Xargo

Here's a sample from a black diamond slope today. Only got two runs as racers were building a course and I asked if I can ride the slope while they were building and they said yes. This is the second run as I rode the first run without a stick: The steep part of the slope first starts 24° steep (where they were putting the latest ports) and then progresses to 27° and the steepest part is 29° measured with this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nixgame.bubblelevel&hl=en_US I'm riding Salomon F4.0's and Quantums now. Really happy with the setup. There's a lot of lateral flex but with duck stance that translates to easier movements towards the tip and tail while edge to edge the setup is pretty stiff. Wouldn't try to ride this interface with positive angles. Relaxed positive angle tests still to come.

Those look pretty damn good! Would like to demo for sure even though I'd like to see 12000 model with 30cm waist. In any case it's really nice to see this kind of production boards.

Thanks for the info. At the moment I'm thinking it's probably best not to make too many changes after all (but that straight section tweak sounds safe enough), especially if Donek could do Contra sidecut variations. Hell, I'm not even sure if I enjoy switch carving but I try to get everything ready while I can still get these amazing boards.

Well the idea with the second sample of this CFR would be to tune it a bit towards pow riding so kinda yeah. That said, what little pow I've ridden with the current board, it works great so I probably don't need more nose than what I currently have but I have to think about it a bit. What I'm more interested about is deep shallowtail. Something like this but with the 16m sidecut design and flex of my current board: But I like the thinking regarding that sidecut math. Another thing I've been thinking about is if you guys have tried symmetrical Contra sidecut. I mean pretty much mirroring the nose for the tail. I know this works against the directional principle of the design but the way I pressure those heelside carves, I feel like I hardly have any weight on my back foot (especially when riding steeps). This got me thinking that if the tail would have the same sidecut design than the nose, maybe that would be good for switch carving and wouldn't affect "normal" high edge angle riding much. Though admittedly I do pressure the tail more during the toeside turns but with duck stance, it's the heelside turn that is more demanding anyways so I'd rather tune the board for that. In any case I need to first try how the current design works when carving switch. It's so damn good that I'm hesitant to make any big changes. At the moment I'm feeling like sticking with the current specs and adding that shallowtail and the straight sections. Oh and thank you so much for sharing the sidecut design. I have this illness of being an engineer that I really appreciate the data. Looks kind of like owner's manual to me where I can read how to best ride the board.

For the sake of comparison, here's new footage with the CFR that replaced the Timeless (I'll probably still ride pow with the Timeless though):

Thanks, I'll take that as a big compliment. Just to make sure, are those sidecut numbers from nose to tail? I always mix these kinds of things up. If I understood Bruce right, I think he was mostly concerned that the big scr wouldn't work with 136cm EE. I already had 16m Contra scr in my EC-board (which works great with softboots, just too narrow) so I was pretty confident that this would work too. What would be the intended improvement with those straight sections? I'm always up for testing new stuff and considering I'm very much in the process of getting another one of these excellent boards so I have a spare, it could be maybe with some small tweaks (I'm just hesitant about using some of the rather short 136cm EE for straight sections). Though as far as I understood, the rocker is pretty minimal in my board because my earlier hardboot EC-Contra had issues with the nose turning too tight and thus I specifically requested for less rocker and slower nose rise. This new board works beautifully even when I load the nose hard. It's very important when I ride those black diamonds (which I got to ride yesterday and it was stellar). No footage from that slope though because it was overcast when I rode it but I can now confirm that this kind of duck heelside works great with this setup at least with 29° steep slope (the steepest part I measured). This is from a much mellower slope but shows the nose loading pose pretty well (I probably load the nose even more when riding steeps, oh and no setback to let me do the same thing switch later): Here are some heelside tracks from the 29° section of that black diamond slope, really impressed by how well the board tracks: The surface was really well groomed man made snow and it was -20°C that morning. Funny how that looks so flat without any cues for how steep it really is. Here are three runs from yesterday in reverse chronological order (these are all from red runs, I wouldn't dare to attempt that black diamond with alternating hands selfie stick just yet anyways):

Yeah I meant more that if he wants other people to try the board he would build anyways to figure out if others like the design as much as I do. I wouldn't recommend to just order that design "blind". I'm just curious how others would like the design and apparently Bruce is too.

