kipstar

I think that it is maybe partly because not so many people go to June, so it doesn't get chewed up quite so fast.... and also the runs at June are quite a bit flatter and there are less of them, so maybe grooming is easier, since they can take their time to groom the hill a bit more than Mammoth, which is, as you'll agree, a pretty big hill. I really am not keen on June at all, but Mammoth crowds were rediculous this last year, so maybe when tickets go up to $70 next year, it won't be quite so crowded.

Awesome to catch up with another carver, Skategoat. Yep, we did some "extreme beer drinking" that night; I used the cross over hand technique to pick up the glasses and also Henry did the "pull up to the mouth, pull off the foam" extreme beer drinking technique. There was some guy in the bar called Boardy who was claiming that the extreme beer drinking was old hat, and that he had been drinking beer like that for about 10 years already, but preferred the face the glass technique and a whole host of other ways in which he felt an experienced beer drinker should be able to drink. He said that anyone can pretty much do the pull up to the mouth and pull off the foam method, provided they have moderate beer drinking skills. The wierd thing was that sadly no one took any photos of Boardy doing extreme beer drinking, so I am not sure whether you will believe or not that he could drink beer like that!! For those of you who want a spot in the sun, it is quite warm here, and the snowpack is a little on the light side; next year we have a full on BES planned, provided the weather cooperates. :-)

the soft boots may chew them up a bit more, since the boot flexes a bit as you walk around the carpark and skate the board around and so on. Not much you can do about it, other than get ride of your soft boots and just ride plates all the time :-)

D-sub..... man, you should make posts like that more often! LOL I have a set of the green comfortmables or something that are mostly green with an area of black where your foot sits on the footbed. Have done a total of probably 500 days on these, and they are still great. The reasons they have lasted so long; they were heated and molded in a similar way to the surefoot I think it is that footloose uses in mammoth; the boot fitter molded the bed making sure that my foot was set up right without having weight pressure on my foot. The way this sole normally works is that the sole is stiff enough to support itself in the centre, with a heel cup wrapping around the outside of the heel. I think this method doesn't work, since with all the flexing forward, the arch support eventually collapses. She then spent a while making a piece of black hard foam that she glued onto the bottom of the foot bed and ground it so that the bottom of the footbed is flat (like the surefoot and the corks that I have seen) and supports the top of the sole so that it doesn't collapse. She then glued and taped the whole thing together so that none of the bits would come apart. I used to have all manner of footpain, but her beds really sorted me; a bit of a way to go though - Marie in National Park, New Zealand; was the former NZ slalom/GS champ for skiiing. Honestly, 500 days and 10 years; I don't think that they normally would last this long, but also other than that, the other things I've done include: - not drying my boots out in hot drying rooms or next to fires with a lot of high temperature - not taking the liners out all the time and bending the foot bed - not swapping the footbeds around from boot to boot I think that these things can really kill the foot bed. Plus I am a relative lightweight, so I don't think the beds have that much stress on them.

ONe more thing.... Depending on boots, one of the things I didn't use to like about the snowboard boots... If you put more lean into the boot, it automatically becomes stiffer unless there is an adjustment to the flex available, such as the RAB on the indys. So, if you start with your two feet the same, then angle the back foot more than the front, then the back foot is locked forward more but also stiffer as well, which is not I believe what you want to be doing. So, then some people leave the top buckles on the rear boot open, which then starts to affect heel lift in the boot, and so on. Instead, if you can get both boots to flex the same, and if you must, then add some heel lift into the binding, this is a better solution. Otherwise, if will feel like your back foot is not angled, since as soon as your weight goes forward, the back boot will be stiffer already, and thus start transfering weight onto the front of the boot on toe side turns faster than your front foot. So I reckon you should set both boots the same forward lean and instead increase the ":heel lift" that you want via the chopping board stuck under the heel of the back foot.

