Eastsiiiide

That weekend should be off the hook, weather and snow-wise.

<pewwf> So many snowsports so little tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime.... There is no question I am going to try skiboarding. It's merely a question of when. Granted it may be on outgrown kids skis, but I'm going to tell anyone who asks they are "SKIBOARDS".

I did a brief visit to June Mountain today and in the space of a couple hours got both "hybrid" and "monoski" x 3 (not even a question but a statement, like 'how's that monoski?'), and 'okay what do you actually call that' from the lifties, followed by the accolade that I am 'a menace to society', in an endearing tone. And then when my AT-ski buddy and I were about to do the "double black" off-piste run back to the parking lot, it was "nice monoski" followed by, "I saw a guy doing crazy carves on one of those earlier" (pretty sure it was me, and I'm a two-bit hack, but hey, thanks!!) Omg riding the new super-narrow virus (infinite THANKS @yamifumi!!) turns the noise up to a whole new level, holy cow. I feel like you might read about me in the local newspaper: "crazy man attacks june mountain riding a flaming two-by-four in ski boots, many small children unable to recover from shock!" (June mountain is our local 'family' mountain, in addition to being great for carving, and it was a holiday weekend. I had earbuds in, but did see a lot of wide eyed kids and caught bits of fading-doppler interrogatives: <stare>-<stare>-<stare> "dad, whaats thaaaaa-?"). I might have to return to backcountry boarding just to get some peace.

I thought that was kind of the point...? Or is it just me. Last week I rode the chair with a guy on actual skiboards and for once I got to be the one asking "what the heck is that??" Now I know. Apparently we are doing it wrong and need brighter jumpsuits.

I don't need hardboots or a special board to make low angle, pencil-line carves. I don't have one preferred binding angle for carving, it's a much wider range than I thought, and varies depending on the board specs and other factors--I learned to be more open minded about including factors beyond trying to mimic my "fighting stance" foot and body position. (edit: foot spacing is getting longer too) More layers of safety equipment doesn't detract noticeably from my experience. (edit: knee supports, armor shirt, neck collar & full face helmet) Ultra narrow boards are super fun. (edit: but also cranks the 'heard it in the lift line' experiences up to '11') Some part of me wants to do park still.

Why do you want to try hardboots? I think this will help shape the answers you get and their relevance. The advantages of hard boots are intertwined with things like higher binding angles and stiffer, narrower boards, but not limited to them. I saw a guy in the lift line recently with hard boots mounted on a short, surfy 'softboot' board, and he said, "They're just more comfortable! And softboots wear out too fast!" Phantom and Disruptive boots were born out of splitboarding AFAIK. Is this the source of your interest, or you just want to be able to carve at a new level, or pure curiosity to check out a new aspect of the sport, or...?

Wow this is a compelling endorsement for a brand that wasn't even on my radar--thank you! What it comes down to is, what is a softbooting setup for, in this group? For some, and increasingly so it seems, softbooting is becoming a straight up replacement for hardboot carving. But for most that are still firmly in the hard boot camp, my read is that soft boots are for a distinct activity, often taken up after the groomers are tracked out, snow is thawing in the afternoon/spring, or when there's powder to be had. A third category I see is an all-mountain, and perhaps social experience. This is when I'm out by myself, or usually with friends, especially friends on skis, just going here and there on the mountain. Let's do cornice, let's do that double black diamond, let's hike over to that tree run, let's do the backside, what about some jumps, let's see who can clock the fastest speed on that chute, let's lap this long blue run a few times... So to me the quiver includes 3 main categories: powder, all-mountain fun, and technical carving. Jumps and park are for the pre-orthopedic generation, much to my churlish envy . It seems that the tech has gotten to the point that you can conceivably do all three categories on either soft or hard, with debatable compromises, particularly at either end of the spectrum. (Time was, my categories included backcountry, which basically meant I wanted the board to be as light as possible and I wanted to wear the same boots up and down, but I haven't been doing backcountry these days, and anyway tbh I felt like I could use just about any board/boot/binding and have a pretty good time going up and down a big mountain, and have switched between hard and soft boots on the same mountain on back-to-back days--in the end it was more important to think about what boots I wanted to be climbing up in than snowboarding down with.) In the group of folks that aren't trying to replicate or replace their hardboot carving rig with softboots, the softboot board is probably looking to be all-purpose, while also at least decent at carving, because it would just be annoying to hit a nice groomer and feel like you can't rail an edge when you want to. Thus I think this discussion is as much a board-review question as it is a "what do you actually want from your softie board?" question. Feedback about how the 3D shapes can be a "mess" for carving are thus quite salient, thank you. I would add to this some scuttlebutt I got recently from some guys who work in a repair shop, who said the 3D shapes are much harder to tune correctly, and they cited the Jones boards specifically as great to ride, but hard/impossible to repair. When I asked what's at the other end of the spectrum, the first brand out of their mouths was Neversummer. Anecdotal data points of small sample size, but still... For boards like the K2 alchemist that are 'way stiff' and 'for advanced riders' according to the dominant paradigm, I am wondering if, to the crowd that frequents these forums, this equates to a board that is acceptably not noodle-y and a good choice for 'all mountain fun' by our ilk, *OR* is it pointless to have a softboot board that's trying to be a carving board, when you could instead be going further afield to designs that will give you an experience quite distinct from what you can have with your hardboot carving board. It's a personal choice, and I'm wondering where people fall on this spectrum. Do you want your 'other' board(s) to be totally distinct from your alpine carving gear capability, or have some overlap?

