TrenchKnife
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Posts posted by TrenchKnife
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modern shapes have cut the learning curve in half, even less for powder.
The only traditionally shaped "straight" skis still made are downhill and GS race sticks.
?!?!
GS/DH Race stockers still have plenty of shape, still "shaped skis" by any standard.
(I ski on 2010 race-stock {full-sidewall/temp-rated} Racetiger 216s & 168s.)
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Initiate with hop turns, this teaches correct extension/retraction for clean initiation and timing.
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I'm heading back up to Vt. tonight.
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That is my favorite mountain to ride. Have a blast!
? Are you serious?
What about Stowe or Stratton?
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Try to familiarize yourself with a very short alpine board first.
Longboards allow a lot of latitude for sloppy balance, and many riders' skills suffer as a result, often with the board riding them, as opposed to vice-versa.
This is all-too-common in hardbooting.
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Had the sickest experience yesterday:
Two local ex-racers too me down a psychotic pipeline trail for a few runs yesterday. Just 3 minutes down the road from Mt. Peter, two cars, hike in from the Appalachian Trail at the top of Mount Peter.
Never knew there was anything so steep and rideable so near NYC.
I'm at my desk in the city and my legs are still shaking.
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I got certified in '88 at Stowe by one of boostertwo's employees.
When I was instructing at Sugarloaf in the 90's, one of my co-instructors said she was dating a CVA coach - Mark Heingartner. I was like what? Mark Heingartner is here and you're dating him? She said, yeah, so? I said do you have any idea who he is? She said, yeah, he's a coach at CVA.
I filled her in from there. She later introduced me to him and he was surprised that anybody knew who he was. Nice guy.We may have met. I was teaching there for Pete Ruschp, Lowell was AD and Bud did a lot of the snowboard school training.
I certified quite a few riders then.
Back then, Bud and Lowell were hard-to-miss in the North face mountaineering pants and bright randonee boots.
We used to spend our off days on Mansfield's North face, we'd hike up from the Troll hut on the chin and ride the steep & deep of the face. Long hike back, though.
That was the season when Rick Dryfoos from Smugglers' was starting the first PSIA manual over at Stowe, without Pete Ingvolstad's (Or Sherm White's) knowledge.
We tried to help him as much as we could.
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OK- I'm outta here for Burgers and Beers. Wish we could continue this conversation over brews and some wings. Sound like a great bunch of folks here, and this discussion would undoubtedly go better in that light. Believe me when I say I'm smiling when I post here. I'd like to have a few cold ones with you guys. Truth: your next one's on me.
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correct, stratton is not known for steep. there's a couple steep spots but nothing really sustained. most of the east is like that but many wester areas are too. most of the better areas in the east have more challenging terrain than the VT ski areas.
Excluding Mansfield's "Front Four", of course, ;)
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Not to get into this pissing match, but I've often wondered just how steep Eastern resorts are. This guy has gone around measuring a few. According to him, Beardown and Worldcup at Stratton are around 21 degrees average, which is a typical intermediate run where I come from. You can get a world of steam up straightlining a 21 degree slope but in the grand scheme of things, that is pretty flat.
Stats can be massaged to say whatever we like- you're taking averages into account, not individual trails.
Stratton is definitely one flat resort,for the most part, BUT: it's race trails made for world class downhills.
I've run DHes at Wengen and Kitz, so, without sounding like Mr. "Been there, done that"
, I can speak to real downhills.I lost it on the Steilhang on a big wide ole 204 safari (not my beloved 210), and i lost it there years before on my Fischer 223s.
The US Open DHes at Stratton were gnarly.
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I am sure that skiing is good cross-training for carving a snowboard, because the reverse is also true. I'm a better skier now than when I stopped, thanks to alpine snowboarding.
And now that skis are really just skinny snowboards for each foot (i.e., similar sidecuts and lengths) the technique is almost interchangeable. The footage of Olympic SL and GS skiing makes me juicy.
Why do I think I was speaking to you earlier today on the snow?
Sounds like a forming concensus, as this is very much what the crossover guy was saying today.
I agree about watching the olympic footage too. It seems the two sports are beginning a return to one another
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Try skiing with much of the same movement progression.
That's what the guy i spoke with today says he does. pretty interesting.
I may be looking into a set of skis!
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who you talking to? don't think anyone disputes that it takes skill just saying it's a different game and courses are/were set differently than the ski events.
I was at the 1994 1995 and 1996 US open and I have seen skier SG courses as well. they were set differently.
Reread the posts: I'm referring to 1980s DH events.
they were NOT set differently then.
I competed in those.
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Gosh. Thanks for the education.
I bow to your "been there seen it and done it" statement. what could I have been thinking?
Clearly, you're a superior snowboard racer.
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I ran into a guy on the hill today who I've noticed hitting gates on his Sl. Board for the past few weeks- a washed up snb. racer and major coach it turns out.
Today he was on Slalom skis going through the same course and he says he's on skis more than his board now.
He told me that he feels switching back and forth helps his hardboot riding.
has anyone alse heard anything like this oustide of a mental hospital?
