Apex Insider

The 173 Freecarve is sold.

Derek, I thought you sold all your boards in favour of fishing gear. Bruce says 165 to 190 lbs for the Nirvana.

And they still claim to be a Kessler dealer even though they haven't sold a Kessler board in 7 years. Kessler has tried and failed to shut them down.

Michael, I think the reason you see the '07 version with most athletes is because there are so many of them around. Any performance advantage of the new version is negligible enough that it's not worth switching.

The old VIST plates had the side rails in two pieces. The reason being - the CNC machine table was too short for the full length rail. I'm not sure when they switched. It was after 2010. Old, 2-piece VIST: Current, 1-piece VIST: Be careful buying an old VIST plate. The aluminum discs are held on with ski screws and after repeated removal and re-installation, the threads get loose and strip.

Man, you guys make a tough audience. If you read other articles on the blog, there is a distinct lack of sarcasm and some well-stated opinion. eg. http://thesnowgauge.net/competition/the-problem-with-lindsey-vonns-butt/ The website is a clearly a blog and I say good on him for showing enough passion for the sport to write about it. The writer is bang on when he says Koreans go hard. They took to golf in the 80s and now dominate LPGA and are quite competitive on the men's circuit. They learned baseball from American GIs, formed a pro league in 1981 and now Korean players are all over MLB. And don't even get me started on online gaming. I thought I was a decent Starcraft player until I went up against some 14 year old Korean kid and he'd destroy me in 2 minutes. Korea's love for carving is to our benefit. They are the #1 or #2 export market for Kessler and I'm going to venture a guess that they are top 3 for all the major brands - SG, Oxess, Apex (the snowboards from Austria). They passionately follow World Cup and treat the athletes like stars. Their own local comps are very well organised and have a pro look-and-feel. Korea and, to a lesser extent, China, are the *only* growth markets for our sport. Sang Ho Lee is a medal contender in PGS and if he podiums in 2018, the sport is going to explode in Korea. Carving is big in Korea and getting bigger. That's my take away from the article. I don't get all the negativity on this thread. Cheers, Henry

The article claims that because EC is hot in Korea, it's going to spread to other parts of the world like K-pop or the Hyundai Pony. Which, I think is fundamentally wrong. Korean carvers make the most of what they have. And what they have is a lot of man-made snow and zero off piste. Thus, the emphasis on riding groomed trails. Despite the flawed logic, I'm pleased that hard booting received some kind of attention and I really don't mind the casual magazine style writing.

Thought you guys might like to see an actual retail ski shop with actual alpine snowboarding gear. Sport Riml in Sölden, Austria stocks Kessler, Virus and F2. Deeluxe and UPZ boots. They offer demos and rental. These guys deserve a lot of credit for keeping the stoke going for hard booting. The manager, Hannes, is very knowledgeable and tells me that they do a brisk business in carving gear. If you're looking to book a European trip, Sölden is the place. Ultra wide, carve-worthy runs. And if you want to pack light, just take a carry-on and rent from Sport Riml. This place will have you drooling. Some pics below. I know I should have taken better photos of the Virus wall but I got a little too excited to see the Geckos on display. Sorry! Suffice it to say that they probably had EUR40,000 worth of Virus and Kessler boards on their display racks.

Both skis are sold.

The Odysseys are sold. The 171 Phantoms are still available. If you love to carve, these skis are the ultimate carving machine. I can personally attest to their edge grip. Remarkable. Turning radius is 13.5-17.5m. They use the same construction as Kessler's Alpine snowboards and same patented KST (Kessler Shape Technology). http://www.kessler-swiss.com/en-US/technology

It's a matter of economics. The carving market is not big enough to justify making serial boards with multiple widths. And even with custom, there are only so many templates and so many CNC tool paths you are going to maintain.