Also interesting. I'm sure I'm going to end up testing this for myself.

Interesting. Why? I'm guessing this boils down to the geometry of angles/boots/bindings in relation to overhang/leverage/stiffness/control, but I'm not certain that there isn't some other factor inherent to a wider board that's involved in your minimum width preference. Is there? I seem to recall that swoard favored slightly wider shapes for extreme carve-oriented boards, and some discussion about why wider is favorable (better structural stability as the board approaches vertical orientation during a carve, because there is simply more structure there?). Cheers

I'm curious what folks round here think of these boards. I'm planning to demo the K2s later this season, and I'm curious how ppl from a carving background feel about the 3D base tech on bataleon and quite a few others now. I see so much raving about the Jones flagship, for instance, that I have inevitable FOMO. But pure softbooters by nature have different standards of 'performance' so I take all the talk with a grain of salt. Are people round here playing with these newfangled board types and finding them exciting? I know there has been discussion before about 3D shapes, particularly bataleon, but it's been a few years, and the K2s haven't been discussed at all. I have fun playing around in the soft stuff with my K2 eightyseven (volume-shifted, surfy style), I just keep wishing it was longer--155 is supposedly 'long' for a volume shifted board at my weight, I beg to differ. Despite that, I find it surprisingly stable at high speeds on decent snow, yet nimble enough to navigate the chops and moguls with some effort on the very-steeps if I want to. Am I in love with it, no. It's fun, I like it, but I'm shopping around for something I'll like even more. Thoughts? Cheers!

In Mark's description for the SF, it's described as also good for softboot carving. Anyone tried it that way?

What are people's favorite runs for carving at June? Silverado, gunsmoke, sunrise? Looks like rainbow ridge to cutback to desperado would give you the longest run.

I would definitely consider a 156 or 162. They're close to 18cm so that would give me a taste of something narrower than what I have.

In case you haven't seen my recent post about board width, I'd love to find a narrow board to play with. Say, 14-18 cm. Anyone have a F2 silberfeil 156 or 162 they want to part with? Virus, oxess, others...? Perhaps even a skwal?

I originally had the Ion SO, but had to switch to Photon to get a wider boot. After reading that Japanese riders go to great lengths to augment the stiffness of their boots while maintaining their softie chic, my solution has been to add plastic parts from other boots to the tongue and cuff to make them stiffer. It's a work in progress, but every iteration is superior to stock, for me.

The main difference I see is that the offset linkage to the lower anchor point is now a machined bracket whereas before it was a bent section of the threaded rod with a fitting on the end to accept the bottom pin.

I dig, man, I dig. Would love to try skwal. Single-planking without having to stand sideways is very appealing.

