Jack M

Borrowing @Termin8tor‘s Apex X-Plate tomorrow, wish me luck!

Fair enough. I just think that an incomplete rotation followed by a quick pivot on the ground is an easy mistake to see. I see it all the time, it's a pet peeve of mine. Seems like a "fake it to make it" move. Maybe it's just not a deduction, but I would think it should be.

Maybe Elan's snowboard line was bought by Capita, I don't know, but they are still a big name in skis. I think I've heard that about SG, but I can't confirm.

Elan is a huge OEM for many brands of skis and snowboards. Chances are very good that they've been making world cup race boards for some time now, just under a different name.

Hey guys. These things take time. Stay tuned.

Can't seem to find this on youtube, so here: All respect to Shaun White of course. I'm not one of the haters, although the way he treated Kevin Pierce was lame. Anyway... Crazy awesome run. Really beautiful to behold. However I don't think it was perfect. During the replay the commentator says about his first jump at 1:08, "there's the 14, stomps it right on that toe edge", except he didn't. He lands on his heel edge, then slides around to toeside. 1440 is 4 complete rotations. He takes off with his chest facing up the pipe on his toe edge, and lands facing down the pipe on his heel edge, then slides around on the ground to face up the pipe again. If you do any number of complete rotations, you will take off and land facing the same way. So there's no way that jump was a 1440. Now, I don't know shit about halfpipe judging, maybe if you land facing one way and then do a quick 180 spin on the ground, that counts as part of your air. I personally wouldn't call it that way because you're not in the air when you do that last half spin, but what do I know. Thoughts? Or was the jump planned to be a 1260? If so then I'd agree it's a perfect run. Do you even have to tell the judges what you're going to do in advance?

Hi Arjan, thanks for sharing your experience, that was helpful. The Allflex website says 6.4 mm, not cm. That's not much at all, a board can bend much more than that during normal carving, so I'll bet your plate is indeed flexing while you carve. The pictures posted recently of the Allflex show not much separation between the board and plate, so I'm inclined to believe it's 6.4mm. I have to say, in theory the Allflex seems very counter-intuitive to me, but racers are doing well on it, so I wonder what the magic is. Seems like for those first 6.4mm of travel it is allowing the board to bend freely, and then after that it becomes a massive flex-modifier.

That section says to me that Bola hasn't been keeping up with Donek or Coiler or Prior or (fill in the blank). The progression of race snowboards may have been toward stiffer decks, but that doesn't mean all alpine boards have.

Nothing on that page indicates the illustrations are only of the ski plate. Again, "1. The Allflex plate allows independent and unobstructed bending of the ski or the snowboard as well as a complete grip of the edge carved into the snow. The ski or snowboard bends in one arch due to the floating mounting of the plate." That certainly describes behavior very different than these photos. I don't claim to know what plate is or is not in these photos, just pointing out that the description and illustrations on Allflex's website seem to be at odds with these photos. These observations seem to agree with Bola's findings that the Allflex plate alters the flex of the board, unlike other isolation plates like Apex: http://allboardssports.com/updated-thoughts-on-snowboard-plates-alpine-snowboard-plates/ But I mean hey, if racers are winning on it, then great. That certainly seems to be the case. I was just agreeing with Corey that these pictures change my perception of exactly how the plate works.

No, I am not. You've misread my post, and the Allflex page I referenced.

Yeah. This photo seems to contradict the descriptions and illustrations on Allflex's own website: http://www.allflexplate.com/ENG/Features And given the material and structure of the Allflex plate I can't fathom it flexing that much. I have to wonder if the plate in this photo is not an Allflex in the first place. Is it confirmed? From their site: "1. The Allflex plate allows independent and unobstructed bending of the ski or the snowboard as well as a complete grip of the edge carved into the snow. The ski or snowboard bends in one arch due to the floating mounting of the plate."

Haha, looks great, but those metal chains touching the edge are making me cringe! As for riding it, I'd be afraid of breaking it and yourself in the process. Donek, Prior, Coiler, Winterstick are ready when you are for a custom.

Don't think of that. This only robs edge hold and hurts your technique. The good riders in the videos posted have 0% weight on their elbow/hand/arm. Most of the time Knapton uses it more as a feeler. Like a motorcycle racer's knee. Sometimes he does use it as a crutch, but many people including me are guilty of that sometimes.

@GeoffV bringing the smack talk! Game on! http://skiracing.nastar.com/index.jsp?year=2018&source=selectrankings2&pagename=viewrankings&overallsnowboard=Y&male=Y (V is for Vincelette)

Be patient and wait for the ground to come to you. Don’t bend over at the waist and reach for it. Probably going to need a bit more speed for this to happen.

Why would you do that when the UPZ heel is so much higher? But you already did change two things at once, your boots and your cants. May as well go to 6 front 3 back now. I think you'll like it.

I feel your pain!

I agree with breeseomatic that step 1 is to learn to carve your current gear. You'll probably need to go down to an easy slope to make it happen, which is fine. The goal is to be able to link carves with no sliding whatsoever. This means rolling the board over at the end of one carve and beginning the next carve on your downhill edge. If this proves too difficult, try forward stance angles. You don't have to get crazy there, the best softboot carver I know is at 27/12. Once you get good at that, then it's time to find alpine gear.

A bit surprised by Neil and ErikJ, since you both seem to ride like #1! Never seen Neil in person, but ErikJ is one of my favorite carvers to watch. Shred nicknamed him "Boing!" at an ECES.

Thanks SunSurfer. No need to apologize, glad we could clear this up, and glad you have found the articles useful. I guess it's not obvious but several of my articles were written in the mid 90s for the first online snowboarding magazine, Snowboarding Online (SOL, hehe) which later was bought by Transworld. I can't remember if this one was brought over from there or if I wrote it for BOL around '99. Suffice to say, it was a time when many alpiners were riding narrow stances with their knees jammed together like Craig Kelley and Peter Bauer used to, waving their arms around, and rotating their upper bodies excessively. This was not unlike the practice of human sacrifice - it seemed like a good idea at the time. But then we progressed. The articles were meant to help break old habits. The section you underlined above was a suggestion of where to go from here. I didn't want to just say, ride with your knees apart and figure the rest out on your own. But the biggest thing was to get the knees apart. I should probably update these articles, eh?

Wow, really glad you are enjoying that thing Rob. I thought it was 28 wide but I could be wrong. That was my brother-in-law's board. He is 6'2" with size 12 boots. He was coming from a K2 Fat Bob 164, 27.5cm wide. He was also coming from two ruptured Achilles, and he only gets about 10 days a year. Although I thought the Sasquatch was sized well for him on paper, it proved to be just too much for him. I tried it with my size 10.5 boots one day and thought it was an unmanageable plank. You must be a savage to be able to tame that thing with size 9.5s. #impressed

Dealbreaker for me. A step-on Driver X would get me.

Thanks all. Just remember primary does not mean "only".

I got to thinking recently about how sometimes discussions here can get a little, shall we say emotional. I think this is due in part to the fact that a lot of people approach alpine snowboarding from different perspectives and with different goals. Then we all try to have one big conversation in the same room. I think it would be helpful for all of us to try harder to discover what someone else's goals are before answering their question or giving advice. Cool? Then that made me think of doing this poll to see just how diverse this group is. If your primary objective for visiting this site is different than your primary objective on the hill, please choose your primary objective for visiting this site, i.e. what are you here to learn/talk about? If you aren't doing any of these things yet, which one do you want to learn about most? Responses are public. Thanks!