For alpine boards, the racers drive the market and they all want narrow. Most are using plates of some sort so they don't worry too much about boot out. And if boot out is still a problem, then the board builder will tell you to make your binding angles steeper. If you don't like it, they tell you to buy custom. Now, there are wider alpine boards and that's the all-mountain segment and the extreme carving boards. It's a much bigger problem with soft boot boards. The trend is to ride shallow angles with 0 to -15 degrees on the back foot. The average adult, American male has a size 10.5 foot or 27cm. That's already 2 cm longer than the average board width. Add the bulk of the boot and you're talking 2-3 cm of overhang at 0 degrees (on both the toe and the heel). I realize the snowboard boot sole is beveled to help prevent drag but still, it's a big problem if you start to carve even moderately hard. I have no idea who they are manufacturing for. I think that the vast majority of snowboarders are not performance oriented. They just slide and skid around, hit a few jumps, grind a couple of rails and call it a day as long as they have a couple of video clips they can post on Instagram. If they have boot drag, they don't even notice or don't care.

Nope. You must be in admin mode.

To add to lordmetroland's point, the problem with having to go wide is that your choices are limited unless you go custom. You can only choose from the Wide part of the menu. It's like being a vegetarian at a steak house.

This is what happens when you copy and paste plain text. These are supposed to be double spaced lines. Well, of course, it worked that time.

I don't think I'm the only one having trouble with the built-in editor on this forum. The editor injects huge paragraph spaces when you copy and paste to it. I suspect there are some hidden formatting codes but they are not accessible. I'm not sure who's moderating this forum but can this be looked at? A lot of rich text editors will allow you to see the raw formatting code. Perhaps turn this on? Also, when editing a topic, the button at the bottom says "Edit Topic" when it really should say "Submit" or "Save Changes". Don't mean to nitpick but as a former UI guy, I have to mention it. The availability of this forum is much appreciated by the community as I'm sure you're aware.

Very similar in construction and shape.

I am having a heck of a time trying to post multiple photos with a couple of paragraphs of text. So I will just leave this here. Two used Kessler skis for sale. 1) 171 Phantom and 2) 189 Odyssey. The Phantom is a balls to the wall carving machine. The Odyssey is a mid-wide (98mm waist) all-mountain twin tip. Both sold for $1900.00 new and are being offered at $700 for the Phantom and $500 for the Odyssey. PM me for more photos and info if you're interested. Prices in Canadian dollars.

Oops. That should be 15mm! Typo!

We estimate you can get 10-15 degrees more edge angle with 15mm of lift. It's not the primary reason we developed the Gecko plates but it's a nice bonus benefit. The main reason soft boot boards are so darn wide is because of boot out. When you run angles below 15 degrees on a 25cm waist board, you can get boot out with size 10 boots (if you carve hard). So Burton offers 26cm wide boards. If you read some of the mainstream snowboarding forums, you'll frequently hear complaints about boot out. The solution offered is always "get a wide board" without any thought to the performance penalties associated with it. But then again, a wide board is not an issue if you don't carve.

We just have the one and they are gone.

Sorry we can't be there guys but we are sending some demos to Patrice today. A Kessler 162 slalom board and two Gecko Carve plates for you to try. Have fun!

You Da Man (Doc)!

Hi guys and gals. We have these boots in the shop that were used for testing. We no longer have use for them. They were given to us by Michael Lambert (ex-Canadian National Team) and he says to sell them and give the money to charity. We've picked Right to Play as the recipient. The boots are in excellent cosmetic and functional shape. They haven't seen snow in 3 years. One of the cant hinge screws was replaced with a custom screw and washer (as shown in photo). The boot soles are brand new and have never been walked on. There are no liners. We want to sell them this week. First CAD$150.00 takes them. Apex Sport will pay for shipping in Canada or lower 48. CAD$150.00 is approximately USD$113.00. SOLD Will listen to offers but remember, the money is going to these good people: http://www.righttoplay.ca/Pages/default.aspx