Sunan

These are wonderful products! My friend, Hu, has been selling Powerride products for two years in the US. Clearly, its popularity is growing!

Burton Driver X+ Powerride W wing hard. this setup will give you sufficient lateral support as well.

Kira Kobayashi rides 160-wide Gray Desperado Ti type-R (256mm waist). The board is typically used for softboot slalom or Technical Riding competition in Japan. And it widely considered the softboot board closest to a hardboot board (vario camber, 90% of board length as EE, etc).

I used a pair of FTA plates from Act Gear, the parent company of BC Stream. They work pretty well on my Gray Desperado Ti Type-R 160W.

I would recommend Burton step-on X, with some heavy-duty zip-ties tying your front highback to the heelcup. I currently use this setup on my Gray Desperado Ti Type-R, and it has been working fairly well. as for the boots, find something as stiff as Burton Ion step on, and use the powerride W-ing Hard plastic tongue (the tongue has decent lateral support) to have a semi-HB feel.

Try Zenmarket. My friends and I bought the boards through this site. It basically helps you purchase the board within Japan, and ships the board overseas. The boards are available on Rakuten.JP through Zenmarket.

Started using Gray Desperado Ti Type-R this season. It’s definite an end-game board for soft boot carvers.

Already have a handbook, I'll upload it shortly.

We are Changing the location to Winter Park instead. At this time our event is already registered with Alterra, the owner of IKON pass and Winter Park Resort.

Because Giri Watts is an AASI examiner and an employee of Copper Mnt. We have talked with Giri himself. For people outside of AASI (SAJ demonstrator + examiner in this case), things are much more compliated, regrettably.

The time currently is set for Dec 15-19. We are still in discussion with the ski resorts to finalize.

For toe side updates, I'll get one pair to test it out. But this is a minor problem easily solvable with some rubbed on wax. the blue winged plastic tongue is called powerride (Inst: powerride_freeride). The one showed in the picture is a medium flex one. The company is rolling out a hard flex (red) one for 2021-22. In addition, there are many different types of tongue for different sizes and preferences. I have purchased/tested two types, looking to test a third. WHERE TO BUY: I personally bought the Japanese products from Zenmarket. The platform charges 3.5% of the item price +300JPY each item. Still looking for an even cheaper channel. And at this time, those tongues are soldout (unless you can accept the version without the side wing). Once the 2021-22 season starts, I believe those tongue will become available. Adjustability is always the big down side for step Ons. I'm exploring some modifications on a pair of Flux xv (xs size) as well.

Some thoughts and modifications to the Ion step-On X combo. Boots: I use Ions most of the time: Ion for strap bindings; Ion Step-On for Step-On X. The Step-On version of Ion is slightly stiffer than the traditional Ion. But both are somewhat weak in lateral support. So I went ahead and bought powerride plastic shin support. the "tongue" has quite some support on the toeside, and, with the wings on the side, provide me with a lot more lateral support. The Step-On X binding: three problems 1. There is some noise on the toe cleats. Just rub some wax onto the cleats and the noise will be gone. (Rumors say that Burton will fix this problem in the 2021-22 step-Ons) 2. There are some delays in the toeside turn since the Step-On X creates two gaps: a. the gap for forward-lean adjustment; b. the area for folding the high-back. Both places caused some delays. A quick fix is to use zip ties and tie the lose part up. 3.The footbed does not seem to be thick enough and as a result there's some wiggling space between the boot and the footbed. A simple solution is to put a thin layer of snow as you step on. As long as you can reach the second click, it'll work very well. A thicker footbed would be the ultimate solution, but Burton doesn't have a plan to make one as of this writing (after talking with Burton HQ and the manager at NYC flagship store). Other than the potential boot-out problem, this setting is among the most responsive SB setups.

The primary destination will be in Colorado for this event, sort of a middle ground for everyone. I know a group of LAers coming to meet with RAMA this winter.