Jack M

accessible reggae... I celebrate their entire catalog!

Board is a good size then. Yeah it just takes practice and time to get used to the different ways of skidding and maneuvering in hardboots and on a longer board. It's foreign, uncomfortable, and exhausting at first. Realize that when you're really carving, you're not fighting the equipment (or at least you're not supposed to be). As you get better you'll find yourself fighting the equipment less and less. Don't give up, it's worth it!

Anyone with size 23 feet using MS? A girl I coach has feet measuring 23 and 23.4cm and finds her size 23-23.5 UPZs too big. Mountain Slope's smallest shell fits feet from 23cm to 25cm. For size 23-23.5 they make up the difference with a different liner: https://www.mountain-slope.com/shop/ @MountainSlope any happy size 23 customers?

Yep! I can't do the story justice but suffice to say Dimitrije has not been involved in many years. The company has a good relationship with him and pays him homage. One of the current BMP owners, Tom Freemont-Smith of Maine is an old friend of my wife's - small world. Great guy. Maine Olympic hero (and my fellow longtime Sugarloafer) Seth Wescott bought in to the company in 2014 and helped move the manufacturing to Sugarloaf. Pretty cool having a custom snowboard shop in my back yard. You can read the story here, it's a pretty quick read: https://www.winterstick.com/history-of-winterstick/ @boardguru is mentioned in the story though I'll let him introduce himself if he wants!

Thanks! You bet I'm bringing it. I think I would call it a "short" board for out there though.

Just picked up the first ever Winterstick Squaretail Plus 170! My USASA auction prize. With a nod to the old Roundtail Plus 170, hehe… 170cm long, 21cm waist, 9-12-11m "Roboid" VSR sidecut, high camber, full Titanal/carbon, extra torsional stiffness between the feet. We'll see if it can measure up to my beloved Kessler 168! Based on their metal 162 I tried last winter, I'm optimistic. Gonna be a good winter!

I am not knowing. I was there in the summer for a friend's wedding, and I was just impressed with the sheer size of the mountain right next to town.

Donek F plate is similar to Vist which has had much success in World Cup racing. Like Mr.E said, it will give you some extra height off the board, allowing lower binding angles. It will also provide some vibration absorption, and make the board turn longer. If you only want to raise your bindings off the board, you might try Apex Gecko plates. They are lighter weight and simpler. I'm not sure if Apex is still in business though, you might have to look for used ones. Our classifieds are a good place to look.

Rare but higher risk of clotting

Missoula has it all. Cool town, sweet river running through it (white water, fly fishing, etc), Montana Snowbowl 15 miles down the road (300"/yr, would be a major resort if it were in the east), 136 miles to Whitefish, 4 other ski areas closer than that, the university... jealous.

Guys... we are all friends here. I don't like the notions that differing opinions should be silenced or that people can't think for themselves. On another note, Novavax is working on a more traditional, non-mRNA vaccine. I'm already jabbed but it would be good for people to have choices. More people would get vaccinated if they had a comfortable alternative. Some news today on that: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/novavax-again-delays-seeking-us-approval-covid-19-vaccine-2021-08-05/

Fauci said on July 11 that a 3rd dose is not needed at this time, but that could change. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/11/politics/fauci-booster-shots-sotu-cnntv/index.html

Sounds great, good luck! Just so you know, the biggest hardboot freecarving event in the US is happening January 31 to February 3. Details are here: https://forums.alpinesnowboarder.com/forum/93-montucky-clear-cut-2022/

Thanks. Kinsje has been banned and flagged as a spammer. There are no users davi754 or greg33 either.

Why compete in anything? Why not just step outside your door and time yourself running 26 miles instead of paying to enter a marathon? I guess I don't understand why someone who doesn't care about racing would post in this thread or even read it. Some people just want to compete. If it moves, it will be raced.

