Alaskan Rover

I feel I must add a caveat, though...and it is thus: When I end my sojourn in flatland and head back home to Alaska, there are some peaks that I would just love to re-visit. The thing about Alaska peaks is that due to the rather dry air, there is a lot of sublimation going on...and this makes for some excrutiatingly HARD surface crust. What appears to be decent snow while scoping it out with binocs, turns out to be super-smooth but ultra hard sheet of inpenatrable top crust at 45 degrees of slope. As many of you already know, 1200 feet of 45 degree hard crust is an almost certain deathwish...and I would never attempt the descent in my softboot/FatBob setup. The only gear I would use for those sublimated peaks is what I have always used before on the steep hard stuff...my old pair of 208cm Volkl P10's and my Lange X9R racing boots and those damned poles. That set-up has never let me down on the Alaskan remote steeps (yes, even though they ARE skis!!). Unfortunately, I can only use this set-up when I am able to bum a heli-ride or a snowcat up...as they are strictly downhill gear. For true remote peaks, I have a full set of alpine Randonee skiing gear...and even though this gear allows me to climb and skin myself up a route, I don't trust the randonnee skis/boots quite as much as my heavy Volkl P10s/Langes for steep crusty descents. So here is my question: My randonnee boots are a really decent pair of Scarpa Denali plastic shell mountaineering boots...they sorta look like Raichle Flexions but with vibram soles. I use these with my randonnee skis and they work well with my sherpa snowshoes. I would love to try those 45 degree steeps with a carving board, so am wondering if my randonnee/mountaineering boots would work well as a hard-boot set up on a carving board....that way, I could put the board on my back and climb and snowshoe (Sherpa snowshoes have built-in crampons) my way up the route and board down on the carving board (with the Sherpas on my back). My only qualm with it would be that the Scarpa Denalis don't come up the shin nearly as high as my Lange racing boots...but maybe with the different angle of carving board versus skiing, this isn't quite as important. Any ideas???

Hey, Thanks. I don't mind a little tar and a few feathers. :)

I am probably one of the few on this board who LOVE carving in softboots. I grew up ski-racing slalom and giant slalom...always using extremely stiiff racing boots...and after a day of practicing on the slopes and in the gates, those boots had ALWAYS begun to feel like medival torture devices rather than ski-boots. To me it was pure and utter heaven when I finally switched from two boards to one board...not just heaven in the fact that I can gloriously SURF down the mountain, but also because the equipment needed was so utterly simple and I must admit, FAR more comfortable than my racing kit. No more clunky, hard-plastic racing boot-torture devices...no more silly ski-poles...no more complicated Marker bindings. Just me, my board and my boots! And those boots....wow! For the FIRST time I was able ride all day long without adjusting and re-adjusting those vice-like racing boots. With my soft-boots, I was able to walk right off my board and walk ANYWHERE in comfort...even drive my old land-rover with them on. No blisters...no more counting the minutes to finally be able to take my boots off (but I DO miss the pure and undeniable ecstacy when I DID let my feet out of those racing foot bear-traps!!). So if those hard-boots were my anathema, then that softbooter's kit was my salvation...and the mountains opened themselves up to be both my cathedral and my heaven. I was fine with the jibbing and the park-stuff at first...even if the groms at the various parks and pipes irritated the bajeezus out of me. But by and by, I started to miss the SPEED. It was like an old-friend that I never saw much of anymore and I was sad for it. Indeed I missed that delicous dance with gravity that can only be begotten from going down a mountain AT SPEED. I've never TRULY felt at home on a mountain unless my parke was absolutely flapping in the wind of my fast passage...that was always my guage. So I guess it was absolutely normal for me to rediscover the ecstacy of the carve. But to this day, I will never again put my feet in hard-boots...they've endured enough of that agony. I have grown to totally love my softboot set-up...and I will trade it for none. I have always been in love with speed...in fact, I have always had a problem with going slow...just can't wrap my mind around "slow". "Slow" is some forlorn stranger that I do not care to meet. So I carve...and I flatboard...and I rip, because that is who am and what I am. But I do it in softboots, with my feet at 15 and 5...and most of all, I do it on my big old (16 years old, to be exact) K2 FatBob...because gravity is non-partisan. And as my flapping parka can attest, my softboots and my FatBob don't slow me down. My Kit: K2 FatBob 162...Vans "Jamie Lynn" custom competion softboots; Preston EX bindings...regular...at 15 and 5 degrees. Gravity is life.