Jack M

For now. I give them 20-30 years. By then the first generation snowboarders will be into their 60s, and I'll bet most of them will still be boarding. If snowboarding holds a majority among current teens and 20-somethings, in 20-30 years the skier-only resorts will starve. But the guy in Utah is kidding himself. MRG will be the last.

My dad just gave me a pair of hammydown Fischer RC4s so I can teach my 3yo to ski. They're 170cm, 15m radius - i.e., shorter and tighter than my Madd 180. They look like two really skinny snowboards. I've never skied on skis this shaped before, can't wait to see what happens.

The Canadian women may take first on the ice, but it appears they'll be taking sloppy seconds from the USA women anywhere else...

good morning, east coasters. Shred... what time zone are you in?

I think it's time for another one of these. Notice - the results are public - click on a tally to see who lives where.

since when did this site become www.teasejackaboutcrappyasyms.com???

Welcome Istvan! Yes, I don't dispute that. It's the rotation that I think doesn't do anything significant. It may help you to get forward and pressure the nose at the beginning of the carve, but rotating at the waist simply cannot magnify pressure on the whole edge. Basically it comes down to this (in my head anyway): If rotation is working for you.... great. If you're just learning how to carve, my recommendation is to not do it. Needing to rotate towards the nose of the board on heelside implies that you are facing the edge of the board on toeside. This, imo, leads to many bad habits, such as bending over at the waist and reaching for the snow. Also, I'd just like to say that I think this discussion has gone very well.

'twas me. what can I say, work is slow this week. Good story, Dan.

Umm.... you know the lever is supposed to go on the TOE end of the binding, right? Shred: here's a one hit wonder for ya: She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult

here's one with some weird bindings...

wait 'till you try the 180...

I don't believe Bryan has that in his collection.....?

Over there, check out Virus, Pogo, Kessler. Over here, Donek, Prior, Coiler. -Jack (RC31)

*sigh* - perhaps. I just don't think it's all that necessary, all the time. In fact, I can imagine how it could be detrimental sometimes. Don't race coaches tell their racers to be "light" on their edges when it's boilerplate? It was just a guess. 2 seconds then? Yes, angulation. That has been amply discussed here. Agreed.

http://www.aspensnowmass.com/images/dyn/Temerity_largepdf_web.pdf

I agree that down-weighting the board at the beginning of the carve will briefly magnify pressure, and that this movement can help you get into a powerful, angulated, balanced carving position. However I'm not buying it for a second that extending your legs throughout the rest of the carve does anything significant to increase pressure on the edge. Even if you were to extend your knees from 90 degrees (bent) to 0 degrees (straight), you're only lifting your body mass by the length of your thigh, which in my case is about 18". I don't see how doing this over the time it takes to complete a GS-sized carve (4 seconds?) can be doing anything significant. For short, slalom-sized "pumped" carves, sure, it can be significant.

Yes, but this only has a brief effect, and won't help you for the duration of the carve.

I think you're both wrong. :D If you weigh 80kg and you are going 10m/s around a 5 meter turn..... there is going to be exactly 1782.1 Newtons of force applied to your board (about 400lbf!!). No more, no less. Your body position has nothing to do with that. You CAN dictate WHERE that force gets applied - more to the front foot, more to the back foot, or even. Whether you use EC style rotation, or you align your hips with your bindings, or you turn more square to the nose, only serves to put you in a body position in which YOU feel the most balanced, and best able to deal with the forces involved. Any time anyone says, "do this, it puts more pressure on the edge"... well, it just makes no sense to me.

The EC guys have modified their Bombers to deal with the issue you're experiencing. However, once you do this I suspect all warranties are off. Check this out: http://www.extremecarving.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=671

Yes, those cants are junk, but you can get creative with plastic cant shims made for ski bindings (and some scissors), or nickels or pennies to neutralize the inward cant. I always thought those wedges were 7 degrees, they certainly look big enough to be.

As many _serious_ differences as I have with cmc, and as much as I dislike the language he uses to promote his event, I have to say it's a legitimate idea for an event. It's no different than a halfpipe or figure skating contest. If enough people have enough of that competitive streak, then they should have at each other, and enjoy themselves doing it. Nothing wrong with that. My only question is, could a gay carver enter the contest if he wore ballistic nylon? Not that I'm gay. And not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'd say: Do you buy snowboard boots for walking or snowboarding? Snowboard purists know how to carve their turns. All snowboards have sidecut. If you don't know how to use it, you don't know how to snowboard. While snowboarding, I like carving turns better than anything else, so I use equipment that is best suited to that. Snowboard purists also support their fellow snowboarders. And dittos to skatha, and whoever here has this signature: "the only thing a non-conformist hates more than a conformist is another non-conformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of non-conformity."

Really? How does it do that?

looks like a mild update of the Winterstick Roundtail, c. 1987.

I'm quite certain most boards SCR ends in the nose scoop, off the ground. You wouldn't want the sidecut to end on the ground (as part of the running length) because the curve necessary to maintain tangency between sidecut and nose curves would mess up the ends of the sidecut.