Either way, though, the guy rocked the slalom hard on both modes.
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I ride my soft setup with steep, semi-alpine (55/50) angles and feet relatively close together.
This is my favorite way to ride.
I prefer this to freestyle stance or hardboot, frankly.
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Well, we got the day off, so i blazed the cross-country back up to Washingtonville and put a few nice runs in at Mound Petit!
Wonderful! I'm staying up here for the storm tonight.
Any Mountain Creep riders interested in riding in Warwick tomorrow?
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I guess Andy Coughlin, Shannon Melhuse and the rest of us who found the 1980s US Open DH courses to be steep and gnarly just aren't up to your level yet.
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What you seem to miss is that I have been racing a LONG time, both skis and snowboards. As far as the the snowboard side of things, I was a regular in the Green Mountain Series back in the late 80's through the late 90's, did the U.S. Open 7 times, and hit a number of the so called snowboard "speed events" my friend Gilmore spoke about earlier. I've also raced in 4 World Cup GS events back in the day when we used the two run traditional GS format.
A snowboard "Super G" or "Downhill" is set like a open FIS skiing GS at best with similar overall speeds. I've "been there and done it" and the overall speed we carried is nowhere near the overall speed you carry in a skiing Super G or Downhill (been there and done that too... have you?). Hey, if you want to restart those type of races, I'm all for it. I actually don't like the PGS and PS format anyway.
What I'm talking about being dangerous on a board is a real FIS skiing downhill set, on a water injected course, with the same distance between gates, the same blind turns where the only way of knowing where the gate is located is from memory, the same insane fall aways, and the same 80-90 mph speeds. Start running those for snowboards, and I guarantee you will see people seriously hurt.
I snb. raced in the '80s as I stated earlier, and I ran downhills and trained on downhill courses that were FIS std.
Evidently in your storied career you missed the iron mountain DH and the wengen DH & Kitzbuhel events, which were full FIS DH rated courses.
You may have missed competing at the 1987 & 1988 US Opens, which were also actual DH courses.
While they scared the living daylights out of me, and I fell in the 1988 US Open DH, I was uninjured and came back for more.
technically, a snowboard is safer to dump on at high speed, i have done this myself...more than I care to remember.
No two skis going in two different directions at a 22 DIN setting, just a shocked competitor with both feet firmly attached to a wooden board, sliding down an icy course into soft fencing.
believe me on this: it is not so bad.
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If you get there during the week, you won't be able to miss other hardbooters. it's a tiny, empty little hill. I'm the ravishingly handsome devil in the brown parka on the SG.
I'm in the city for the past couple days but hope to be at mount petit there for Thurs. or Friday through the weekend.
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Apparently none the racing organizations agree with you regarding the safety of speed events for snowboards. :rolleyes:
Look, I'm not missing the point here. I think many of us have made insanely fast runs on our board and walked away to tell the tale about it. But that is different than an organized season long schedule of speed events, that I honestly believe that most people WOULDN'T end up walking away from without serious injury due to the inherent diminished stability characteristics of having both feet strapped to one board at that speed.
Like it or not, the current PGS and PS structure is not going away in snowboard racing.
Trained snb. racers routinely raced dh events in the 1980s and 1990s.
I know of none that sustained "serious injury" as a result.
The removal of the DH, and then the SG from the US Open spelled the beginning of the end for snb. competition in the US. It's a shame because these were excellent events that sucked even the skiers off of the trails and assembled them along the course to watch.
What you seem to miss is the fact that having "both feet strapped to one board" reduces the risk of knee trauma, and higher speed events on hard surfaces allow for less blunt-force trauma, as DNF "sitters" simply slide, as opposed to have their forces stopped at the expense of bones and ligaments.
Snowboard DH was and is an exceptional sport.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you on that.
I read recently that a snb. coach is working to start a new alpine series in the US that includes DH and SG .
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JT: you should try mount petit.
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I have heard of a snowboard Super G but not a downhill. Could you imagine a snowboard downhill? It would be mad. Did you see how many women ski racers bought it at the bottom the the olympic downhill and how many men on the Super G run? I think a snowboard downhill would be half racers and half bodies strewn across the race course. It would be cool to watch but man you would have to have a set in order to race it. Obviously AlexJ, you have a set.
JT- snowboard downhills used to be common in my day.sometimes they called them "Super-G"s for insurance purposes. good snowboard racers have no problem with downhills, this less technical event is better suited for a non-stepping discipline.
I filled her in from there. She later introduced me to him and he was surprised that anybody knew who he was. Nice guy.
, I can speak to real downhills.
Bone on Bone (New Knee)?
in Carving Central
Posted
Try changing your binding angles first, being as its a hole in the cartilage, as opposed to full thinning.
You might be surprised at how many alpine riders are able to bypass continued knee trauma by simple binding angle changes and canting adjustments.
At this late point in the season (even in the PNW) you may consider switching to a soft setup and then simply work on anciliary muscles/groups over the Summer on a bike.
Binding cants can really exacerbate knee issues.
Try trading cants for angles, as doing so can significantly reduce focused meniscal stresses and erosion.