gdboytyler

According to the The Carver's Almanac, Raichle AF600 = DeeLuxe Suzuka http://www.alpinecarving.com/#Boots

My bold prediction for Sunday conditions at the Snow Summit: Crowds will be light for a weekend. Snow will be very hard (but not icy) until about 9:30-10:00am, when it will soften nicely and be very carvable. By noon/1:00, temp will be in the high 40's, snow will get softer buy not slushy. At that time I will probably switch to my freestyle board and session the pipe at Bear.

Anybody going to Snow Summit on Sun (3-14)? The weather is suppose to get colder. I plan on being on the slope by 8:30 am. Anybody want to meet up?

The Oxygen Proton 164 GS is another shorter board with a large sidecut radius of 13m. With a 19.5cm waist, it was the widest production GS board I could find that had a length in the low 160's. I thought the 161cm Swoard had a 12m sidecut? I also wanted to get a Swoard, but with the strong Euro, it was just too expensive. The Proton specs were close enough for me. Since I wear mondo 25 boots, I could still use moderate angles (54/48) and get 0 overhang on the front and 0.6 cm overhang on the back foot. I didn't pay attention to sidecut specs until reading at extremecarving.com how bigger sidecuts make it easier to do eurocarves. They were right.

I used Kniessl Rail ski boots for a couple seasons and they worked well with wider all mountain boards. The Donek Incline I have has a waist of 24.5 cm (I think). The Rail is a "soft" ski boot. The shell is a combination of plastic and fabric. When I switched to an Oxygen Proton, with a waist of 19.5 cm, I had too much boot overhang at the angles I wanted to use 54/48. I have now switched to Raichle 224's which have a shorter sole. The Rail is probably one of the flexiest ski boots available. The ankle flex is comparable to the Raichle. But lateral flex on the Rail is a bit stiffer than the Raichle. Unless you can find some soft/hybrid ski boots for cheap (around $50), I would recommend spending the extra money and getting snowboard specific boots like Raichle. Buy used from the internet or order new ones from Bomber. I think Bomber allows one change in boot size if the first pair doesn't fit right. Stay away from the old Nordica SBH snowboard boots. The SBH has a lot of forward lean and that will wear you out. Also if you decrease the forward lean on the Nordicas, the ankle flex becomes too soft.

A month ago, I was in the same situation. I was happy carving on a Donek Incline for the past two seasons. But I was curious about getting another carve specific board. Before the Donek, my carving board was a Burton Alp 157. Even though the Incline is Donek's freeride model, it carved alot better than the Alp. In early Feb, I emailed Sean at Donek about getting a mail order demo of an Axis or Freecarve 2. Unfortunately, Sean was getting ready for SES and could not send any demos until the first week of March. Well, I couldn't wait until March, so I bought an Oxygen Proton GS 164 on EBay. I figured if I didn't like the board, I'd just re-sell it on Ebay and demo the Donek boards in March. Well the Proton has been great, so I'll be keeping it and won't be asking Sean for the demos. So my suggestion is for you to contact Sean and get a demo of the Donek boards you're interested in. The Axis would be similar to the Pror 4WD and the Coiler AM. Then you could meet up with me, Oldvolvosrule and any other SoCal hardbooters and try out different boards. The long range forecast is calling for some unsettled weather after 3-13/14. Hopefully that means colder temps and more snow.

Are the TD2's still for sale? You can email me through my profile.

Any idea when you will have more 0 degree cant disks available?

I've spent $327 on alpine gear this season vs $50 for freestyle gear. So in my sample population alpine spending is outstripping freestyle spending by a whopping 654%! You'd probably want a bigger population sample to prove your point:)

On my Donek Incline 160, that is my situation. With size 25 hardboots, I could go with a minimum 36F/30B to prevent overhang. But, that setup felt too slow on edge changes and I would washout on carve too easily. I increased the angles to 42/36 and everything felt more solid.

Good video. I give it two-thumbs up. The ending is quite funny.:D

Oldvolvosrule, I don't want to burn a vacation day for a warm/slushy day at Summit. So I'm planning on going to Summit on Sat (3-6). If you decide to go both days, lets get some runs together.

I posted my defense of Burton bindings a little too soon. I had just bought a used pair of Raichle 224 boots and I was adjusting my Burton step-ins to fit the boots. Lo and Behold, the heel bail on my front binding was broken. The bail must have broken when I was riding on Sunday (2-29). Where the bail broke, it was still able to provide some support to the heel, but once I unlocked the bail, it would no longer re-engage. Since the bail was on the front binding, I never unlocked the bail until the end of the day. I got lucky on that one. The binding that broke is not the set in the photo (mounted on Donek Incline). The binding that broke was mounted on my Oxygen Proton. Time to get a non-Burton plate binding.

I've never posted anything about your opinions on Bombers. I also don't think I was insulting you. I just asked for you to back up your claims. In the surfing world, 3-fin surfboards didn't get noticed until Simon Anderson started winning contests with them. In our smaller world of alpine snowboarding, who would listen to the guys at extremecarving.com spout about their alternative alpine technique if they didn't have video footage for proof that their technique works? I've only seen one freestyler in hardboots that was as good or better than his peers in softboots. That was Damien Sanders. At one time Damien was probably the most photographed snowboarder and he couldn't convert anybody to hardboots. I haven't seen any snowboarder on softboots that could carve like a good snowboarder on a hard setup. I’ve tried getting a good carving setup with softboots. From Burton strap bindings, Elfgen tongues and Koflach hybrid boots and now Solomon boots with Flow bindings. My soft setup pales in comparison to the hard setup for carving. I’m open minded. If someone proves that a certain soft setup is the ultimate for carving, I’ll try out that setup and see if it works for me. I’m just asking for the evidence.

