st_lupo

+1 this! Many years back I was riding on pavement on the way back from a mtn bike trip in late fall when I hit a patch of leaves in a fast turn. I left a couple square feet of skin on the pavement. Will never forget the delight of scrubbing out gravel/sand and later peeling bandages out of the resulting gook on my arm and leg. Surprisingly my worst injury ever has been while wakeboarding. Crushed a couple small bones in my ankle that time.

Thanks for all of the info folks. It sounds like a 50/50 split. My impression is that it is a lot of board for the money but is further out of my ability than I realized. I dont have a bottomless budget so I'm thinking its better bang for the buck if I hold on to the money and instead save it towards one of the european carving events next season and try joining a clinic or class. Didn't mean to sound like I thought I had outgrown the Silber. Mine is in great condition and I love riding it. Its like a gocart in the best way. There is a looong way before I master that board. I was fortunate enough to get one extra day on the snow and had a couple of runs with a colleague. He has the exact same board but years of experience. When he rode he was probably going 2/3 the speed I was but making two absolutely beautiful turns for each one of mine and really getting close to the snow. Lots to learn and seasons are too short...

Ooops, height and weight... 6ft 1inch, 190llb (86kg). Slopes where I ride are kind of on the narrow side, so I saw this board as more of something to take on trips to broading the riding experience when visiting the bigger ski areas. Price is around 200 euros + shipping. Starting to get the impression that this is more of an impulse buy that I should just leave alone...

Hi All, I just found a 2014 F2 Speedster RS Equipe 185 for a really good price. I've read some favorable reviews on the board and have had a recommendation that I should have several different styles of carving boards at different legths in my quiver to really get to know the sport. I've also read that GS boards are a bit more formidable and not suitable for beginners. Where I'm at right now: Experience: 1st season on hardboots this year with 6 days on the snow Current Board: F2 Silberpfeil 169 Bindings: F2 Titanium Race (65/60) Style: Bomber (? I wouldn't say I have any style but this is what I am aiming for) I'd say that I'm currently able to carve greens and blues (not incompetent but not beautiful either) and don't screw up too badly on reds given good snow days. I have a tendency for more speed rather than completing full 180 degree turns (but I hope to focus more on performing fuller turns next year), and my tracks, while carved, represent more of a snake going over the whole mountain as opposed to a set of linked semicircles. I'm looking for a board to grow into over the next few seasons (before I can justify a major investment in one of the custom brands), that will perform well on ice and choppy snow at the bigger Norwegian ski areas. A board that I have a reasonable chance of mastering before it kills me. Would getting the Speedster RS 185 be a stupid thing for me to do? What other considerations should I take into account when deciding on a carving board? I read that GS boards tend to need more speed before being able to turn, all things are relative so how much speed are we talking about: 30kmh, 60, more? Thanks!

Looks like the season is over for me so this will be the last I post on this thread. Days 4 & 5 (at Geilo) ---------------------------- My family and I took a trip to Geilo and had two half days on the slopes. One of our girls wound up getting pretty sick so the wife and I were tag-teaming between care duties and ski/snowboarding. My wife got early morning and late afternoon runs, and in my darkest/jealous moments I keep thinking of how she had the early morning groomers and late day deserted runs. My preciousssessss!!! In honesty though, no complaints at all (just too short of a day). Saturday was again awesome weather and I could almost imagine I was still living in Colorado. The start of the day was a little discouraging. I was expecting to start off exactly where I stopped the previous weekend. No can do! It took about three runs at maximum awkwardness before I limbered up and things started rhyming again. After that I was on full afterburner on a blue that was every n00b's dream: wide open and silky smooth at the top with a pitch that just seemed to serve up a perfect speed. Here you could really plan out your turns and push your learning in a controlled way. Not the super wicked experience of last week's red runs at Kvitfjell but a solid slope that served up lots of confidence and helped create steady improvement. I started developing a preference for my heel side turns. They weren't 90 degree inclination but they were solid and reliable and went pretty much where I wanted. My toe side improved a bit too, but was more erratic. It varied from not exactly a disaster to actually brushing my inside knuckles on the snow for a couple of seconds while not having a complete toilett butt stance. After four runs of confidence-building I learned that a crash at the higher speed of a carving board makes you hurt more. Somehow I wound of getting thrown head first to the snow, with my arms instinctively extending in front me. My left hand lodged in the snow and my elbow just locked into a slightly hyper extended position. Basically the 90 kg of me+gear wanted to keep travelling forward and I felt my elbow trying to double over backwards. Luckily drinking milk as a kiddie meant nothing broke, but I did have to take a horse-pill of an ibuprofen to keep going that day (and one to sleep at night, and one to ride the next day). I got a little skittish and took some red runs to get a grip on that, but overall I was a little bit timid on those. At the end of the day I went back to the blue for some really fun times. I felt I was really getting a good handle on my heel side turns and was consistently placing the apexes of those turns so they were around 6 inches from the netting that separated the edge of the trail from the far away horizon. At the more choppy sections I started concentrating on completing 180 degree turns and was rewarded in seeing how effective that was for controlling speed. On Sunday we headed back up to the hill and I remembered, oh yeah, we're in Norway. The sun was gone, just grey skies and equally grey flat snow. The wind was howling, ice was poking out here and there and the chairlifts were closed. The t-bars were running though, so I had that going for me... To paraphrase the old saying about beer: T-bars are proof that God exists and that he hates snowboarders. Other than (maybe) childbirth, nothing proves love more than being dragged up a 45 degree incline by nothing more than a thin hook that you shove in your groin. The only good thing about the t-bar is that they almost never shut down due to weather. I took Duke's idea and put a camera on the tail of my snowboard. So below is my butt cam. This was probably my last day this season so I guess this is the sum total of what I've learned in my first season of carving. I thought I was concentrating on squaring off to the board and relaxing the upper body, but there is still some twisting going on (body lagging the board). I was excited to see some boot-out; it makes a n00b feel all grown up! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v7DNfkoQ9-U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zEp4w_kT0q4 I guess the summary for the year is I love this stuff, and I love being this excited about snowboarding again! I have to say that I'm really impressed at how freely folks here give their time to help us beginners out and at how helpful the information is! The gear that I started with works perfect for me. The most expensive piece of kit, the boots, fit like a glove, have good support and work with my current stance. The bindings do what they are supposed to and didn't make me poor. The board I think is great. It might not be drool worthy, but it was unused, affordable and it never spanked me for doing something wrong. It also feels like a board that I'm not going to grow out of any time soon. I guess the one last question that I do have before ending this thread is how do you all make it through until the next season???

