Jack M

You are correct. Many snowboarders and skiers, including some here, refer to any act of turning with the board on the snow as carving, but they are wrong. Slicing the edge cleanly through the snow, no matter what the equipment, is a distinctly different activity with a higher skill level and it needs a unique name, thus, carving.

I'll give you $80 for all the Burtons. $100 if you watch me feed them into a wood chipper.

"So that's a snowboard and skis together, right?"

Not sure I'd call that "figured out" because most people are stronger going one way than the other, and I generally disagree with duck, but hey it sure makes it easier on the rental shop and easier for the instructor to just think "fine, good enough". It's all good bro, right?

Sure sure. I was an instructor during snowboarding's fad years. A shocking number of people would show up to a lesson not knowing if they were regular or goofy (and the rental shop didn't care). To these people.... just go ski. Instructors were mandated to carry mini-drivers to fix all this. Pain in the ass. I would hope now that the fad is over and skiing is easier than ever that these people are the extreme exception.

LOL, yes. If you're not going to take a lesson, stay very far away from snowboards.

I respectfully disagree completely, if one takes a lesson in the morning. If you were meant to slide sideways, after a 2 hour group lesson you'll be linking turns and having a lot of fun on good green-circle trails, and not just the bunny hill. I think the resurgence of skiing (due 100% to inventions by snowboarders like usable sidecut, twin-tips, parks, etc) has effectively killed the fad of snowboarding. The only people trying it now are the ones who actually want to surf or skate the snow. This is a good thing.

While I know who Chris Karol is and fully respect his experience, I think the unpleasant truth is that the FIS takeover of ISF doesn't matter one iota, to anyone other than those who were personally invested in ISF. FIS came along and said "We'll take it from here. You play by our rules now. Oh by the way, we're going to make money off this." Oh the humanity. They were probably rude at the time, but such is life in business. You want to compete on this level? You accept the rules of FIS/USSA/USASA, and go compete. Or you don't. The fact that there used to be a grassroots organization called ISF doesn't enter into this.

I only pointed out that you were mistaken when you said "A Parabolic curve doesn't really help, as it's tightest curvatures are out near the ends of an arc segment". Then we geeked out. Yeah I tried to do that above. I don't think my c. 2010 NSR 185 has that hook, but it's certainly easier to ride than my new-to-me KST 180. The waist and tail widths are the same on both boards, so I think it has more to do with the flex. I had heard about that hook option on the newer Revs. Rode a buddy's F2 185... definitely no hook.

Of course a board builder could use whatever section of a parabola they wanted in order to achieve... something. You could align two parabolas to achieve a sidecut that was tighter at the ends and longer in the middle, but the resulting curve would not be a parabola (and I don't think it would ride very well). A parabola has exactly one vertex, and your slider tool shows that. As you play with the sliders, the vertex moves around and the direction and "sharpness" of the parabola changes, but there is still just one vertex. At any rate, quadratic/parabolic sidecuts used on skis and snowboards are typically tightest somewhere near the middle, and longer at the ends, as were the Burtons of the 90s.

@1xsculler, the cliff notes are, VSR sidecuts allow you to adjust your turn radius by pressuring your feet differently. VSR sidecuts that go from short at the nose to long at the tail also compensate for the fact that g-forces are light at the top/beginning of a carve where we typically have our weight forward, and heavy towards the bottom/end where our weight has usually shifted to the back foot a bit. Single radius sidecuts can also be "adjusted" for turn shape by angulation - e.g. tilting the board up higher than your lean angle to tighten the turn.

Parabolic and Quadratic are the same thing. A parabola is drawn from a quadratic formula. I distinctly remember reading a Transworld interview with (Paul? Peter?) Wren during the 1990 season where he described Burton's new quadratic sidecuts. He said picture a rope hanging between two points. That would technically be a catenary curve, but he was just illustrating that a quadratic (parabolic) sidecut is tighter in the middle and longer at the ends.

Pretty sure race boards like Kessler KST, F2 Speedster, Donek Rev, Coiler NSR, etc go tight nose, medium middle, long tail. Or just two radii - shorter radius in the nose, longer in the tail (Coiler Nirvana, Prior FLC). Pretty sure the clothoid curve used by Kessler is (basically) a constantly increasing radius from nose to tail. Tight nose, large middle, medium tail would be a freecarve VSR. It would have some hook at the end of a turn. Racers usually don't want this.

Pretty darn sure parabolic sidecuts are tightest in the middle. A curve that tightens at the ends wouldn't be a parabola, by definition. The long side of an ellipse would do that. Pure arc segments (radial sidecuts) have been used with great success across many brands of skis and snowboards.

(man this new quoting system sucks) 1) Wow. You know he very well may be lurking here. He used to post. I quite enjoyed the piece. It was creative and it came from experience and the heart. No glaring grammar mistakes jumped out at me either. 2) You are not the arbiter of what defines the spirit of snowboarding. 3) Don't hold your breath.

MK: me, Angrry: @trailertrash, Nirvana: @AlexJ, Stubby: @GeoffV, Oxygen (with hardboots): @dhamann

Comparison of turn sizes on Sugarloaf's Sluice Headwall (steep). MK (image with one track), vs Coiler Angrry, Nirvana 174, Stubby 171, Oxygen Supercross 164:

Stop it.

Update... this thing looks evil with black and red TD3s...

El Dorado was new last year. Sorry I couldn't catch up with you that day, I was only out for a couple runs before my kids' competition.

It is, I had a graphic designer friend of mine reproduce it in vector form, from a photo of my original Safari, in 2008. Bruce has gotten some mileage out of it since. However mine is the only one that says Safari on the tail...

LOOSEN UP!

Couldn't resist... picked this 180 up from @megtrimix, like-new with only one run on it for several hundred off retail... I will win beer league now...

well, according to Wikipedia, the rapture is at the end of the world where all Christians rise up into the sky to be with Jesus. I wouldn't want to be eternally rising, so, I think I'm good.

At your service. Googling for this was amusing.