Apex Insider

There's a big difference between saying "snowboards can break" and "snowboards are supposed to break". I don't think anyone would agree with the latter. To use your analogy, cars also break. Even brand new cars break. Could be a manufacturing defect. Could be an accident or driver abuse. Take your brand new Toyota Camry to Nurburgring, run it at the limit for 50 laps and I guarantee it will break. My hat goes off to snowboard builders for making product that takes the kind of abuse that we dish out. In 20 years of snowboarding, I've only had one board break. It was a Coiler and it was 100% my fault. So there you go - Coilers break. I was so pi**ed off with Bruce and his breakable snowboards that I've bought two more since.

Our first race plate hit the snow in the summer of 2009. Since then, we've sold a lot of plates to World Cup and other FIS carded athletes. Total snow days must number in the tens of thousands. In all that time, the number of plate related board failures have numbered exactly - zero. And to get back to the original poster's question - I've heard of Kessler boards breaking. And I've heard of Oxess, SG, Coiler, Jasey Jay, Black Pearl and F2 breaking. If someone builds an unbreakable board, you won't want to ride it.

Henry here from Apex. I was able to catch both NorAm races from the weekend. With the World Cup race coming up on Wednesday, the field, especially for the PGS was absolutely stacked. Available FIS points are capped at 500 but this was a World Cup race if I ever saw one. Talking to some of the junior racers at the hill and they were a bit overwhelmed but stoked to be racing against the best in the world. I highly recommend this week in Quebec to anyone interested in snowboard racing. World Cup, NorAm. You've got most of the disciplines - Big Air, SBX, PGS. Throw in the great food and nightlife of Quebec City and even your non-snowboarding spouse is happy. Just remember to dress warm. Results: GS Ladies: 1) Julia Dujmovits AUT, 2) Caroline Calve CAN, 3) Ina Meschik AUT GS Mens: 1) Ingemar Walder AUT, 2) Andreas Prommegger AUT, 3) Andrey Sobelev RUS SL Ladies: 1) Marianne Leeson CAN, 2) Ariane Lavigne CAN, 3) Eri Yanitani JAP SL Mens: 1) Justin Reiter USA, 2) Masaki Shiba JAP, 3) Darren Gardner CAN Pics for you. Snowboarders take over the hotels this week. View from my hotel room of one of the great cities of North America. The wall at the bottom of the photo is what kept stinkin' Benedict Arnold out in 1775. My quiver. It was a bitch getting all these boards on the plane. They seem friendly but they're thinking - "Sorry, no medals for you." Ladies PGS podium Men's PGS podium. Tyler Jewell finished fourth. Nice to see him do well. A couple of Canadians and their modified Full Tilts. Marianne Leeson Ladies SL podium Men's SL podium. Masaki smiled once he opened the envelope and found money inside.

I was lucky enough to be at the race. Conditions were terrible with dense fog. I gave up riding that morning because I couldn't see 5 feet ahead of me. Morison was riding great. Look for him in Stoneham. The photo is me with Andreas Prommegger. Super nice guy.

I'm afraid I won't be there personally but there will be a full quiver of Apex/Kessler demo gear to try out. One of them will be full race stock 185. Hate to miss it. Have fun. Henry at Apex

The Austrians and Swiss must have a secret stash somewhere.

Both Roland Fischnaller in the quarters and Andreas Prommegger in the finals could have beaten Benjamin Karl but both made little bobbles near the final gates. That's why Karl is winning everything. The guy never makes a mistake. Ekaterina Tugedesheva, on the other hand, is just plain dominant. Powerful, powerful rider. This is a great event and anyone interested in snowboard racing should try to make it. Quebec City is a wonderful place to visit and Stoneham is very carve-friendly. If you want to meet and chat with the athletes, all you do is stay at the athlete's hotel. In this case, the Hilton, was just crawling with Olympians and World Cup champions. If you're interested in gear, the base lodge is littered with Kesslers, SGs and every other brand of racing board. The athletes never mind showing you their setup and talking tech. Dress warm. More photos on our Facebook page if you're interested: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=46327&id=122051841146725

Fawcett takes Pro Masters. Morison places a respectable 7th. But what's really impressive is Maelle Ricker winning Pro Women with one arm tied inside her jacket. http://bit.ly/fiDhc1 Full results here: http://bit.ly/eRxCL7 How'd you do GAK?

No, they're riding Kessler BX boards and soft boots. Take a look at the course in the videos and you see it's not really suited for GS gear.

Afraid not. We couldn't get a wider version ready in time. Maybe next year when enter the "Older Amateur" category.

Check out some of the names running the Banked Slalom this year: http://lbs.mtbaker.us/index.php/racer-info Amoung the more interesting entries - Mark Fawcett, Matt Morison and Michael Lambert. My money's on Fawcett taking the Pro Masters category. Maelle Ricker's name is in the list but I'm pretty sure she's out with an injury. Too bad because she'd be gunning for a three-peat.