Btw. Bruce said he might build another sample of my weird hardboot tech wide softboot carver and letting people try it out. Might want to ask about that. I know I'm getting a second one with pretty much the same specs since I want to keep riding this board for a long time.

165. Though looking at the photos of that board, it might have the same kind of sidecut than the aluminum Timeless from couple of years back. I have two of those (153 and 167) and they are supposed to have 9 and 12 sidecuts. That might be the case for most of the sidecut length but they also have these strange kinks of tighter sidecut at both nose and tail. They work great for low speed agility but not so much for higher speed carving. Looking at the Commissioner, I think I see the same kind of kinks. Looking at the Ride tech spec page, that seems to be the case: "Designed exclusively for the Commissioner, this sidecut combines tight elliptical curvature at the tip and tail to provide low-speed initiation and response with a larger radial section between the feet for high-speed stability and tracking." Don't get me wrong, both those aluminum Timeless boards work great and the 167 was my main sb carver before my new Contra. Just wanted to point out that the nose and tail sidecuts are probably much much tighter than the spec sheet indicates. Here's an example of how the 167 Timeless works in steeps with duck stance: I would assume Commissioner would be quite similar.

I didn't actually consider Flows since I don't like the back entry system. However, it looks like they now offer the same hybrid strap that I love about Kaon-CX so I definitely have to see if I can demo some Flows somewhere. I already have Flow Freeballers I got dirt cheap from some sale but I don't like the baseplate. Way too thick, feels like riding on stilts (that's what I dislike about hardboots as well) and NX2 seems to have same kind of thickness. That said, the Fenix Plus Hybrid might be what I'm looking for. So thanks for the tip! The problem is that all my friends live 800km away from where I stay for the winter season. Should find some local friends I guess. That top section is a bit tricky for heelsides since the slope is tilted to the left as can be seen here (showing some of my tracks as well): The second steeper section is actually considerably steeper than this. Though the grooming of that part is always a bit rougher than this first steeper section. The great thing about this board is that it tracks really really well even if the surface is a bit rough. I don't know what qualifies as a pencil line but these are good enough for me (this is a screenshot from one of the runs of that vid above). But I do agree that our goals are different. I want to get as close to the slope as discussed earlier on the EC thread and don't care about the speed really. Max g-forces are fun but that pretty much happens anyways if you carve steeps with a 16m scr board. I try to minimize the snow displacement of my board but not my body. Anyways, I love any kind of deep carving and looking forward to seeing more of that browsing this forum. Today I tried the Ride Insanos. The surface was pretty hard and I have to say the added stiffness really helped to control the carve a lot. However, as my legs were already pretty tired when I started, I had massive comfort issues at first. Somehow it started to feel better after riding about an hour though. Looks like I'll be switching between different boots depending on the conditions and mood. I also noticed that Japanese duck carver guy just released a new vid showing the "mirror" carving concept and it also illustrates really well the difference between the toeside and heelside. As mentioned earlier, duck stance definitely hinders the heelside power but with correct hip rotation, it's still doable much better than people usually think: I think he would benefit a lot from a bigger sidecut board. Considering he's riding pretty normal production board, I think the riding is pretty stellar. Motivates me to learn that switch carving. At the moment I'm feeling too lazy though.

Here's a vid from the last season where I experiment with the hardboot duck stance setup. 275mm waist Ride Timeless here since I didn't have this new Coiler yet at that point but I did have those Atomic Ultra XTD boots (so too much overhang here): Pretty narrow and steep black diamond run (not open yet this season).

