Alan

I asked a guy with a monoski "Is that an alpine snowboard?" He didn't know what I was talking about, so I asked if he wanted to race.

<Sensitive Content Warning> perfectly good liners about to be dissected... I’ve been riding a new pair of Deeluxe 425s this year, and was having a lot of pain on the sides of my heels. Before making a trip to the boot fitter, I did some feeling around on the built-in heel hold down shaping inside the liner and compared it to my previous Burton liners. I discovered in the Deeluxe liners the J-bars were located very low, with the bottom basically right on the sides of my heel bones. In the Burton liners, the padding was higher up and at more of an angle, wrapping perfectly around my ankle bones. What now? Should I ask around to see if different liners have higher-located padding? Find out if this was the way the Deeluxe liners were intended to be? No, I decided to tear the liners apart to see what I could learn! I undid the stitching around the heel and separated the glue bond between upper and sole. There was another line of stitching to remove along the bottom of the upper. This helped hold the layers of the liner together. Looking up inside the liner with the sole folded up/in out of the way. You can see the heel-hold-down shape here. Next I pulled away the lining fabric up to the J-bar area. I sliced the next layer of soft foam right along the bottom of the J-Bar. (I had a hard time pulling this layer cleanly apart at the bottom, which would probably have been better.) This gave me access to the J-Bar which was lightly glued to the outer layer of foam, and carefully peeled it off. After doing the same to the other side, I temporarily reattached them with double-sided tape where I thought they should be. A little position-tweaking, and I had something that felt good on the carpet. A couple days test riding and adjusting, I’m ready to glue and stitch things back together. We’ll see how this works over time!

Cool - I'll PM my info.

Hey @RRrider I'm local to Bachelor and ride alpine boards on non-powder days. Also have a GoPro - we should nerd out together on the slopes one of these days!

At Mt Bachelor, there are signs around the lift lines with a photo of a snow angel that say something like “You were going 50, she was 5”. As a parent, it hits me all in the feels, not sure how the typical <insert stereotype> sees it… Seems like other well-designed on-slope visual campaigns would be worth a go.

a) male b) 192cm c) 81cm Alpine Modern: d) 49cm e) F60˚ R55˚ f) F2 standard toe/heel lift g) Deeluxe 425 Alpine Vintage: d) 44cm e) F60˚ R50˚ f) TD1 Cants F3˚ R3˚ g) Deeluxe 425