It was great to see old friends and make new ones. Alpine snowboarding is indeed thriving in Southern Ontario. Thanks Chris for making it possible. A big thank you to Michael Lambert for taking time out of his busy schedule to ride with us. And thanks for loaning me the pants. Not often I get to rock the lime green.

In case anyone missed it, Olympian and World Cup Champ Michael Lambert will be joining us. Too bad we don't have gates set up - I'd show him a thing or two. BTW, if you want to ride a 174 Kessler or 185 Kessler race stock board with Apex Race Plate, send me an email to reserve. You just have to supply bindings.

The Apex/Kessler demo fleet will be at SOS 2011 on January 28. And a sweet Coiler VSR 177 as well.

If you haven't been to a World Cup race, I encourage you to do so. Try to spend a couple of days if you can. The racers are all very approachable and if you are a gear junkie, you will be in heaven. Just the board lineup outside the dining room will have you delirious. Telluride was hugely rewarding for me. Watching the Apex Race Plate in action, under the boots of the top riders in the world and then winning 1st and 3rd - that's why I got into this business. Some pics: Canadian coaches Sylvain Jean and Mark Fawcett, Michael Lambert and yours truly at the opening party. It was quite the bash. I got these guys telling stories about the old days. A rare pleasure. Like I said, it was quite the party. Inversion shots were a big hit. Camille de Faucompret. One of the few ladies riding a new gen plate. Most were still on VIST. Camille again. She finished a strong 5th. Ekaterina Tudegesheva doing the tango. This is my favourite shot of the day. 3rd place finisher Manuel Veith. Phillip Schoch and I'm not sure who in the background. Winner Rok Flander Prommegger in front and another Austrian in the background. Simon Schoch Rok Flander after his win. Ladies podium. Fraenzi Maegert-Kohli, 1st. Isabella Laboeck, 2nd. Ekaterina Tudegesheva 3rd. Men's podium. Rok Flander, 1st. Kaspar Fluetsch, 2nd. Manuel Veith, 3rd. Rok wasting perfectly good champagne. Rok and Me. Just prior to this photo being taken, I reprimanded Rok for removing the Apex label from his plate. Manuel Veith. Having a super season with 2 straight podiums. Matt Morison lost to Rok Flander by an hair in the quarters. He could've easily been the winner. Very cool of Tyler to call me just before he left. He still owes me a beer. It was also a pleasure meeting Fin and Michelle. I appreciate Fin's dedication and passion for the sport. We are lucky to have him making gear for us. There are easier ways to make a living.

Home from a rather hectic but rewarding week in Telluride. I'll post some photos in the Telluride thread in the Racing section. The Apex Race Plate was designed for winning World Cup races. It was built for GS turns on a World Cup level course. We think the Apex-Kessler platform is the killer setup for GS. Mounted on the proper snowboard, the Apex plate works with the board and doesn't try to alter its flex or ride. Quite the contrary - the Apex Race Plate allows the board to work naturally. The hardest part for a rider is trusting that the snowboard is doing its job under the plate. There are many variables when designing and building a carbon fibre race plate. The materials, the layup, the location of the axles, the hardware and of course, the shape of the plate including the duckbill. Alter a variable and it may have a negative, unforeseen impact on the ride. That's why we haven't "improved" the hardware even though I personally don't like all the fiddly bits. I am not going to mess with success. We got to where we are over the course of an entire training and racing season, incorporating feedback from six World Cup racers and their support team. There isn't a workshop on earth that could duplicate this kind of laboratory. I have a huge bin full of prototypes. Some crazy stuff that I hope I can share sometime. The duckbill is part of the overall system. Jasey loved to tinker with it by placing pads under it to tweak the flex of the board. He used different densities and locations to create his own customized, asymmetrical snowboard. And he adjusted it according to the snow and course conditions. And it wasn't just the duckbill he tweaked. Jasey was always adjusting the plate position on the board and moving the axle pins. Most racers mount the plate one way and leave it. And most put nothing under the duckbill. Isolating on the duckbill and telling you that it does X ignores the fact that is part of the overall plate structure. It's there because it works with the rest of the plate. After the Olympics, we were under tremendous pressure to release the plate to the rest of the world. Everyone wanted "Jasey's Plate". So that's what they got - right down to the last nut, bolt and duckbill. A lot of project background can be found in the media coverage we received just prior to the Olympics. We've linked to a few on our webpage: http://www.apexsnowboard.com/press.html In more than one interview, Jasey laments the fact that there was almost zero equipment innovation in snowboarding. "It's all about style and image and what your snowboard looks like. There's been absolutely no evolution in snowboard performance," he said. I hope carvers can appreciate that a small company with almost nothing to gain did something about that.

