphill hip joint sloooowly dislocating) is horrific. And unlike LordMetroLand, for me getting off was always a relief and never a challenge.

Thanks everybody for the feedback! I think I'll leave the ankle cams alone until I get the forward lean of the cuffs sorted out. Carving seems to be a fickle beast... Tonight I started with the forward lean adjustments that got me grooving last time and... it just wasn't doing it for me tonight. I was counter rotating all over the place and back-seat driving a lot. I thought about Beckmann's "tense meat" post and tried setting my cuffs one click more upright to get out of the gutter. Boom! toe side carves locked in and the heel side didn't suffer. I think I was still going to the gutter but I was getting there through a different body position than before; leaning forward (towards the tip of the board) at the waist. I felt more in the "cockpit" that way (what do you think of that Metroland?), and had better symmetry in my heel-side and toe-side turns. I was definitely starting to feel something like a cross-through (or maybe cross-under) on some transitions, but being able to do it reliably is incredibly elusive. Anyway snow was awesome tonight, winter has finally come to this little corner of Norway!

I'm not sure: is that an old photo or is somebody using their dad's clothes from the 90's? Also, is the Geeksquad going to start giving carving lessons??? It is cool to see the sport getting more exposure!

Lets see how many UPZ threads we can get going at once? Last year I had my hands full just learning the basics of hardbooting and I didn't even want to think about my equipment setup. As a result, the principles guiding my setup were pretty basic: bootout dictated the binding angles, shoulder width dictated the stance width, and comfort dictated the boot setup (basically the fore/aft lean angle). I've now got a somewhat solid (albeit rudimentary) skill base to draw from and I am starting to re-evaluate my hardware setups to improve performance (where for my money performance is measured by reliably maximizing centripetal acceleration during the turns; I guess this boils down to angulation) . The RC10s have more screws and twiddly bits that I know what to do with and was wondering if somebody might supply some guidance on more advanced tuning. Probably important for the discussion are my stance angles (65/60) and board type: SL (F2 Silberpfeil). As of tonight I think I've got my fore/aft lean angles set right with one click forward lean on my front foot (ie one click where the metal "spine" on the back of the boot starts to show) and two clicks forward lean on my back foot. This seems to "feel" right in that it forces me to get a low stance on the board and offers a good balance between left side and right side carving performance. The cost is that my front leg (left) gets completely wrung out after just two or three runs. All of my joints feel fine though. Is this typical? The other main adjustments: those cams on the ankles and spring/tongue stiffness; I have absolutely no idea how to approach them. At my binding angles, is it event worth futzing around with the ankle cams? How do I identify if the boots are setup too soft or too hard? I can relate from experience that snowboard specific hard boots are superior to soft boots for carving, but I really have no clue why even stiffer ski boots are worse? Thanks for any help or rules of thumb for setting up the boots.

Think I might have answered this at the hill tonight. Stiffer TD binding in front for steering power and softer F2 in back for a bit less punishing ride?

Digger Jr: Groovy graphics! What' the lowdown on using two dissimilar bindings?

Different strokes for different folks. There is no one OS or platform to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them). Regardless of what the different camps would have you think. When it comes to 3rd party apps, consumer apps, games and driver compatibility, sure Windows is great (mostly), and Windows is my primary desktop operating system at home (mainly due to power management). But when it comes to my day job and hard number crunching, it is Linux (and FOSS) all the way, there is no way to beat the customizability, scalability, and price-performance of Linux, when it suits. When it comes to embedded... Arduino is really cool and amazing at it's price-point ($1 for the mircrocontroller that controls a multi-copter?!?), but I think the Raspberry Pi Zero and the C.H.I.P. platform is going to see a bigger share of the micro-controller market at the 5$ and $10 price-points respectively. Full Linux machine, pick your favorite programming language, whats not to love? In the end it's the right tool for the right job, and I like the jingle of having a pretty big toolbox.