Preventing injuries is a high priority so I appreciate all the advice/concern. I don't know why but for me it's the alpine stance that tends to cause issues. It's probably because of lack of technique but my back knee starts to give me trouble if I hardboot too much. Rubber band exercises help a lot. That's another reason why I want to ride both ways. The plan is to first hardboot couple of runs when the groomers are perfect and then switch to the duck setup with the same (AT) boots. I tried it already last season a bit and the AT setup with springs works well with the duck stance. I also had some issues late last season when I tried to charge hard with a duck setup after having spent pretty much all the season riding alpine stance and I just didn't have the muscles needed for the kind of duck riding I wanted to do. That's one of the reasons why I now build some muscles riding duck and then I can switch between the styles later when black diamonds open for some EC fun. The reason why I would need more rear angle for the forward stance is that then the rear toes would point towards the waist which is narrower than the tail to which direction they are pointing now. Of course it would be the opposite for the heelside. My favorite softboot bindings (Kaon-CX) have massive heel loop and there's too much overhang to use them with a duck stance even with a 300mm waist board so I'm really looking forward to testing those with positive angles. At the moment when I'm still learning the new board, I'll stick to duck since that's what I'm most comfortable with. Ride Insano boot test tomorrow morning. Should be quite a bit stiffer than the Salomon F4s I've been riding lately. It's nice -21°C outside now so I anticipate empty slopes. Thanks! I agree about the binding/boot stiffness. That's one of the reasons why I first wanted to test how the board works with rather soft and beaten F4s and now it's time to try the Insanos which are probably my stiffest soft boots and then the duck hardboot setup after that (Atomic Hawx Ultra XTD 95). I anticipate I like the softest setup best but I like to experiment especially at this point.

Thanks, yeah that's probably the case. However, I don't have any issues with my back leg. I charged pretty damn hard lately and only my front leg is sore. I put a lot of weight on the nose of the board on heelside turns and the back leg doesn't do much that much. The whole pointing the rear knee into direction of travel comes from recent alpine riding. I didn't do that before trying hardboots and I couldn't handle heelside carves on steeper sections. Now with this strange hybrid technique it seems to work great. Of course with my +52/+45 EC setup, the heelside are much more powerful. In any case I'm super grateful about the advice the alpine snowboarding community has given me to get that powerful heelside working. Of course I'm still a bit concerned about that back ankle and I'll continue monitoring if it continues to feel good or not. The problem with forward angles is that I would need to have at least around 24 for the back foot to prevent toe overhang but I'll try that out eventually. The feeling I'm getting with positive back angle is that I lose a lot of agility and ability to absorb shocks and bumps. Heelsides become a lot more powerful though. Here's an older vid showing the difference with the hip rotation (or lack of) and not pointing the rear knee into direction of travel: I guess that's more typical softboot riding technique but doesn't really allow to carve steeper sections (unless you go crazy fast and straight). Which is kind of what I wanted to discuss here. My claim is that you need that hip rotation into direction of the travel to carve those steeps (heelside) and that's what duck stance riders don't typically do.

I guess this mainly relates to softboot carving even though I've tried duck stance with hardboots as well and that works too. I know there are some duck stance riders here as well but most of course ride posi angles. My background is that I started snowboarding riding a noodly softboot setup with posi angles in the nineties. Later on my brother convinced me to try duck stance and I instantly liked it. Then I rode duck for more than 20 years (not that actively though) and now for the past two seasons I've been practicing EC with hardboots and alpine stance. That said, my preferred setup is still duck stance with a softboot setup and finally I have wide enough carving board to match. I'd like to discuss duck vs. positive stance here in the context of relatively relaxed angles. I'm going to try the new Contra with relaxed positive angles at some point but at the moment I'm having a blast with duck stance. Here's a video from yesterday morning: I guess the main reason why I like to ride duck is that I feel like I can pressure the edge with more precision that way because I can use my toes a lot better. Of course the tradeoff is that the fore/aft movement is more vague and it's way harder to get the hip alignment right. Another thing I'm looking forward to is learning to carve switch and hopefully at some point I can carve deep both ways. I kinda wanted to comment the discussion on the 23/24 board porn thread but then thought it's better to have a separate thread, I started this one. I'm referring to this: I've thought about the same thing, why do a lot of Asian riders ride such steep angles with softboots? There are exceptions though, like here: Personally I ride +21/-21 and even with a 300mm waist board there's slight overhang. I can't straighten my legs as much as I would like when doing heelside carves but it's good enough now. Really, really pleased with the board.

