Jack M

Thanks! All those boards are gone except my personal NSR. I could do an article on riding the NSR with and without my Boiler. Based on how much it cost me to do that board review, I don't see something like that happening again very soon.

Haha ok guys, get a room! Back on course, I think people who have a lot of days on a Vist could also comment about getting used to the reduction in snow feel. And it looks to me like people who have ridden the new plates could weigh in.

This is one of my biggest concerns about plates... I have very limited plate experience, but the day I tried a Vist I found that I had a greatly reduced sense of when I was about to lose an edge. I'd be carving merrily along just fine and then kapow, I'd be on my butt with very little warning, with a very heavy thing on my feet. Do you get used to this? Do you become attuned to the feedback from the plate so you can tell when things are about to go bad? Or is this just the price of admission?

It's a suspension system. The way it works is like this. As your board carves and also when it encounters bumps while carving, it bends into an arc. Karl-style plates like the Boiler/Apex/Donek/etc act as a chord of constant length that spans that arc. Your feet ride on that chord, so your feet are always on the same plane, no matter what the arc (your board) is doing below. The result is less jarring to the rider, and the board is free to flex more naturally. The red line BX is a chord: Why would you want a Boiler and not an Apex? It will be significantly less expensive. Why would you want a Boiler and not a Donek? The plate is made of carbon fiber and is lighter. The Donek plate is a snowboard-like composite. The Boiler will be significantly more expensive than the Donek though.

I wonder if that dude on the Swingbo is about to eat s*** or if he was really that good. If the latter, my hat is off to him.

The effect of the duckbill is probably why the Canadian team didn't like a stiffer plate.

Umm, no. They look to be square bars, very stiff.

I don't doubt your findings at all, but I think there is room for personal preference here. Surely Benjamin Karl with his silver medal and his all-aluminum plate would have something to say about this.

No soup for you! But anyway, how about you man-up and get an all-mtn carving board?

Well I think you know I don't like a lot of binding flex. :) As for the flex of the plate, my understanding was that they are trying to eliminate it.

Dude I have been promoting wider stances here since day one. It's funny to me how some people will refuse to accept "simple geometry" - love that term. Note that asked if I would need new cants, not if I would need to narrow my stance.

Nice! ok, specs please! and specs for the board too. ;)

I agree a wider stance is more stable, but I can't fathom it becoming more comfortable when the platform no longer bends. Guess I'll wait and see, but that makes no sense. I can imagine maybe it becomes more comfortable due to the fact that the feet are experiencing a lot less jarring. The Swoard guys advocate flat feet (no cants/lifts) and they rationalize it by the fact that the board bends, thereby tilting your feet towards each other. That's not going to be true for them anymore on a plate. Thanks for the offer... tempting! NGH though.

Huh? I would think the sensation would be the opposite - that you would be tempted to either narrow your stance or increase cant/lift on a plate. Without a plate, when the board bends, your feet angle towards each other, bringing your knees closer. That won't happen on a plate, so I'd think you would feel like your stance is suddenly too wide....?

what about stance set-up? I imagine without a board flexing under your feet, your stance feels wider? will I need a new set of cants?

Just say you're part of Team 32. He's pining for the fjords!!

yeah but you also like to ride with ski-poles, so.... ;) :p

A modern asym will surely work better than an old one due to materials and other construction advances. Maybe so much better as to be "good enough" for many people. You can still take a great picture with an old camera. But a shifted sidecut is still a shifted sidecut. I like to go straight across the board. I don't have to try a new asym to know that. I'd try one if it was handed to me, it would be interesting to remember what it was like to ride one. Well that's true, sure, but in alpine I always saw the word "asym" most associated with boards with that parallelogram shape of shifted sidecuts. As for boards with different sidecut radii on the toeside and heelside, I'd say those are pointless for carvers who are able to tilt the board up equally high on both sides.

If he's willing to ship it and he wants the best, why look any further than SkiMD? (formerly known as PTC) http://www.skimd.com/

factory second. ;) Seriously though, such boards existed back in the days of shifted asyms, and I don't recall them ever receiving a definitive name. I think the Nitro Pyro was the first.

I'm not sure, but even if that were true, that's not exactly "asym", right? I mean if the sidecuts are not shifted, then it's not a true asym.

Right on cue. Burton made an asym Factory Prime alongside the sym Factory Primes through 1998. I switched from a 1994 PJ6 to a 1995 sym FP. The difference in construction was not significant (other than the sym part of course). If racers had said no, I need my asym, they would have kept them longer. But no, guys on symmetrical boards were the ones winning races.

It is possible to not "sit on the toilet" on an asym, and ride it well, but it requires a compensation in technique for the asym offset. When you switch to a sym, that compensation goes away, and your movements are more efficient. Asyms fell out of favor when people realized that better stance and better technique led to edge-to-edge weight transfer that happened perpendicular to the board, not along a diagonal line. Of course some people still like asyms and can ride them well. (cue the conspiracy theorists about the only reason being the cost of building goofy and regular models of each board)

I predict an all-time high for the count of "what is that?" type questions in liftline this year. And they won't just be asking about the plate, they'll think it's a whole new sport.

I agree it's possible to plant a seed and start it growing in an hour or two, but that doesn't work for everybody. At ECES 2006, I heard some feedback about the provided lessons. Many people thought they were wonderful, but I also got some comments that some more "practical" tips would be appreciated, and that some people had a hard time getting their head around the theory. I'll never forget when Erik grabbed me on the hill in I think 1992 and said hey, on heelside, try putting your rear elbow on your front knee and holding it there. And on toeside try grabbing the back of your rear boot cuff with your front hand. Of course the intention was/is not to ride this way all the time, but these two simple drills changed my riding and got me past a plateau upon which I was stuck.