I'm interested in this question too! I just received a brand-spanking-new Coiler this year and am terrified/thrilled by the possibilities (gruglede as is said in Norwegian). Bruce confirmed a 0-degree on the base and 1-degree on the side-wall. If it is too grabby in the lift-line I plan on bevelling the base to .5 degrees. After time I plan on sharpening the sidewall to the 2 degree that is standard in our household. I guess that it is sufficient to take a magic marker to the edges and just continue sharpening until the magic marker is completely worn away?

It depends on the reported value of the imported items. For some reason the value $150 sticks in my head. IE if the reported value of the item is less than $150 the item is VAT free and no processing fees. If the value is over that amount you are liable for both VAT and any related processing fees, it depends on what the sender reports. When I've been shipping stuff (to Norway at least), the VAT and processing fees are typically handled by the freight company (UPS, DHL) and billed to me.

Feel for you all! Our little corner of Norway in Kongsberg has been pretty dry and warm. We took a trip to Beitostølen/Raudalen this weekend for my daughter's training camp and finally found some real winter... It was heaven!!!

Sophomore class reporting in!!! Winter has finally hit Norway and I had my first day on the local hill a few weeks back... I started with alpine snowboarding last year and had an absolute blast, and haven't been this motivated by a single sport for a long time, and not wanting to loose any traction over the spring and summer months I started cross-training with long-boarding, dropped some weight, and accumulated some (rather largish) scabs. The whole time I was really in suspense over where I would be when I resumed riding in the '16/'17 winter season. Rewind to winter '14/'15: By the end of last season I was getting used to locking in reasonable carves and grinning at the stupid speed that develops when avoiding skidding at all costs (and how to clean out my shorts when said speed got waaay out of hand). I also developed a expectation that when I shifted my center of mass over the edge, the board would lock in and the centripetal acceleration kept me upright. Symbiosis... Terror... Control... Reward... That kind of stuff. Three weeks ago - 1 day: I prepped my board as best as I could, getting ready for the first snow-board trip of the season. I scraped the storage wax layer down, brushed the base and honed the edges with my wife's chrome-file and diamond stone. There is a certain zen-like relaxation in tuning the edges and seeing the fine curled metal shavings collect on the table. The final touch was checking the bindings... good and tight; 65/60 degrees. Three weeks ago: I took my daughter up to the local hill for her first race training session of the ski season and my first snowboarding trip of the season. I had my board ready to show those skiers who really owns the carve! I took the Poma lift up without a single complaint from the hip department and locked in my back boot. I was cock-sure and ready to go! First carve on a heel side and I wind up dragging butt (can I say ass?) like a dog that's eaten a pint of yogurt. Meh... I'm slightly embarrassed in front of these 10-year-old skiers. Okay toe-side carve then... I wind up dragging my... (antonym of ass)... on the snow. Now I'm red-cheeked and my daughter is also embarrassed in front of her peers. Amazing! I was just completely dumbfounded, and here I had even ordered a brand-spanking-new Coiler board, and this happens to me?!?! Things never got better that night and my attitude was basically "Screw you guys, I'm going home." I'm too old and too handsome (wife made me delete that) to be humiliated like this!!! Fast Forward to this last week: The family took a trip to a small ski area (that actually had a lot of snow!!!) for a race-training camp for my daughter. Here I really learned my lesson! We started the trip on the green runs on the sunny side of the valley. Perfectly groomed hero-snow. We finally cut the umbilical for our youngest daughter and she was skiing in really good control. Our oldest daughter is chomping at the bit the whole time, challenging anyone to to a race and my wife... well she's as awesome as ever on skis. I'm getting in a few good slashes in on the SilberPfeil but it's green-groomers, mind you. The next day we get our oldest daughter out of bed (hail of protests) her and I are finally are on the hill on the opposite side of the valley, the shady side. Cold. Dark. Hard snow. Racing snow. My oldest daughter took off with her training group, and my wife was with our youngest daughter on the sunny-side of the valley. I was left alone; red and black trails only... do or die. I start off a bit tentatively and punch at the snow with my hand once or twice when I loose my balance. That it hard stuff!! The slope finally drops from beneath me and I pick up speed. The lessons that I learned from last year starts kicking in. My back knee rotates into my front leg, my stance drops and I start bending away from snow at my waist, hot-lava! Oh man!!! That feeling when I dropped into a heel side turn that just locked in was pure ecstasy, only matched only by transitions to toe-side turns... fractions of a second before careening off the edge of the trail! Continually transitioning turns by throwing my center of gravity down-hill and trusting the board would catch me was the biggest rush! This is what I had waited all summer and spring for! The Take-away: My 10 year old daughter now officially kicks my butt and that's cool. Regardless of age, it is great when your children kick your butt. But... just as importantly I will never... EVER... use my 16-year-old Burton free-style board with soft-boots (regardless of the stance angles) as my initial-season rock board again. There is no comparison to the responsiveness to the hard-boot + carving-board combination. The SilberPfeil is now the daily driver and the Coiler is for those special occasions. I wipe-out more than enough when probing the limits of my abilities and I'm sure that the jib-bonkers are laughing at me, but when things just connect... wow! Terror, relief... repeat!