I do some wakeboarding here in Norway, so I know the feel. Mostly we use short wetsuits to help with the cold, but they don't help when falling facefirst into a stinging jellyfish!

Welcome on board Bprime101! As far as wide board / narrow board: I was told by a friend that I definitely wanted a wider board to start with (the recommendation was a SilberPfeil Vantage), but I got a fairly narrow board instead (normal SilberPfeil) because I found an unused 2012 model for small cash (I'm cheap!). For me transitioning to the narrow board seems mostly just about making peace with the very forward facing stance. If you can ride the narrow board and face (more or less) squared off to the nose in a neutral feeling stance I think you're good to go on a narrow board. Other than that there definitely seems to be style differences between riding a narrow vs. wide board. As far as getting the board to catch you on the edge... That can be due to a few factors I think. First is your overall ability to balance. It sounds like you are coming from softboots (like me) so we'll assume that overall balance and coordination is not a problem. Whenever I've had a problem with either loosing an edge or not catching my balance on a transition it's pretty much been because of bad habits from softbooting getting into my hardboots. 1) Do two_ravens exercise from earlier in this thread, 2) drive the board with your hips, 3)keep facing towards the nose and 4)angulate your torso away from the snow, not towards it. Never reach for the snow! Or an easier way to remember things based on lots of help from the forums: 1)Butt over the board (two_ravens) 2)The action is all below the waist, as the actress said to the bishop. (philw) 3)pretend there's a steering wheel or handlebar attached to the nose of the board (markbvt) <--sounds goofy but it does work! 4)The snow is hot lava (ExcelsiorTheFathead) I've gotten lots of use out of these four things. I guess just one other thing... don't transition when you are going too slow. You need enough forward velocity to generate the centripital acceleration that you are going to need to keep yourself up. This problem becomes obvious if you just flop onto the slope and stop right away. Read the tech articles on BOL. There are a lot but certain critical concepts are repeated often and really stick out. Visualize your movements in your head and practice in front of a mirror. Take some video on the slope, the people on this forum are great at dissecting it and offering positive feedback. Best of luck and don't give up, this is a blast!

Thanks for the great input and encouragement everybody! The family and I are heading up to Geilo for the weekend and it will probably be my last two days of riding this year. So I'll end the season with three days in softboots early this season and 5 days in hardboots, all in March. All in all those 5 days in hardboots has transformed a pretty bleak and warm winter into a really kick-butt season that I won't soon forget. So this weekend I'm just going to focus on repition of what I learned in the previous week, and see if I can get those pencils parallel to the board's edges. So this weekend I'm just going to focus on repition of what I learned in the previous week, and see if I can get those pencils parallel to the board's edges. I'll also try cleaning up my upper body movement and to be prepared to prevent counter-rotation on my heel-side turns. It became really obvious while doing "zombie hands" last weekend that my facing tended to lag the board's direction by up to 15 or so degrees when I transition. I'm not sure if this was just inertia pulling my hands out to the side or if it indicates a general problem? I've always had a problem figuring out what to do with my hands while riding. The past three trips on hardboots they've been flapping around to help keep my balance while I concentrate on other things. On softboots I don't need them so much for balance, just catching me when I fall and bending/tapping any overhanging branches in order to dump snow on friends when we're riding through trees.