So I've been out with the board three times this season and I think I found my favorite binding setup. Nitro Machine with Phantom Carver ankle straps. -21/+21deg 58cm duck stance. The heel loop does come a bit over the board so I have to watch out on a softer snow with the heelside turns. I've been using old Salomon F4.0 which aren't that stiff and I have used them quite a bit so basically mid flex boots now. I wanted to first try soft boots and only go stiffer if I feel like I need it. Looks like these work fine. Conditions have been great for this early season. Some tracks from my first test session with the board this season: Yesterday the slopes were also very well groomed and firm but not that good weather. The board held an edge really really well. Had such a great time so I tried to film a bit today but it was poor visibility and the surface was too soft... Oh well, still got some footage and it was nice to learn to trust the board as I couldn't see much of the surface details: Does that last turn qualify as an EC-turn? Can't wait for the black slopes to open. Now I'm limited to some 21deg slopes.

From -12 to +30 and it looks to me that with some modifications you could go a bit higher. With solid pucks I mean. I'm not 100% sure but I think you can rotate them 180deg to get -30 to +12 so you can get more than +12 for you back foot (since the pucks are mirrored). I'm using -21/+21 so I haven't done that. Either way, more than 30 is not possible without modifications. Splitboard pucks are different and I don't have those at hand to check (but I do use Spark pucks with my splitboard). The video you linked to is showing splitboard pucks and you can't use those directly for a solid board.

Thanks for the comments @Technick and especially for the drawings over the example screenshots, that kind of illustration really helps a lot! I've been concentrating more on heelside so my toeside is pretty weak. I will definitely try to improve that the coming season and try to emphasize push-pull much motion better. Also I'm getting a second hand Swoard Pro2. Interesting to see how it compares to the Contra ECC I have now. Probably an easier board for my local hill. I love the Contra though so not looking to replace that. Also I got a 300mm waist Contra late last season so really looking forward to some softboot EC as well. Though I will mostly ride that with duck stance. Both my Contras have 16m scr. Pro2 is 13.3m apparently. The best EC slope I have frequent access to is only around 20m wide so I was probably initiating turns with too slow speed to not overshoot the slope. Maybe Pro2 will help me with that narrow slope. Just two more months until the slopes open with the snow from the last season. (have to wait until December for the steeps though)

Just got these couple of days before the season ended. I'm going to use them for both splitboarding and resort carving. Initial impressions are looking good and I especially like how the ride height is lower than with F2 plate bindings. Here's a vid from my first test session: Spark pucks don't allow steep angles though. Not a problem for me but alpine stance is not possible without modifying the pucks. I ride duck with them so doesn't concern me. With this setup I can use the same boots first for alpine carving and then switch to duck without having to change boots and also use the same bindings for splitboarding. Changing the bindings from one board to another is really quick with the quick release. However the system does have some play so I just put some tape there to make it tighter as a first aid. The setup worked so well that I bought a set of approach skis from an end of the season sale so I can use them to tour up the hill and ride down with the Coiler CFR. You also need Spark Tech Toes and dual height wires for this setup and tech toes requires boots with tech inserts:

What about Deeluxe Ground Control? I haven't tried them but they do seem to be intec compatible.

Yeah Burton Step Ons are probably the way to go. There's also Nidecker Supermatic. I don't have experience with either but do have the Nidecker Kaon-CX which uses similar frame than Supermatics and that is a very supportive binding. Also I have experimented a lot with different stiff softboots and soft hardboots. Currently I'm using modified Atomic Hawx XTD boots and I ride both 55 front, 46 rear and 21 front, -21 rear using the same boot (different board obviously). Great setup for what I want to do but no step in option. I've also tried to ride Deeluxe Track 700 boots with duck setup and while it worked surprisingly well, I wouldn't recommend that. In any case here's a video about that: Track 700 of course is a pretty stiff boot and you might get more surfy feel with for example Track 325 (which is step in compatible) but still I would rather go for a stiff softboot or touring boot (I use both now).