Hey folks. I appreciate all the interest in the Apex Race Plate. I can't post a detailed response until after the Telluride World Cup. It's just a bit crazy right now. I wanted the BOL community to know I do get updates on these threads and read them when I can. I am not ignoring you.

Snowman - how much money? <G>

I guess I better jump back in here because there seems to be a lot of assumptions being made about our design. The duckbill on the Apex plate is not intended to alter or interfere with the flex of the snowboard. In normal GS turns, it does not contact the snowboard. The majority of the Canadian racers last year rode the plate naked. Well, they did wear clothes but did not place any kind of bumper under the plate's bill. This season, you may see more racers adding a dampening bumper but I suspect that has more to do with mimicking Jasey Jay Anderson's setup than anything else. Having the duckbill act as a dampening spring is strictly an option. Michael Pukas is right - without a bumper in between, the duckbill does not contact the snowboard unless there is a major deflection. For weekend warriors like us, messing around with bumpers under the duckbill is probably not a good idea. We just don't have the sensitivity and experience to tune it properly. Jasey would finish a run, wet his finger, stick it in the air and declare that he needed a slightly softer bumper for the next run. Us mortals would just be guessing. This is where I have to bail on this thread. Keeping up is killing my day. Feel free to call or email with specific questions. 110/220v - you posted as I was typing this. I'm going back to the lab now. Cheers. P.S. One thing I forgot to add - when we talk about flex, it is not just the ability to bend fore and aft that comes into play. Just like a snowboard, torsional rigidity is a big factor in the "feel" department.

I will add my 2 cents about plate flex. I think there is some misconception floating around the community that binding interfaces are stiff planks that don't flex at all. Here's what we found: During development, once we settled on a basic design (after 12 prototypes), we offered three different flex variations to the Canadian team - firm, medium, soft. Sorry that these are rather arbitrary and loose descriptions of flex. Somewhere we have real data from deflection gauges but I am too lazy to go find it. The firm (which still flexed a bit) was immediately rejected by the team members. The ride was squirrelly and uncomfortable. Eventually, everyone on the National Team ended up on a medium flex which is why that is the only variation we now offer. Mark Fawcett said it best when he told me that you need some flex for the ride to be "user friendly". Perhaps as lowrider suggests, there was a loss of feel with a really stiff setup. What we found is that all computer modelling and bench testing in the world wasn't worth squat. It was all about the feel on the snow. Absolutely nothing replaced on-snow testing and we only came up with the right layup and the right core profile only after many, many hours on snow. Maybe some guys can adjust to a super-stiff plate but our real world experience was that even the best riders in the world couldn't or wouldn't race on one. queequeg: you are bang on with that assessment. Kessler is doing just that and I'm pretty sure Bruce is as well.

The Race Plate is made for performance, not comfort or convenience. Some carvers don't like that the duck bill might contact their topsheet in the event of a major deflection. Most don't need or want the dampening options that come from placing foam between the bill and the snowboard. I'd like the hardware to be easier to setup and be serviceable in the field without fear of losing parts in the snow. Those are some of the issues being addressed with the Sport Plate.

The Sport model will be only 4x4. We've always positioned the Race model as the no-compromises, race specific plate. Buyers are primarily World Cup and aspiring World Cup racers. For that reason, it works with the Apex Standard Insert Pattern (umm...UPM) and it has certain features that may not be appropriate for recreational riding. Because some World Cup riders still run on 4x4 pattern boards (SG for example), we offer a 4x4 adapter for the Race Plate. The Sport Plate, on the other hand, is designed for developing racers, recreational carvers and weekend warriors. The vast majority of that crowd is running on 4x4 boards. We won't offer any other insert adapter for that model. None of this means there won't be any overlap in our customer base. Plenty of coaches, regional level racers and rec riders have bought the Race Plate. And who knows, maybe the Sport Plate will show up on the World Cup Tour.

The Apex Race Plate was designed with one primary purpose - win Gold in Vancouver. And there are no SL races at the Olympics. That being said, Jasey did place 3rd at the opening SL race at Landgraaf in 2009 and Lambert and others use the Apex plate in SL races all season. The key is to place some foam under the duck bill to dampen it. Jasey had all kinds of different densities and thicknesses under the bill last season. Glad you liked the edgehold and ride with the plate. A shorter nose version might be in the works for 2011/12 and the upcoming Sport Plate might just be the ticket for SL.

If anyone is going to be at the WC race at Telluride from Dec. 14 to 17, let me know. I'll be there with a whack of demos. Here's your chance to ride a full race prepped Kessler with Apex race plate without shelling out the $3k. Of course, I'll need you to sign 10 pages of waivers first.

Sounds like I'm really going to like this place. Thanks for the info. Wide range of hotel options there.