Duke, I like the video! I'm going on (maybe) my last ride of the year this weekend and I'm going to try doing the same. Its pretty hard to get my wife to film me when I'm riding since she's got her hands full teaching our youngest to ski but I hope that with my old GoPro on the tail of my board I can get an idea of what my stance it doing. As far as technique, I'm a beginner too so I'm not qualified to critic anyone's style but I can tip you on what has helped me get on edge pretty reliably... First off get really comfortable with two_ravens exercise: "knees, knees, hips, tuck". That really helped me put my butt where it should be, and helped me face the correct direction. A proper stance is an essential foundation to everything that we are trying to do. In the "knees, knees, hips, tuck, tilt" part I found that the tilt must not originate from throwing my center of gravity to the inside of the turn. IE don't lay into the turn. Laying into the turn I think I created two problems: 1) the line between my CG and carving edge is no longer (nearly) perpendicular to the slope (this is talked about in some threads, but I'm not entirely sure how important it really is) and 2)biomechanically this will prevent my carving edge from achieving a high degree of inclination on the slope. For me the tilt comes best from driving my hips towards the inside of the turn and bend my torso to the outside of the turn, perpendicular to the board's longitudinal axis (angulation). If my stance is good (squared to the board, with my butt over the board), this is going to force the board to roll/inclinate up onto it's edge, bingo! My CG position remains relatively unchanged and I'm bending kind of like a piece of macaroni. By driving your hips to the inside of the turn your legs will press against the sides of your boots and get the board on edge. Angulating away from the snow with your torso (keeping your butt over the line running perpendicular from your board's topsheet) gives you a lot more clearance between your body and snow, allowing you room to get higher inclination angles on your cutting edge. Also the conservation of angular momentum is going to drive the board to higher inclination angles the more that you angulate your torso away from the inside of the turn. Another benefit is it reduces the temptation to reach for the snow with your hands, which at our stage in the game is a killer no-no. For me trying to do the angulation part of the bomber style was like fighting against years of habit from softboot riding (even though I was carving on soft boots). At first it feels pretty unnatural and personally I feel kinda vulnerable when I'm opened up on a toe-side turn. At the first chatter of ice, my conditioned reaction is to sit on the toilet and reach for the snow (or at least close up my stance and protect my body). That reaction guarantees a lost edge and needs to be reconditioned into the a response of increasing angulation. When you feel that extra few degrees of edge inclination that angulating your body gives you, man its good! The first few times I just had to say f-it and trust that my board was going to catch me. When you experience that it does catch you it gets easier. For me, I also had to do all the motions to the point that it felt like I was really exaggerating. When I saw a video of my riding I saw that I was hardly angulating at all compared to experienced riders, but it was getting me a better edge than I've ever had before. My impression is that we beginners can really derive a lot of benefit by initially focusing on three things: Stance (naturally facing somewhere between the board's nose and the mean angle of your bindings throughout the turns, adjust bindings/boots so this is comfortable) Angulation (this leads to edge inclination, practice this in front of a mirror) CG (keeping our butt properly over the board) Each one of these skills gives a big payoff, and (for me at least) they are the easiest things to focus on while riding. You can set a good stance while you calmly approach a downhill and it pretty much sticks through the run. Angulation (at our level) is created by large scale movements which are reasonably easy to perform/monitor. CG is a bit more subtle but is critical to master. A lot of the other things are just out of my capability to evaluate or do anything about right now(cross-over/cross-under, for-aft weight distribution, etc). Of course if anything I say is wrong, creates bad habits, or is just plain stupid I defer to the masters on BOL!