OK, there are two different concepts, and I think they are getting a bit muddled here. You want heel lift. But..,.. Most of the snow pros come with wedges than angle your bindings towards eachother, and neither raise nor lower the heel compared to the toe; at least that is how the set i have is. I call this canting. I am pretty sure my set (which I have not seen in about 5 years) is the same as yours. I would suggest that you should ride both bindings flat cant - no need to cant at all. Some people like to ride cants; if you do, then you can use wedges or something, but at most you probably would want something like 3 degrees. The reason why people used to use cants was to get their knees together; but people don't ride like that so much any more. The knees about is a much more stable way to ride I think. For heel lift, if you are riding in a more swiss rotational style, then heel lift seems less necessary. However, a bit of heel lift (about 1cm/ 3/8 of an inch) can make traversing a bit easier and stops you from falling backwards. This you can definitely make out of a cutting board; the white looking cutting board is perfect, and about the right thickness even. You would try to insert this between the baseplate and the piece with the bale/peice for your foot to sit on. And yes, you will probably need longer screws; I think (but cannot quite recall) that they are M6 thread screws. This is a metric screw 6mm. The problem is that if you just raise the back heel, then your boot is going to be angled, and your bindings are still going to be flat, so this will put a bit of pressure on the front of each binding part for your boot, since the boot won't be sitting quite flat anymore in the binding. In my opinion, if you are using a snowboard boot with a rubber sole, then this is not a huge deal, since the sole will absorb most of the unevenness. If you are a master grinder, you could bevel off the piece of chopping board you have cut out and drilled to have about a 3 degree or so bevel angling towards the toe piece of the binding. It would be possible, but rather hard to grind out a piece of really thin chopping board and do the same thing with the toe piece, so I would just not worry about it, unless you have access to a grinder and know how to grind very thin things. If you lift both the heel piece and the toe piece as well, I can't see that you will get any benefit. So.... take the heel piece off; cut a piece of chopping board about 3/8 of an inch thick off, and drill it, grind it if you want so the heel piece leans forward a bit towards the toe to match the base of your boot, and you are going to be away laughing. Good as gold mate, let us know how you get on. Sawasdee krap

My dad raced finns in the era of John Betrand, Clive Roberts, just a little after Elvstrom - that group. I am just too light for that, and the laser is a sucky stupid boat.... I have max respect for anyone who races the finn; I always thought though that being allowed to carry a big bag of bricks to put on the rail as you were stacking would make the boat infinitely easier to race :-) You might like to consider taking up formula windsurfing.... that class is not really tactical (none of the fast classes are really) but what a blast... much better than a laser :-0 Check out the board here to get an idea of what I am talking about..... would be much less work than sailing a finn, even though it carries an additional 15 sq ft of sail (with the big 12.5m rig) http://www.formulawindsurfing.org/viewer.php?f=031004&id=2 a nice starting line for ya.

triathalons ( a little bit) and windsurfing formula racing (also a little bit).

1. Get a life, get some skis (yes, someone suggested this to me, no I didn't take him up on his fine idea) :-) 2. Take trip to Southern hemisphere or northern hemisphere as the case may be for a winter fix 3. Move to area with indoor snowdome www.snowplanet.co.nz for instance 4. Take up windsurfing (formula gear... aight!) 5. Take up texas hold 'em 6. triathalon season 7. Read countless arguments between racers and EC people about which is better and why they are brilliant and the other crowd isn't (actually it is mostly going one way :-) 8. Buy cheap gears on ebay 9. Eat some tom yung goong and save $$ for another trip to the snow next year

Well, I guess technically you could say people were already doing pretty much every type of turn in the 80s prior to the real explosion in snowboarding. However, despite claims by various ppl, nowhere have I seen people ride like P&J prior to seeing it on their videos. Since then, I have seen some guys in Tahoe riding the same style with (IMHO) comparable skill to those guys (as can be seen in the videos anyway); namely a guy called James Ong, who rides with grace, power and gets right down on the snow without appearing to try. As a former racer, my interest does not really drive me to specifically learn this style of turn, although from time to time, I feel like I am getting pretty low, more so on toeside than heelside, from the hips up - in general I prefer to ride with my upper body straighter than the EC style of laying it right over. So, my thoughts are not coming from a "I am trying to EC" viewpoint. From what I have seen with snowboarding, and many other sports, techinically being able to do something, compared to technically being able to do something effortlessly are two different things. It is fairly debateable whether what Bauer and Nerva were doing 10+ years ago is even in the same park as what those EC guys do now; certainly their technique approach on the asym boards and seeming lack of push pull technique that I can vaguely remember suggested that they instead pretty much used to fall into turns and let the board carve through it, and these were almost all toe sides not linking to anything. Those purecarve videos look like nice carving, but they don't seem to be the same thing as the EC guys. And the short video from Bordy isn't quite high enough quality to compare, but again while very good riding we are not talking hip and shoulder to the snow turn after turn after turn. And in terms of all the guys I used to see riding 10 years ago (including the US amateur nationals held in Mammoth, Japanese national team, a few of the Euro ski teamers out snowboarding) I never saw anyone ride anything like the EC website. Yep, snow has a lot to do with it, but I've ridden with an EC rider in Tahoe on fairly hard snow, and he had no problem pretty much replicating the video moves for the steepest groomers on the mountain. So my vote goes to not having seen it b4; although then again you don't see much snowboarding here in Thailand :-)