@Jack M this resonates on multiple levels, thank you. The thing that's always bothered me the most about boarding is that it's so physically asymmetrical. For softbooting, I used to favor the duckfoot stance so that I could switch and be symmetrical with either foot forward. My body was younger and dumber then. Now the idea of having one foot twisted backward in a duckfoot stance seems unthinkable from a body mechanics standpoint. Instead I go to steeper forward angles on both feet, so I won't feel like I'm twisting in the middle like saltwater taffy. But as someone whose feet are short enough that overhang and boot-out seemed like bigfoot-people-problems, the upshot is that I've pretty much always been boarding with underhang (nice word btw). So. Yesterday I went out for the first day back from injury (woot) to do some gentle laps on the K168 (if that's possible), and did an accidental experiment. When I got to the mountain I discovered that I had hurriedly mounted the bindings the night before with the wrong bolts, so I wasn't going to be able to get the binding bolts fully tightened down once the disc had fully seated itself. With some mechanical improvisations (washers) I was able to get them tight enough, it seemed, to at least do some low key runs just to test out the state of my injury on the bunny slopes. It went fine, and after a while I was doing some passable carving but it felt vague/sketchy going from heelside to toeside. Stopped to move the front binding forward a bit, and in the process discovered the binding angles had slipped from whatever I started at (60/55 or 55/50, front/rear) down to omg-what-the-heck approx 40/35! Moved the front binding forward, set the angles back up to something in the 50's, took another shot at really tightening the bolts down the best I can under the circumstances, and wow, board feels great now. Every run better than the last, really feeling nice at various turn radii (the K168 just begs me to get better, holy cow). Honestly doing some of my best, most comfortable carving to date, just playing around with different body postures, trying to sit deeper on my heelside, etc... Finish the day and, yep, the bindings had slipped again, down to 37/32 or something. I couldn't believe it. Cue everyone freaking out about dangerous bindings, but they really weren't. The bolts were not loosening, they were bottomed out, yet the F2 discs were still able to just eeeeever so slightly move under the extremes of turning forces--it was certainly not enough to make me turn around and go home. It seems that having the bindings just a teensy weensy bit loose allowed my body to settle into a happier geometry via kinesthetic sense than I had chosen via executive brain function. I concluded that I've been so busy sticking to my "preferred" binding angles, that I've been giving short shrift to 'underhang'. I think this also makes some sense as to why I've been relatively happy for so long using ski boots, but feeling... unconvinced, shall we say, since moving to alpine snowboard boots. I just had a day with my bindings at the shallowest angle ever, mostly boarding with my body facing them, felt more relaxed than usual, and it was excellent. Mungo is learning. Jack's comments are spot on. I still want a hyper-narrow board though ;}

@b.free and @yamifumi this is super interesting. Thank you. I see that @b.free had a virus that was both short and narrow. Verrry curious about that. Any board suggestions I might look at to explore my curiosities are strongly invited. @yamifumi I just might want to take you up on that offer someday, I've been meaning to get out to CO anyway, thanks! Sadly though I'm on the injured list at the moment, just playing wait and see. I had entertained a glimmer of coming to MCC this year, but no dice.

Right, yes, sorry if that was misleading. What I'm saying is I've long preferred hardboots for much of my all-mountain and backcountry pursuits out here in the West (I grew up skiing, so it just seemed like yeah, of course hard boots are better), and now I'm trying to learn more about what thrills remain to be found by pushing myself into the more technical side, carving on ideal equipment and ideal runs. But aside from my use case, what I think is interesting to get a read on from the vast oracle of this forum (thanks Jack M) is how much tweaking this parameter of waist width translates to bigger thrills. The answer, of course, is 'it depends'. Nonetheless I'm really interested to read the various takes on this question, thanks everyone, and keep em coming if you please.

Whoa. Mind blown a little bit. Had not thought of doing that.

Good question. Basically I want to see just how much fun can be had carving groomers! So if for example the consensus was that narrowing the board has minimal returns in enjoyment, but can take milliseconds off your slalom time, that would be irrelevant to me, like putting carbon wheels on a mountain bike. But if it means I can have a substantially new and different experience on a snowboard, then that starts to tip the balance to seeking out a board that really allows me to feel that extreme. 14-15cm is pretty exciting and something I'd definitely like to feel for myself! In the bigger picture, I'm looking at how snowboarding fits into my spectrum of activities and what kind of boarding I want to do from now on. The zen of perfectly carving groomers is an area that needs more exploration to find out its value to me, and I want to get to good data on that as efficiently as possible. And I want to have fun. Narrow boards sound like fun.

The narrowest waist I've used is 20cm (Alpine 168), but I've got these wonderfully short feet (~MP25) at steep angles, so I'm really curious how much value could be added to my experience by minimizing the width of the board with a custom build. I'm not interested in racing--just an aggressive all-mountain boarder who prefers hard boots. So what are the narrowest (non-skwal) boards y'all are riding? And what are people's experiences with moving to a skinnier board? Mindblowing, or just Meh? Thanks!!!

mmmm, I wish. But I just feel like my snowboard budget is already a tad out of control. And I'm lusting for a Thirst SF next. But then again I've never ridden a plate and very much want to. Also, sorry to hear your body is putting a pause on things. I have some experience with that myself.

And here is my other bike at the same spot, if slightly down-canyon.