Days 2 and 3!!! The family and I went up to Kvitfjell this past weekend and the weather was absolutely awesome! For the past week the temperatures had been alternating between between lows of around -8C and highs of +3C. The runs were perfectly groomed, the sky was a brilliant blue and the mountain wasn't overcrowded. The snow was definitely super hero quality starting with a nice firm texture early in the morning and giving way to a slight softness with a piquant aftertaste of Swix red later in the day. Just to make you all jealous... I spent the past week reading and rereading (and rereading) the advice and technical columns here. I might not be the sharpest tool in the box so I can't say I fully appreciated everything that was said, but I do notice when certain concepts are repeated again and again. Two things stood out as important: angulation (the pencil pinching exercise) and keep my eyes in the direction that I am travelling, not on the fall line. So we set out for the slopes early on Saturday and that was going to be my focus for the day. The first run was a green dot and things didn't feel too bad. First, I tried to do the pencil pinching exercises. That was an absolute revelation! Seriously, "pencil pinching" and facing the right way on the board (plus some significant help from the snow conditions) just boosted how I ride significantly. I almost look back at my last 25 years in softboots with a bit of regret since I now understand why I plateaued with my riding in Norway. The Toeside Problem seems like absolute essential NOOB reading, regardless of a toe problem or not; it really hammers down how cant angle and proper weight distribution is rooted in your stance and ability to bend in the right direction at all times. For the past 25 years I've been hanging out with the "A" gang, but the techniques of the riders in the "B" gang (and why it worked) had just never occurred to me. The reason for some of my weaknesses in softboots just became painfully obvious, and throughout the day, the engineer in me kept smacking the back of my head and saying "idiot". I mean it is painfully simple and obvious, like e=mc^2, right? That was a big lesson learned and I decided that if I did nothing else this weekend I would practice a shed-load of turns while exaggerating the pencil pinching. I would flop around so much people would think I had lost my 3rd vertebrae. Now this was improvement! King of the green! My family, of course had other ideas. While looking at me like I had lost my mind, both my oldest daughter and my wife who is teaching our 5 year old daughter to ski, tell me that preschool is over and it's time to graduate to blue. I was ok with that (no choice really) and it went tolerably well. There were a few rough patches that sent my body spasming back to the "A" gang stance out of pure instinct. It seems like I will have to unlearn some bad habits in order to learn good habit, or some zen hocus pocus like that. One thing I have to admit to is that the pucker factor builds every time my turns point me towards the trees or a tower or a person while my speed increases. The one question that keeps floating in the back of my mind is what happens if I don't make the transition to the next turn? Speeding across the trail towards the trees at max speed is not something that I'm exactly used to. Riding in hardboots feels like a trust exercise in some aspects; I've got to throw my weight around and stand in some positions that (for now) feel pretty unnatural and vulnerable and trust that the board does it's thing. By mid day on day 2 I was pretty much doing the following pretty consistently on the blues. not my best run but pretty far away from my worst: The thing that kind of annoyed me at this point was my tendency to lapse into doing lots of quick and short turns and not crank into full 180 degree turns. I kept imagining myself like a hyperactive chihuahua when I really wanted to be running with the pitbulls. Regardless, it was fun and I convinced myself that every extra turn now helped me get further away from my old, bad habits. Finally my wife and youngest daughter peeled away for some alone time and my oldest daughter said it's time for black or at least red runs. Like mother like daughter; when it comes to snowsports they don't cut anybody slack, and I was getting kicked out of the nest in a big way. I'm up for red at least and yip yip yip I start the top of the nearest red slope like that hyper chihuahua. Since the board is pointing mostly down the fall line I get a big burst of acceleration and freakout and push the eject button. SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID. That approach isn't going to work. I tried making a deeper swooping turn. Again a huge burst of acceleration and suddenly all of the other skiers in front of me started looking more and more like moving insurance liabilities. The remainder of that run and the reds that followed pretty much went the same way. I kept trying to carve turns until I loose my nerve and then skid to get my speed back in my comfort zone. The ski hill finally closes aaaand it's miller time. This is Norway so it's actually Fat Aas beer time. My oldest daughter comes up to me and fist bumps me and laughs, "If you bought that board and fancy boots to keep up with me, you just wasted a bunch of money." Like I said, no pity in this family. Day 3 is just as beautiful as day 2... I could get used to this! I started off on the blue runs in spastic little doggy style, yip! yip! yip! I tried to concentrate on making bigger turns and immediately I can tell I'm kinda sore and really loose (in a bad way) compared to saturday. I could carve, but I couldn't CARVE. I spent a couple of chair lift rides trying to debug what's going on. Knee-knee-hips-tuck, pencil holding... Finally I think about where my eyes are looking, I had forgotten that. Having gotten used to those short turns, my eyes were used to focusing on the fall line and as a result my head was lagging behind my snowboard by up to 30 degrees or so in each turn. As a result I got to be acquainted with this dreaded counter-rotation of which BOL constantly speaks. Getting my eyes refocused in my direction of travel cleaned up a lot and it was crazy how slow the snowboard could go and still carve turns at the end of the green run. Here's a question then: when initiating/transitioning a turn do people keep their head/sight locked into the direction of the board, or do they lead the turn with their head, or what? Having my head completely fixed in the direction of travel felt kind of like tunnel vision. Leading each turn with my head, so that I was looking about 5 degrees ahead of where I was travelling seemed to work really well but then my head was swiveling a lot and it didn't feel completely natural or efficient. What is preferred? Does keeping you head loose but moving your eyes have the same beneficial effect? After I realized that my point of focus needed some improvement, the day picked up significantly. All too early my family was pooped and called it a day. I said I wanted "just one more run" , and found myself approaching the red slopes from Saturday. There was nobody around to crash into and I really thought that if I could just attack a red run (and not wuss out) I could shut up those little dog turns once and for all. On the other hand, I thought, I could start out really aggressively, panic and loose control and pretzel myself on a tree or tower. It turned out that on that run whatever is left of the 19-year old in me finally clawed up through the bills and mortgage and the overtime and won out over good sense. Finally! My sensible side was still spluttering arguments as it fell of the board and 19-year old me started a sweeping toe-side turn over the first drop that would let me make my first traverse at a moderate angle. The last voluntary thought I had was wow, my body reacted and bent in the right directions for the turn almost automatically and the board just stuck to the snow, now I'm learning! 25 years of bad habits were finally getting eradicated :) At this point the board really started picking up speed (or so I thought) and my whole world became this white strip of snow sandwiched between two walls of evergreen death, plus the occasional snowmaker of doom. I was on the first real steep and the transition to heelside initiated pretty much where I hoped, and I was please. And then it hit. I thought my first traverse across the slope was pretty fast. I quickly learned that I hadn't even left the starting gate yet. I was completely unprepared for the acceleration I had as my heelside carve began to parallel the fall line! I was also completely unprepared for how little speed bled off after I was back on the traverse- "Too late!" came the answer as transitioned to toe side and arched my back over to my heelside. This was immediately followed by the little kernel of doubt that "I should stop while I still can." I am so grateful that those thoughts came in that order since I just committed to go with it and ride this thing out. My world shrunk even further, the trees and snow-makers disappeared and there was only a blur of white that I had to stay on at all costs! I don't remember where I was looking or where my hands were but there are three things that I remember quite clearly: 1)"CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOOHOOOOO!CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOHOOOO!" (replace CRAP with your word of choice multiply by 100 and you start to get the point),2) sucking my knees up into my chest in preparation to have some range of motion to push the board back onto the snow when I crested each drop, and 3)at no point did I try to skid the board out. There might have been some ugly bad turns but there weren't any skids and the direction of travel followed the board's nose the whole way. In just one short run I had managed to drop a whole 25 years from my age, awesome! Happy just to be alive, I let rip with a big yell and pumped my fist into the air a couple of times. I know I'm a n00b and for anybody who was watching I'm sure it was a lot less impressive that what I was feeling, but that sensation of teetering between equal parts of pure terror and pure ecstasy with only a thin strip of metal separating them was pretty gol-darned-ding-dangalang intense! That "just one more run" turned into 6 more. Time just didn't exist for me the rest of that day and I only stopped because the lifts closed. Luckily I was on the right side of the mountain. Each run went pretty much the same way... I started cruising from the top of the lift to the start of my run and I would gesture with my hands toward the backs of anybody downhill from me and use force of will to steer them away from my run. I must have looked like a nutter. I would then get another fix and bomb down my run (with varying degrees of success). A quick cruise back into the chairlift, and sit the whole ride up in a sublime state of bliss. I was now king of this mountain, and I was a good and benevolent king, provided the peasants stayed off of my run. Yep, I was an ass! So... if I thought I was hooked on carving before this last trip... that ain't nothing compared to now! This keeps getting better and better! Also a big thanks to BOL, for being so friendly, approachable and helping us n00bs get our stuff together a lot quicker than if we had to learn this in a total void. It's kinda hard to get a feel for what is possible on a particular slope/snow conditions without any/many people to mimic on the local hills. By the way, that was an impressive amount of feedback regarding getting locked in to my bindings and it helped immensely! No longer a chump, I now proudly lock in upright with my fellow bombers! Beckmann AG's advice really helped as well as the general consensus that getting back up toe-side is easiest. Many Thanks! TL;DR -------- Progressing. Pencils gouged in waists. Yip! Yip! Yip! CRAPCRAPCRAPWOOOOHOOOO!!!. Thanks!