I talked to my parents not to long ago and they said that Santa Fe has a really good base. Depending on how many Texans you get behind it is typically around and hour and a half drive from Albuquerque (north east heights). As far as ski areas within 2 hours of ABQ, Santa Fe is the best hands down, IMHO. Maybe not Colorado class, but really very good. When the snow is good, Santa Fe has some fun off piste opportunities, and some of the longer runs in NM. As far as renting carving gear, can't help you there unfortunately, but you will probably have a problem locating it in NM. They don't rent it on the mountain anyway. The ski area's performance package will get you a Burton Custom Flying-V (which drives like a pig). Also "Carpe Diem": check the edges and sing out if they aren't sharp. Sandia is always hit-or-miss (typically miss) and is usually icy (in my way too long ago high-school recollections anyway). Another plus with Santa Fe is there are some awesome breweries in town (La Cumbre and Santa Fe Brewery have awesome IPAs... if you're into that kind of thing ;) Best Regards!

A big problem I've had when flying with my board in a soft bag is that the edges of the board will slice and dice right through most of the snow-board specific bags unless you find some way of isolating them. That plastic coarse-weave tarpaulin material just gets eaten up, even on padded boards. My wife however has some ski bags from her racing days that used a lot of thick vinyl-like material and those have held up really well.

For me the sock slide has always been largely non-preferential. Actually I have to admit that I seem to have a slight preference based on which direction I'm running inside my house. Right-foot one way, left-foot the other... go figure. I also tried the arms-folded/eyes-closed balance test, and in a minute and a half I had the same amount of toe-outs with my right foot forward as I did with my left. It certainly felt a lot more awkward with my right foot forward though which leads to an important point that Beckmann hit on... When performing these left-foot/right-foot tests after already having a few years of boardsport experience under one's belt, it's impossible to eliminate causality between said experience and the results of these tests. When I try to skate or wakeboard goofy, it feels really awkward (especially at the start) but I'm not sure that it is necessarily worse than my first day riding regular. For tasks that primarily require balance and coordination without large voluntary muscle movements I would guess that the cerebellum is in the driver seat, and there would be little inherent neurological left/right bias. For tasks that rely on lots of voluntary motion, especially when the voluntary motions can be isolated to one specific side of the body (kicking, writing, etc...), the cerebrum drives and there should be a noticeable bias? That's just my guess, but I'm no neuroscientist. I'm wondering about the skiiers: do you experience a preference for left/right turns when skiing?

And what a kickin soundtrack. That 80's soundtrack synth music will never sound dated, and it always sounds best on Maxell chrome cassettes.