Do a fully laid-out Euro-carve. The sharp turn and dragging your body across the snow will slow you down. Watch the videos at http://www.extremecarving.com. The videos there show carves on steep runs with"safe" speeds.

The photo that Doug M. posted is NOT Doug M. And yes, the carver in the photo (Ken DelRossi) looks pretty good. I'm a competent carver and I can carve in soft boots/freestyle board and hardboots/alpine board. I know my carving is a lot better on the hard setup. I'll be riding at Snow Summit this coming weekend. I'll probably be going to Mammoth one more time in March. It would fun to meet up and do some runs together. I'll bring a digital camera and we can film each other. I was hoping to get video footage yesterday, but my riding partner cancelled at the last minute. Great conditions at Snow Summit, camera in the car, but no one to take the footage.

Since I'm in California, it would be much cheaper for me if you take some video footage on your Killington trip and show us what kind of a ripper you really are on a soft-setup.

I just bought an Oxygen Proton GS 164 about a week and a half ago from Ebay. $178 plus shipping. I've ridden the Proton for 3 days and really like it. Best carving board I ever had. The other carving specific board that I have is a Burton Alp, so not much competition. The Proton worked great on groomed runs as expected. Large and small radius carves were easy. Skid turns to avoid crowds was also easy. The Proton was also surprisingly fun in bumps, chopped up snow and 3-4" of fresh powder. The board is definately more versatile than I expected. I highly recommend getting a Proton. Hopefully my Proton will be more durable than Bobdea's.

Doug, a better way to get your point across would be to post a video of yourself carving on a hard setup and a soft setup. Then let the gallery decide if you really are better on a soft setup or if you suck on both:D No one will believe you unless you have some evidence. One still photo of someone else is not enough.

I also have had a good experience with my Burton bindings. I have 2 pairs of the Burton Step-in Race plates. Here’s a photo. <IMG SRC="http://members.cox.net/morfeeg1/Burton_stepin_raceplate.JPG" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="180" align="left" <FONT SIZE="1"><BR clear="all"></P></IMG> I’ve had both sets of bindings for 5 or 7 years. I had one set on a Burton Supermodel, and then moved that to a Donek Incline. The other set was on a Burton Alp, which then got moved to an Oxygen Proton. I’ve gotten off Burton boards, but the bindings still work great. I do ride aggressively, but I only weigh 130 lb. The only time I had problems with the bindings was when I was riding my Proton in 3” of powder. I hadn’t put a stomp on my board yet and I had a hard time cleaning the snow off the soles of my boots. On that day, I had to manually engage the bales. My thumb was sore at the end of the day. I’ve read plenty of horror stories about the toe clip on all brands of bindings popping loose. Because of the spring and cam in the Burton Step-in race, it seems highly unlikely that the bails would pop loose. Burton made the Step-in Race only for a few seasons. So I’d be interested to know the problems people had with that particular model. The Burton horror stories have gotten me a little worried. I don’t want to push my luck and keep riding the bindings until I do get a mechanical failure. So I probably will replace at least one set within the next year. I do like the flex in the Burton binding, so Phiokkas might be a good replacement.

I hit Snow Summit with my skier friend on Friday. Snow conditions were great. 3 inches of fresh powder on top of the groomed. My friend and I were on the 3rd chair up. I wish I could do that at Mammoth on a powder day! I tried doing some Euro-carves, but the snow was too soft and I kept sliding out:D It was only the second day on my newly acquired Oxygen Proton GS. I was really surprised how well I could ride that board in the shallow powder and bumps. That Proton is a really versatile board. I'm going to Summit and Bear again on Sunday. Hopefully I'll meet some fellow carvers.

Samantha, I'm interested in your boots. But I do have some questions: 1. Do the boots have the 5 position lean adjuster? 2. Can you measure the length of the sole (outside)? I want to know if the boots would fix my boot overhang problem. 3. Can you post or email a picture? I also emailed you the same questions.

Overall, I thought you looked pretty smooth, except for right at the end of the video. Your smaller carves at the end didn't look as smooth. So work on your small, quick turns. On your next video, throw in some Eurocarves! The slope you were on looks amenable to getting laid-out.

I think you've got boot overhang, which is causing you to lose your edge on your bigger carves. You are not seeing this when you are making small turns because you are not tilting the board over as much.

Oldvolvosrule, thanks for the tip about the traffic. So I took 38 to get up the mountain on Sat morning. Took 2.5 hrs from Newport Beach (left at 6:00am). I talked to some people that left L.A. at 7:00am and they didn't get to the resort until noon (taking the 330 route)! We ended up going to Bear Mtn because the front parking lot at Summit was already full by the time we got there. Sat. was fun, until about 1:30, when the visibility went to crap. The runs got bumpy real fast because of the new snow, so I didn't get a real test from my new 164 Proton. I still rode it all day. It was a lot easier to ride in the bumpy snow than I was expecting. If the weather is good, I'm going to Bear/Summit again on Friday.