Just had my second day on a carving board and I was surprised to find that small ankle movements do have an effect despite the stiff boots. I noticed it with the small movements that were necessary for me to keep the board on track at slow speeds, immediately after getting off the chairlift and while the board was relatively flat. Coarse steering of carved turns at higher speeds however felt like they came a lot more from my shins pressing on the boot. There probably are lots of small adjustments that my ankles are making but I'm nowhere near good enough to notice that now.

Thanks everybody for the advice! I think I'm better prepared regarding getting the back foot locked in. I'm taking the family on a weekend to Kvitfjell this weekend which is a little higher and a lot colder than last sundays ride, so the snow should be a bit harder. I'm planning on focusing on driving my hips into the turns while angulating everything above the hips, practicing cross-under turns, and keeping my eyes on where my BOARD is headed this trip. I think I can get some video this weekend so I'm kind of interested in seeing how lacking my technique is. -->Markbvt: Those three strap bindings wouldn't have been the old Burton Flex bindings would they? I lost count of how many pairs I broke when I started out riding. Comparing the rubber "shock-absorper" on the highback with the springs on my hardboarding boots, those Flex bindings were pretty chintzy. But I guess there have been a few decades to improve things? :)

(Yikes!!! Apologies for the length of this y'all. I was just trying to capture everything I could about my first day and maybe get some feedback and/or help others who are starting out in hardboots, especially on a pair of legs that are used to soft boots.) First Blood!!! I made it out to the local ski hill on Sunday with the rest of the family and had some great spring skiing conditions. The short version is that I'm pretty satisfied with my first days performance, but I've got a long way to go. I'm definitely hooked! Conditions: 13C (55F), SLUSHY (the little brother of hero snow). At times it was more like wakeboarding than snowboarding. Runs: mainly blues and greens Around the lift ------------------- The immediate thing I noticed was that it feels really different skating the board around in the lift line. Pushing with the tip of the boot as opposed to a mostly flat foot felt really odd at the start but the large front foot angle definitely made it more comfortable to stand in line. Other than that, no big deal getting on/off the lift. Next challenge is strapping in the back boot!?! I'm used to sitting on my butt and strapping in my back foot at my leisure but that didn't go as smoothly with the hard boots. Nothing seemed to want to line up and nothing was where it "should have been". Ok, hardboots, I've gotta think a little different even with the small things. Shifting my weight to my inside hip helped a bit. But even then, pushing myself up into an upright position and trying to go those first few slow feet before getting good directional control had me looking like a chump all day. It probably sounds stupid, but does anybody have any tips for just starting from a sitting position? Run 1: getting my sea legs ----------------------------------- First run is a green slope. Getting started isn't pretty and my wife kept laughing at my wobbling knees. Regardless of how comfortable I felt standing on the board at home, once the thing starts sliding there is waaay too much softboot muscle memory that takes over. The hardboots + binding angles then create a different feel/response than what my body is expecting. Bad feedback loop. I stopped, regrouped and force myself to focus on: "knee-knee-hips-tuck" as two_ravens was so kind to point out in an earlier post. I got started again and kept focusing on knees-knees-hips-tuck and ah... Everything lined up in the right direction and suddenly my inputs were having an effect. An immediate effect. It was still a really shallow green trail, but the Silberpfeil is almost reading my mind and at the slightest nudge the board is doing the right thing and feels really locked in. I'm not carving yet just basic slow-speed directional control. Compared to this feeling my SuperModel (that I love) feels vague and laggy. The nice thing about this responsiveness is that it doesn't feel nervous at all. Now we are getting somewhere. Another big difference that I notice immediately is that I'm steering most effectively by leaning into my boots and not by flexing/relaxing at my ankles. This is a totally foreign feeling compared to carving in my soft boots but to me it seems to make a big difference. As long as I keep remembering to steer by leaning into the boots and keep my feet flat in the footbeds it feels like the boots take care of the rest. Halfway down the first run the slope gets a bit steeper and I can start thinking of carrying more speed. I start a heelside turn and wow! Again the board is a mind reader and it confidently goes into the turn and holds it without any complaints at all. I'll disclaimer that by saying it wasn't a great carve and all the veterans here would probably smile and say "oh yeah, I remember back in the day when I was starting out..." but it was a clean cut, about on the level of what I'd normally be doing with my softboots... but it was effortless. I stand up against the centripetal acceleration at the apex, then relax and let the board come up under me and transition to the next edge. Nice and quick transition. OK, now the toe-side edge, this will be easy... push a little bit extra to show off aaannndddd wipeout! I wind up in something like a bad extreme carve position, laying against the snow, but going in a straight line perpendicular to my board, scooping all of the wet slush into my jacket. Hmmm. All of my fantasies of making a sequal to the Opus youtube clips on my first day were dashed in an instant. I revert back to focusing on "knee-knee-hip-tuck" and figure I'll just have fun and boogie down the rest of the hill. That actually worked just fine and it helped increase my familiarity with the board. It also helped highlight some immediate problems in my technique and letting my outside hand get behind me on the heel sides was probably the most obvious of them. I had a few wipeouts down the rest of the way, but that's just fine. Run 2: Exploring a bit ----------------------------- Second run is on the same green slope. This time I'll start to clean up on some of my worst problems. "knee-knee-hips-tuck" somehow got changed in my head into "shin-shin-hips-tuck" because I'm envisioning preloading my boots/board with my shins. I don't focus on that the whole time now, but starting off while consciously reciting it seems to help get me into a good stance right away and it carries through the rest of the run. What I do have to constantly focus on is what