Sounds like Slopestar's recommendation is the safest way to go. I'll throw a good edge tune on my SuperModel and let them try the forward facing stance on that. Probably start looking at a centered 51cm-ish stance (they are both around my size) and try with a cant plate on the back foot if that makes the stance feel more natural. The people I am thinking of have at least 10 years of snowboarding under their belts. I'm just wondering if any ex-freestylers have any insight on how big of a change it feels like going from duck-stance to both-feet-forward (BFF?)? Ever since I started snowboarding (softboots) I was riding at about +45/+25 and never thought much about it other than I couldn't ride switch like most of my friends. But last year when I tried hardboots and an alpine board for the first time the experience was just out of this world crazy. It's that feeling I'd really like to recreate for the folks over here, because then I know they would be hooked. Since I've only got one year of experience on hard-boots, I don't want to screw up their first carving experience because of my inexperience. Any typical pitfalls that I should avoid? Should I just start with trying to teach "the norm"? Is it best to be more systematic and do drills, or do you see better results by just going for a fun ride, with me on my alpine board doing some simple demonstrations and them trying to repeat? Thanks! Thanks!

Whoah, let's not get carried away. The Norwegian link says that nothing will happen to the skiing events until after the Beijing games. And even then it is pure speculation.

Hi all! I kind of feel that I'm sitting on top of an opportunity in my local town in Norway but I'm not really sure how to proceed. We've got a growing population of carving snowboarders here (hey, they added me to their ranks last season!), and I know of a few more people at work that imho would love the sport. The problem is that they are a bit less impulsive than me, so they would like to "try it before they buy it", and there are no rentals that I know of in Norway. They sound really interested in trying the sport out, and they can certainly borrow my Silberpfeil board, but boots are a big problem. Is it viable to introduce them to the sport using ski boots (if so what kind? recreational boots, racing boots, etc any brand that are better?). Any proven strategies on winning people over to the cause? I think that developing a slightly bigger community of hardboot snowboarders in this little corner of Norway would help the rest of us to improve our technique significantly. Ultimately I would love an old-duffers racing league here!

They look nice! How much do they cost?

Gotta +1 this! I just received my Coiler Nirvana Balance, and Bruce was really fantastic to work with. Reasonable prices too, compared to Kessler et. al. Can't wait for the snow!!!

I used to LOVE Burton boards; Craig Kelly, Asym Air, Custom 159 (an abnormality) and Super Model 169. Seriously, their gear was fantastic and never let me down. But perhaps their best board ever was the Custom Flying V. When I rented one a couple of years back I experienced an epiphany and saw where the cutting edge of traditional softboot snowboarding was going and I wanted no part of that. The Custom Flying V was a pig wallowing in ...mmm... mud? After that it was an F2 Silberpfeil and now a Coiler Nirvana and I'm happier than a pig in ....mmm... mud?

I always pegged Van Halen as more of a freestyle band (ie, Jump), but that looks sweet!

A little porn, surf and turf style: I just took delivery of my Nirvana Free Carve Balance from Coiler, so I'm getting all kinds of amped for the snow!!! I also threw a couple of new long boards that I got this year into the picture (Loaded Vanguard and a Detroit Surf Company Freestyle). I've mentioned elsewhere that alpine boarding finally got my snowboarding juices flowing again, and learning longboard carving/sliding was a blast. I especially like the Detroit board with the yellow Stimulus wheels and I've got the scars to prove it! I also take guilty pleasure in seeing my daughters forsake their inline skates (alpine ski training) for daddy's longboards! I'll make snowboarders out of them yet! I threw a QR code on the Nirvana to help the board find it's way home in case of getting lost or stolen. Hope I never need to use it! I also brought in a second Coiler to Kongsberg for a friend, so here's hoping to make Kongsberg the carving capital of Norway!!!

LML, I thought this was just your unique sense of humor. I even copied the quote and googled it. Only your post came up so I thought the world was safe and God was in his heaven. Then I searched just for Burton and Gwen Stefani. Wow... WTF!?! I just don't get this anymore. I'm debating trading in my old Burton and just riding a cookie sheet in a pair of high-tops when the powder hits. Gobsmacked... that is the word I'm looking for.