I only have alpine gear, no soft boots, so I guess you can make yourself get used to things if you have to. Not having ridden for a few years until this year, I did find prez weekend at Mammoth friggin hard work; about a foot of fresh soggie snow and a million and one people chewing up every run. Even with the ice showing through, it can be ridden reasonably well on a carving board with a few changes to technique (no doubt changing binding position and so on helps, but most people are lazy). I found the following helped a bit - you need to ride in a lower more dynamic position, and not trying the extreme carving leaning out type turns; weight much more centred over the board - you need to hold a bit more speed and not turn out of the fall line quite so far as you would on a groomer - adjust the nuetral body position to be a little further back, and this includes not driving forward too far into the start of turns - keeping knees bent, and upper body quiet; let the lower body suck up the bumps and stuff with your upper body still nice and straight and no straight legs (especially heel side) - hold a little more speed than normal I don't have a walk mode, and I don't adjust boots anyway; I ride them the same way the whole time pretty much. Not as much fun on crowded stupid Mammoth sierra cement but it still works fine. You will burn up your thighs much faster though, unless you ride in this sort of stuff quite a lot, because it uses different muscles and stuff. That's my opinion anyway..... not much chance of powder around here! Kip

go suzukas if you have a relatively narrow forefoot. I just got a set of INdys, and I ride fine in the bumps with them with the race tongues; no problem at all. Not sure why you would undo buckles of anything; get them set right, and put an RAB on, then let the spring do the work. My friend has a set of the lemans, and it looks to me that the design of the suzuka/indy is a little better if you modify the RAB and bolt that on (and get rid of the 5 position thing at the back). Just my opinion - whichever fits better is the way to go....

Designed by a New Zealand guy called Dave Partridge, made sometime in the early/mid 90s I think. I actually knew this guy back in NZ before he went to Apocolyse. THe Central Asym Position means that it is built with an asym core; so that the way it flexes is not the same on either side; the board is shifted to be stiffer in the tail on the heel side sort of, so that it balances out with the weight shift forward and back that was popular back then. I think that the camber may also be twisted to match that as well... this means that you can only ride a goofy/switch or regular board depending on which way it is designed, it would ride a bit odd if you ride it backwards. The channel was supposed to do something I never understood. Somewhere on it it probably says which way round it is to be ridden, or it has a designated heel side.

er...bump

The orange Raichle Indys used about 5 or 6 days by the previous owner; I bought them on Ebay and the fit is not good for my foot, plus I don't like the flex. They have the moldable liner, the sole is in very good condition; basically the boots are almost new - the liner has been molded once by the previous owner; I haven't actually even used them on the snow. I have modified the RAB as per the extremecarving.com website to have more thread, so now the boot can be more upright; used an M8 die as per the instructions. This means you can stand with less forward lean, and it also stops the RAB from jamming as well. I have an extra set of race tongues which I bought on bomberonline website 2nd hand; so you get two sets of tongues. I also have an extra set of springs, which may be the same flex as the pair that are in there now; not quite sure about that. So.... you get - the boots, 27/27.5 size - 2 sets of tongues (the grey softer ones and the light grey stiffer ones) - spare set of springs - moldable liners - modified RAB already set up for extreme carving/lazy people who ride like me with not much forward lean I am losing money on this deal, 'cause I bought the boots off Ebay and the tongues.... but I fly back to Thailand in 2 weeks, so I don't want to have to take these boots with me. $200 ONO..... seems to me like a good deal, and someone out there will hopefully have more luck with boots than I have (this is the 3rd pair of snowboard boots I have bought then never used!). Best regards Kip

brand new,still in plastic. Bought prior to my trip over here, then I found a more suitable longer board later on. I paid $90 + delivery, so I will sell for $90 if you pick up from me here in Reno/Tahoe area, or plus shipping (which I think is at most $20) for the rest of the country. Kip

Well, I aim for those uphill finishing carve turns, all linked, so I think Fleaman has the best diagram. Of course, there are some problems: - girl looking in awe is clearly not on carving skis - girl looking in awe is nice and thin, but a little flat chested - what is up with her Dianna Ross hair? Other than that, the diagram seems quite good.