my outside hand is doing on heel-side turns. I keep thinking, "Why the hell does that thing keep going back there?!" and "Do I have this problem on softboots?". It actually took me lots of focus to keep it more or less where it should be (in front of me), and while it takes some effort it does payoff. It seems to keep my balance where it should be and that makes the difference between me riding the board and the board riding me. By the end of the second run my 9 year old daughter is giving me the "Come on dad! Keep up!" look. Hopefully moving on to a blue slope will settle her down. 1.)"shin-shin-hips-tuck":ok! 2.) "hands in front": roger that! 3.)"Hey, didn't somebody say something about pretending to hold a bamboo pole?":ok we'll try that too. Ok, bamboo pole... hold it this way, hold it that way, hold it level to the slope and across the board, hmm. I don't quite see the big deal until all of a sudden bam! bam! bam! For three whole turns something just clicked and my random gyrations must have lined up perfectly and everything seemed to flow. Instead of feeling like an artificial learning device, the bamboo pole was getting my hands where they should be, I was bending over at the hips and the carves were feeling really powerful. Those were the best carves I have ever done and it felt like there was plenty more power leftover for the taking... but after 3 turns it was back to reality :( Luckily there was no one filming so I don't risk looking back and being underwhelmed, but they felt so good! The closest way I can describe it is like being clicked onto a big spring and getting both the compression and rebound effort timed just right that I really got a smooth boost in power. Sweet! Run 3 and on ------------------ I get back to the lift and I still get the rolled eyes look from my daughter. To make her happy the next run down is just a bomber; the first one down the hill wins and all that. I'm kind of curious to how the board is going to react to a lot more speed. I'm planning my turns like I would in my softboots. Big diameter turns, each less than 90 degrees of direction change. In Norwegian this would be called grisekjøring. I beat her to the lift in plenty of time, but does that cut me any slack? The board obviously will go down the fall-line as fast as my other board and under good control. The weird thing is that getting downhill first just isn't the point anymore. I want to get back up there and practice trying to get some steeper turns even if it meant getting to the bottom slower. I wanted those three golden turns again. It was a good day in all. I was about where I expected, not as good as I hoped but also not as bad as I feared. Later I got a couple more turns just like those golden three, but I've got a long way to go. There were lots of crashes but lots more smiles Some things I learned: * There is a lot more than I expected that carries over from soft boot snowboarding to hard boots. Balance, coordination and a feel for the snow helps. If you already carve in softboots, it's gonna help, but you need to make a few adjustments. * Before making it to the mountain I was stressing a bit about how hard this would be. Turns out it was no where near as bad as my first ever day snowboarding. * Putting time into getting your stance right on the carpet at home seemed to remove some of the variables that could contribute to a bad run on the hill (for me at least), I aimed for: neutral/natural/no-overhang. * Contrary to what I expected from a narrow carving board, my Silberpfeil isn't nervous or hooky (at least not in slush). It turned when I wanted and it did so in a manner that was assertive but not hyper. * When making the switch to hard boots you're gonna come face to face with all of your bad habits from soft boots. * (Maybe this should have been #1), Have fun, crash lots, don't get self conscious and don't get overly fixated on the rules. * I feel that there is a risk of becoming obsessive about my edges. Every skidded stop just makes me picture my edges getting dull. Does this happen to everybody? * After getting home from the first day I found this Youtube video. Seems to do a great job at breaking down the individual elements and really makes a good visual impact: EC technique lessons by BEN *Next time I carry a foldable PZ3 screw driver. I had a really bad crash on my last run and my front binding got twisted around. I can't begin to described the suckage of riding downhill with my front foot rotated to 5 degrees while my back is still at 55. *Have fun, have fun, have fun. And listen to anybody willing to offer help. No video or photos from this trip, but I'll be going to a Kvitfjell this weekend, and I think they've got pretty good snow. My wife promised to film (and to keep a straight face). Then I'll be begging for tips!

N00b to N00b: I just had my first day on a carving board on sunday. I'm going to do a writeup on the whole thing tonight. Some of the things that really helped me to adjust are: 1.)Two_raven's post that was mentioned above. Definitely! I didn't have to focus so much on her advice while I was riding, but consciously thinking about before setting off downhill definitely did get my stance and balance set correctly. If your toes point forward on the board, but the rest of your body still wants to face sideways, your going to have a bad day. Two_raven's post really gets my body facing the right way at the start of the run. 2.)For me a big change from softboots was that at first I was trying to use my ankles to steer the board. On softboots it's natural to carve with your ankles because the boots/bindings don't give enough support. On hardboots I found I do best when I imagine steering with my shins. Press your shins/calves into the boot to steer the board. If you do this you might want to get out of walking mode. 3.)Don't let your hands get behind you. I really had to focus on keeping my outside hand in front of my on the heelside turns, but it paid off. 4.)Spending lots of time at home to get your boot/binding configuration comfortable and neutral helps.

No ride today :( A friend from the US was in town so we met up instead. I'm pretty sure I'll make it out tomorrow though. In the mean-time I'll just share an alpine board video that I found on youtube that really gets my heart pumping every time I see it: Runners 2014 . I've shown this (and other vids) to some friends/collegues and the typical response is "holy carp that looks cool!" They never even knew the sport existed and some really seem to want to try it out. Regarding the barbie: I've got two girls so those things pop up everywhere in our house and sometimes it's just "wrong-time, wrong-place, Barbie". Ken, on the other hand, hardboots I think. He's got the stance down pat, as shown by his mastery of the zombie hands position. And a big thanks to the BO community for all of the supportive/informative posts!