Dunno about the worth watching part (of this vid of mine) but that reminded me of one of my runs three years ago when I was on a collision course with a pack of reindeers. The reindeers were more clever than me and yielded. Perspective is a bit wonky due to me wanting to fit both the rider and the reindeers to the same frame so they were much closer than what it looks like in the vid:

Just a small update about the binding/boot setup. I've ridden the board now with two of my favorite softboot bindings (Salomon Quantum and Nidecker Kaon-CX). Quantums are already enough to power the board. Kaon-CX gives more support but sadly the heel loop is rather thick so bindings are dragging in slush even with board this wide and -21/+21 angles. Kaon-CX will probably be my choice for hardpack but that's a test for the next season. Hawx XTDs worked great but I felt like I didn't need the extra response to power this board. Still nice to be able to ride alpine and duck setup with same boots but I didn't ride ECC now for these last days of the season. I also tried Surges and those worked great. Kind of in between Quantums and Kaon-CX in terms of support but the footprint is much smaller than Kaon-CX and about the same than Quantums. Enjoyed Surges so much that I didn't switch back to "normal" softboot bindings for the closing day. This is with Surges: Next season will be amazing. Massive thanks to Bruce for making my dream board reality!

... but back to the hybrid bit. This is my 3 board quiver for the next season. I've ridden the CFR only with softboots for now but today I got solid board pucks so I'm going to test it with AT boots tomorrow. The idea is that I can swap between softboot and hardboot setup using those quick release bindings. I also like how Spark R&D system is so thin. I dislike risers: Conditions are too soft to do anything with the ECC but with this setup, those Hawx XTD boots fit to all of these three boards (I just put those softboot Spark Surge bindings there for reference, I do have tech toes for that split). Of course it's also possible to ride the CFR with Surges and softboots.

Here's a series of 3 photos showing the problem with the ECC nose. In the first image the board tracks nicely (notice the lack of spray) but there's not much room for error because the slope is rather firm (well groomed though): In the second photo the nose has already bounced once but that wasn't too bad and I could somewhat recover. But in this photo you can see that the nose has "overturned", bent a lot and I'm doing my best to maintain grip (at this point it's basically game over already): Then just two frames later you can see how I've failed to maintain the grip and there a major nose bounce: After that I couldn't recover anymore and the turn was a failure. I didn't even load the nose much in this example. This was before I detuned the nose. After the detune, the nose wouldn't bite like this anymore in firm snow so this turn would work just fine with the current ECC setup. However, detune doesn't help in softer snow where the nose trenches and that's where the CFR with improved nose design comes in. Now I can ride ECC when groomers are good and then switch to CFR when the conditions get worse. I also have second hand ECVC with Bruce's "hybrid nose" and that doesn't have this same problem what ECC has. I specifically asked for this nose shape for ECC to ride pow a bit, so my own fault. Just didn't realize it would work like this.

True, the main difference is that when a racer loads the nose, he wants to turn pretty sharply. When I load the nose, I still want to do a big radius turn and just load the nose to make sure I have good grip. Of course the grip is also important in racing. I only have one race board (Kessler 185 GS, don't know the specific model but with titanal topsheet) and that has 34mm rise and 14mm rocker at the contact point. My CFR has essentially zero rocker at the nose contact point. I measured 1.5mm but not really in controlled enough environment, so essentially zero. This week I've trenched the CFR nose 10cm deep in soft snow and haven't had any problems. Also flex plays a major role in how tight the nose will want to turn the board. I asked Bruce for a stiffer nose for CFR so that's also a key difference compared to ECC. That said, it's still a lot softer than the nose of the Kessler. All this doesn't mean that I would think that nose rockers and/or blunt noses with significant rise are bad. I just didn't want that for the kind of riding I do but I still wanted to have rather big raised nose for soft snow. This nose design works for me.