She does compete in moguls. I don't think anyone cares to engage in that taxonomy. Your score in a mogul run is judged 50% on turns and line, 25% on jumps, and then 25% of the score is calculated from your time start to finish. Race training does not buy you much of anything in moguls. A racer cannot just hop in a mogul event and be competitive if they aren't already practicing in the moguls. However mogul skiers can transition to gates pretty quickly and successfully. That probably doesn't happen after high school though. I am biased but I would say good mogul skiers are the best all-around skiers. I would agree, I've been doing the Sugarloaf Banked Slalom for many years now (10??) and there was only 1 year where I felt hardboots were an advantage. I do it in hardboots just because I'm better at it in hardboots. And to be that guy. BSL is basically single rider BX without jumps. (don't let that make you think it's easy though!) That actually existed briefly, but it was more wild than your description. It was a parallel GS for the first half, and then the two riders funneled in to a BX for the bottom half. I think it was part of the Jeep King of the Mountain series or something like that. It was on TV. I saw Chris Klug beat Jasey Jay in it once. At least I'm pretty sure it was JJ - I know it was Klug because Picabo Street was the commentator and she looked like she fell in love with Klug in the process. She just about licked his face in the post interview. I though the format should be called "Super-Y" for lack of a better term.

Not quite. An alpine snowboard is a snowboard. One must know how to snowboard to ride an alpine snowboard. If one learns to ride an alpine snowboard with hardboots first, they will be able to switch to a freeride snowboard with softboots and ride it well. A good softboot carver can try an alpine setup and do quite well on day one. A skier cannot just put on a snowboard and go ride at a level anywhere near their skiing. Skis are not snowboards, just like a car is not a motorcycle. This is why skiers and snowboarders don't compete against each other, they are different skills and different sports. And anyway, If softbooters really wanted to race gates without hardbooter riff raff, don't you think a softboot-only race series would have been established by now? Seems like the interest and demand simply isn't there in any significant way. I also don't think people would enjoy it - imagine dealing with race ruts at full speed on softboots. If you did somehow establish softboot-only gate racing at the world cup/olympic level, you'd just end up with people modifying their softboots in search of more speed and better carves. Just like how the Korean softboot carvers are reinforcing their boots with plastic tongues and internal battens and whatnot, running stiff molded liners, and adding lace-up braces over the liners. 3rd straps would come back, unless you banned them. And then would you put limits on board length? Because if not, the boards used for GS would get longer and longer until they were probably around 185cm. There would be plates, if not banned. So ultimately the hardboot ban would be purely cosmetic, in other words, a joke. The equipment used in gate racing would bear little resemblance to freeride equipment. Someone interested in this new "softboot" racing would need to buy a whole other "racing" setup, if they want to be competitive. And now we're back to square one. I think what you really want is a "run what ya brung" type beer league. You're in luck, that already exists. But if a good hardbooter shows up, you're probably not getting a gold medal. Oh well.

Nobody is saying that can't exist, and it does in BX and BSL. I'm just saying USASA, as the pathway to FIS, needs to include hardboots. And hardbooters are still a tiny minority in USASA anyway. Most of the time many of the age groups do end up being softboots-only. I think that's true whether hardboots are involved or not. $1500 for a Donek B1. C'est la vie.

Not hard, more like impossible. You would have to somehow limit overall equipment spending then, not just hardboots. Because the kid on brand new top-shelf gear is going to beat the kid on the 3 year old beater low-tech gear, all else equal. Check out a Little League game sometime. There will be a number of kids swinging $500 composite bats. Several years ago I went to a coaching lecture given by Bob Bigelow, the only Massachusetts native NBA first round draft pick. He said how youth sports and parents collectively lost their minds the day that Tiger Woods became the youngest Masters' winner at the age of 21 in 1997, and Nike ran a commercial showing him driving a golf ball at age 4. You might be interested in Bob's books. https://www.bobbigelow.com/solve-youth-sports-problems.htm That's kind of offensive. The talent has to be there. I get it, a kid with talent but no money is out of luck, but, life's not fair. A kid with money and no talent is not going anywhere either.

https://www.sugarloaf2030.com/west-mountain-expansion This is as much about real estate as terrain, but this could give Sugarloaf a real increase in good carving terrain with a nice intermediate slope of which Sugarloaf currently doesn't have much. The new lift should be constructed next summer (2022).