Hi all, hope I'm not going to bore the community by starting a thread logging the progress of yet another beginner in hard-boots. Just wanted to track my progress from zero to hero from the perspective of a softboot veteran. Regardless... the fact that there are so many noobs posting to bomber online now must be positive for the sport, right? Bear with me on this, and any feedback is appreciated ME: ---- So about me... I posted this info in another thread where I was begging for help in finding the right snowboard to learn on: 6ft 1in, ~approx 190lb and living in Norway (Kongsberg, typically hardpack to icy). I started with alpine skis (~5 years) and the memories of my freezing/cramping feet have probably stopped me from trying hardboot snowboarding earlier. I've clocked in 25 years on soft boots and my riding style is probably best described as aggressive all-mountain. While I haven't yet gone on the hunt for the perfect carve, I do carve a bit in softboots and understand the mechanics of "the norm". I made the decision to switch to hard boots a couple of weeks back when I came to grips that I'm now spending the vast majority of my time on-piste. It just seems to be the sensible thing given the local conditions. All of the little details that play into perfecting the various carving techniques also gets my inner engineer all bouncy and now that I've finally gotten all of my gear assembled I have to admit I haven't been this stoked in years! NOOB Gear: ----------------- Hardbooting seems a pretty small sport and Norway is a pretty small country (at least population wise). Add the two together and it means that there is very little chance of buying gear locally, much less demoing anything. For me buying gear has basically been an informed leap of faith: read reviews and tips, talk to anybody I can and cross my fingers! *Boots: UPZ RC10 (2014/2015) I had decided that boots were going to be the biggest investment for me. Without a great fitting boot things will suck, imho. Control and comfort is rooted in the interface between your board and your body. From what I've read, and from a friend's recommendation, I went with the UPZ RC10 boots. I followed the guide for measuring the Mondo Point size as described on upzboots.com and ordered them. For me, the boots fit really well and I've got pretty wide feet. They are firm and tight, but not painful and I haven't felt any scary pressure points yet; granted I've only worn them watching tv or in bed so far. *Board: F2 Silberpfeil (2012/2013) Here I didn't get what I was initially looking for, but I got an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was really hoping for a Silberpfeil Vantage since I figured the wider board with lower binding angles would be an easier first step. I couldn't find any Vantages at my price point, but I was offered an unwrapped 2012/2013 Silberpfeil for just a hair over 200 euros. From what I read it's a good board but maybe not as sexy as a Swoard or Pureboarding board. The potential downside is that it is narrow so I will be running with 58/55 on my bindings from day 1. *Bindings: F2 Race Titanium Again here I wanted something competent, but not necessarily the best of the best. I don't mind forgoing the customization of the higher end bindings in return for reducing the total number of variables that will effect (and maybe screw up) my ride. I was able to locate a pair of new bindings for around 130 euros. Everything else is just my old snowboard gear. Luckily my wife used to race downhill so we've already got tons of tuning gear to keep everything in tiptop share. One thing that I noted is that it is important to find a helmet with a big enough arch in the back to allow you to bend low at the hips but but still look up without your neck pushing the front of the helmet down into your eyes/goggles. Setup -------- I still haven't had my first ride on hardboots yet, but I've tried to adjust the stance on my board to something that feels right. My goal for this is to acheive: 1.) Wide stance . This is loosely based on many recommendations here on BO. Wide-->longitudinal stability and more precise modulation of your forward/backward weight distribution. Here I've wound up with a width of about 51cm. 2.)A stance that is symmetric about he middle of the fore/aft bolt patterns. From what I understand this should put the bindings symmetric about the effective edge's apex. 3.)Very little boot-out. So I'm at 58/55 binding angles. The binding angles will reduce boot-out but not eliminate it. The boots aren't completely inside the board (I've got MP29 boots), but I think they look reasonable, and I really didn't want higher angles yet. As boot out becomes an issue I'll either look for a wider board or increase the angles. 4.)Neutral stance when flat on the board. This is my big one. Given the above width and angle settings I wanted to adjust everything else (binding cant/lift, boot cant/lean) to make my stance as neutral and stress-free as possible. With the board a flat on the floor I want my body to naturally stand in a 50/50 weight distribution. I also want to eliminate (or reduce) any shear/torsion stresses in my hip/knee/ankle joints when standing in a "relaxed" position. Finally I want the natural tendency for my hips to point in the direction of my bindings. Given that my bindings are rotated over 45 degrees I focused on toe-lift (front) and heel lift (back) to clean up my stance, as opposed to cant. What seems to work for me are a few adjustments: 1)zero-cant on my front foot, 2) "standard" toe lift on the front binding by removing both front foot cant wedges and stacking them both into just the front toe platform 3) the default 5 degrees cant on my back binding 4)Heel lift on my back binding using the lift kit that comes with the F2 bindings. I still feel a little bit wide in my stance, but otherwise it feels natural and relaxed. Standing on the board I feel comfortable and I'm not having to use any extra force to clean up my posture. When I leaning my shins into the boots and bend forward at the hips it feels like I keep my CG lined up over the board and splits my weight about 55/45 on my fore/aft foot. I can definitely feel that the transitions between toe/heel/toe requires a different mechanic that I use on my softboot board. It feels like it will take more effort from my hips and that maybe it will transition more slowly, which is a bit of a worry. One of the big reasons I hate rocker boards is that the transitions feel sluggish and mushy (admittedly I've only tried one). Compared to my current softboot ride: Mental Preparation ------------------------- There is almost too much good stuff to read in these forums, and I'll never remember 5% of it for my first ride. So I've just decided to focus primarily on one piece of advice given in this thread: and concentrate on keeping my butt over my board. Other than that I'll take what I know from softbooting: balance and dynamic riding and try to wedge that into my hardboots. After my first day I'll regroup and evaluate what I need to improve. I'm planning on continuing posting to this thread to either brag about how easy the transition is (yeah, right) or to most likely beg for help from all of you awesome people. I'm really hoping to get up to the hill this weekend. Can't wait to see if I survive the transition or if I come running back like a whipped dog. Cheers!