This picture is everything.

Thanks for the kind words, AA. It already is and has been for a while. Skiing is the same way if not worse. That goes for racing and freestyle. The guardrails you would need to implement would have to limit not just equipment but also training and travel. It's simply not going to happen. The reality, generally speaking, is that beyond the "weekend program" or USASA level, a teen is simply not going to be competitive if they are not attending a private academy, training on hill 6 days a week, and traveling around the country to events. On-snow summer camps give another advantage. After all those expenses, adding a couple of plates to your bag is a rounding error. At that point the difference between a used pair of UPZs and a new pair of Mountain Slopes is negligible. It takes money. A lot of it. Or a ton of work, sacrifice, and creative fundraising, a la Justin Reiter living in his truck. If you cannot pay to play at the NorAm and FIS levels, you can stay in USASA and NASTAR your whole life as a weekend warrior. Nothing wrong with that at all, it's fun. It's just an expensive sport. Like horses or sailing or motorsports. Even more traditional sports like hockey and soccer become prohibitively expensive at the elite level.

There is lots of youth and highschool softboot racing in USASA, which is why we support them through subscriptions and advertising on this forum. It's part of our Mission Statement. In fact, USASA gets more participation in gates than halfpipe. January 2020 USASA Maine Mountain GS. The only other event that day was SL. There was no freestyle or BX event bringing this crowd. (picture does not contain the whole field) Of course one doesn't put it condescendingly if one wants to encourage kids to try racing on alpine gear. But it's a fact borne out in every race. All else equal, experienced kids on hardboots simply dominate. That is how the kids I help coach at Carrabassett Valley Academy came to be interested in hardboots - they went to nationals on softboots thinking they were all that, and got smoked by hardbooters. Because they are competitive by nature, they wanted a piece of that action. Others are ok with forfeiting to hardbooters because they only use racing as cross-training for boardercross. I think that would reinforce the perception that hardboots are weird or that they don't even exist. Younger kids in hardboots are typically new at hardboots, or they don't have the muscle to get the most out of them, and don't really have an advantage yet. Last year there was a new hardbooter in 7th grade at CVA. His parents are both teachers, and he was using free hand-me-down and purchased-used equipment. Hardly rich. He's into it and will have an advantage over other kids who come to hardboots later. A certain 15 year old we both know has been in hardboots since he was 7 and I think he's a great hope for US racing. I wouldn't call his family rich.

It's ironic that we just doubled down on Sugarloaf and moved to a bigger condo there, but at the same time I wouldn't recommend anyone settle there, lol. Or anywhere else east of the Rockies for that matter. Unless of course you are tied to the region by family, like we are. In that case, it's a special place. There are many awesome groomer days where I simply don't need to be anywhere else. Summer is very quiet as there is no town of significant size within 45 minutes in any direction. That's both good and bad. Edit - then again... if you love the ocean, Maine is hard to beat. There aren’t many places you can live near the ocean and have one of your favorite mountains a two hour drive away. I think if I removed the ocean from my life I would need to get it back eventually. To the OP, I've also heard good things about Sun Valley, like it has perfect grooming and pitch top to bottom.

i-carve is a platinum supporter and advertiser here. You may have seen their clearance sale listings stickied in the classifieds, or their banner ads. The service is great. daveo turned me on to them a couple years ago. Ivan sells at a significant discount so he probably isn't permitted to publish his prices. Just use the contact form or email store(at)i-carve.com and ask for a quote on what you want. Ivan is very responsive. Shipping is quick and reasonable via DHL, and the international payment is quick and inexpensive through wise.com. For F2 products I would look to yyzcanuck.com though.