Oh the tailbone pain! It took about two years from my first day of snowboarding before I could sit long enough to make it through a 2 hour movie. Started on a K2 TX at Loveland ski area in CO in 1990. That board barely lasted one season, don't know who the moron was that thought it was a good idea to make the edges out of dozens of short segments instead of a single piece of metal. Scraped up enough money and got a factory reject Burton Craig Kelly the next year and loved it.

Hi, another softboot oldtimer here. I think this could really be a useful thread for the rest of us carving noobs. With the exception of one day, 20 years ago, I haven't even started my journey on hard-boot boards... yet. I've got some kit arriving this week and I've been trying to mentally prepare for my first real foray into carving at the local hill next weekend. Threads like this can be just as informative as the links describing "the norm". I think the great thing about hearing from other beginners is that you hear about some of the "obvious" stuff that the experts might take for granted. That, plus the terminology is great. If "zombie hands" isn't a part of the official alpine lexicon, it should be. That's probably all that I'll be thinking about during next weekends ride. Does anyone care to expand on getting our butts over our boards? Just how how over the board should the butt be, and what kind of stance is this trying to clean up? Is this about riding "squared-up" to the board and crouching as opposed to sidewise and squatting over the side?

Just wanted to say thanks again to everyone for all of the help. I just pulled the trigger on a setup: An unused 2013 F2 Silberpfeil 169 + F2 race titanium bindings from carver.si (they were also helpful and quick to respond to my questions). The price was really nice (better than the prices I've found on Ebay for used Silberpfeils/Speedsters), so I might even have enough money left over for a second (used) board with different characteristics if the opportunity arises. Looking forward to running into somebody (not literally) from the community up in Norway some day!

Wow, what a great community! Thanks for all of the great info! I appreciate the links for learning the norm. That is pretty much what I've been shooting for when I'm on piste, but I've just had to learn it on my own. The description clearly defines the does and don't and will certainly help me tighen up my act. The description and reviews of the Pureboarding boards (Bastard and Two) sound awesome! That is definitely the kind of style I'm interested in. Its just a little more cash I want to put on my first board, before I learn more about my limits and interests in this kind of snowboarding. Definitely something I'd look into for my second board. The Ultra Prime sounds like a good deal if I can find one available. I've seen a couple of Factory Primes on Ebay, are they similar? Pokkis: I live in Kongsberg. Work isn't gonna let me get to Oppdal otherwise that would have been perfect. I've been to Oppdal twice. The first time was beautiful weather and fresh snow; I really liked the terrain. The second time is was windy and foggy and really isn't worth remembering! On occasion I also make it up to Kvitfjell or Geilo. Finally regarding the metal boards. I've come across some references to them and they are supposed to be good on ice, right? How are they constructed? A metal sheet laminated in with layers of fiber glass or? Is there a specific board model that is typical? Thanks again for the help!

Hi all hoping you can provide a little advice, I've look through a bunch of posts with board recommendations and am surprised at how much room there is to specialize in a branch of snowboarding that is already a pretty small niche. Me: I've been riding soft-boots for the past 25 or so years. I'd say I'm am pretty good, and have primarily focused on powder, trees and off-piste riding while living in Colorado. I typically ride with steep (for soft boots) binding angles 42/25. When I am on the trails it's mainly speed and edges (but with soft boots). I don't do parks or pipes. Now I'm living in Norway and my daughters are both training for alpine (ski) racing so I'm looking for a way of spicing up my on-piste experiences. I'm around 6'1" and approx 190lb, feet are 29mp. Style: I'm looking for a board that is going to only be used on-piste (if I get any powder what-so-ever I'm digging out my Supermodel). The conditions at the local ski area vary from groomed hardpack to chop to sheet ice (Norwegian conditions). The runs are moderately steep (between blue and black diamond) and a tad narrower than typical. I'm not really looking at extreme carving, but I am looking for something that: 1.)Is stable at speed, 2.)will let me carve aggressively on both the early morning groomed runs and out into the afternoon when the skiers mess everything up, 3.)is available in Europe for reasonable prices EUR600 or less. I don't want to have to fight with the world most extreme board, but I don't want a beginner board either. I'm pretty sure I'll pick up the basics quickly so I want something that I can grow into for a couple of years at least. What I'm looking at now: Finding demo/rental carving boards in Norway is pretty much never going to happen, so it is going to be a pay and pray type of deal. *A colleague has an F2 Silberpfeil Vantage and recommends that. After my boots arrive I might get a chance to try that out, but I'm a little worried it's only for extreme carving and won't be as stable at higher speeds? *I've read a lot of good review of the Prior Snow 4WD. Unfortunately it looks like importing that to Norway is going to be pretty expensive. *Anybody know anything about the Goltes Grand Carve? On paper it looks like it might fit the bill (and I really like the price), but I haven't found any reviews of it. If boot selection matters, I've got a pair of UPZ RC10 boots on the way. Thanks for any help!