THe title says it all I guess, I want the stiff tongue race set for Indys size 27.5 Let me know if you have some that you want to offload, delivery to Tahoe area. Payment by paypal or western union. Kip

I always thought he was Tom Tuttle, but maybe are you any relation of Tom Tuthill, the race coach guy from Mammoth from the mid 90s? The guy could really rip.

Unless you are massive you should be able to carve on the alp, so I don't think you need a longer board. Perhaps the edges are super blunt? Perhaps teh board has developed a warp so the base is like a boat? Perhaps your technique needs some tweaks?

I feel your pain, having only ever had one pair of boots even close to comfortable. Your riding may have improved, so you are pushing harder, and thus stressing your feet a bit more You may be riding in harder choppier snow this year, which tends to load up your feet a bit more Or you may have altered your technique a bit, and be either leaning too much, or sitting back a little much on heelsides, which may also be loading up your feet. Obviously, fitted boots and foot beds will help, but if you cannot do that, they you can take care of your feet a little better. Get some decent socks; they should be a medium/low thickness sock specifically made of skiing is probably the best; make sure they aren't bunching up at all when you put them on. Swear an anti inflammatory cream on your feet where they hurt about 20 minutes before you ride everytime; voltarin emugel is a good one. Sometimes the inflammation keeps getting inflamed and gets worse and worse... this might alleviate things a bit. When you put on your boots, make sure they are always warm and dry; don't leave them in your car overnight etc. What is probably causing this is that your foot is collapsing from above, due to the tightness or some aspect of movement - a foot bed, even a cruddy one, will provide support to your arch, and stop it collapsing under pressure.... If you are also getting pain on the inside edge of your arch and the bunion on your front food little toe, then those are signs of the same thing occuring. The only real fix for these are footbeds; if you can't get molded ones, at least get the standard plastic ones, and cut some pieces of foam or something and build up an arch to support your foot. But the voltarin is a good place to start; it should help almost straight away. Using tiger balm or similar after you finish riding and not standing around will also help; if you can get into a routine of not walking around the lodge etc with your boots on, you can save your feet for riding more; walking around stresses out my feet a lot more than riding. In you can get to a Thai store near you, ask for "Num mun Muay" (muay rhymes with Toy or soi) this is similar to tiger balm and seem to reduce swelling and pain; this is what Muay Thai fighters use to make their seemingly miraculous recoveries after big fights. You will want to massage in, leave for 20 minutes withyour feet up watchin TV or whatever and then you should be feeling much better.

Alternative... Stick a sheet of clear sticky back on the tail, or coverseal. The damage is already done when they stand all over the board. The plastic protects the board. Or just not care too much - gear is meant to be trashed. I used to claim when people did this on my nitro EFT (with the notch out the back) - "listen you f&*king k&*t you've broken the corner off my board, go and find it so I can glue it back on, this is the third f&*king time that some k&*t has done this f&*ked up s&*t this f&^*king week." Sometimes I would show by vast disapproval by shaking my head and saying nothing while looking at the snow. The second one was less funny though.

I vill sell you my old lamar trickstick ya? It ez for zer walley and zer mogul, and ez zer best carver for how u Kiwi say ride zer yellow snow. $700 because it has zer elfgen binding ya.

This is a fusion I think, from the 3rd year that Nitro was around, so this would make it about a 1993/94 season board. It has a 5 hole pattern OR is a deck you'll have to screw in, so recommend T bolts; back then the stance options were narrower than nowadays, plus you'll probably rip out any other way to mount it. It has a standard radius sidecut (the first year, the nitros had a progressive sidecut); it is a little narrower than modern freeride boards, and is directional, with a bigger scoop on the nose than tail (hard to see in the photo). It has a extruded PTEX base, and a wood core (I think, it MIGHT be foam, but fairly sure they went back to wood after the 2nd year of foam cores). The bindings to match this board are junk, so again, you'll need to either T bolt a 3 or 4 hole pattern in it. If you want to save money, and know exactly how you are going to mount, then use screws from the base side in, and put the nuts on the top, then brind the screw length so they aren't sticking into your foot, seal the whole thing with resin as you do it. I did this b4, and worked fine on a similar board. Alternatively, there are some threads on T bolting and how to do on this board somewhere. Porbably heavier than modern boards, but a bit of a classic.

awesome stuff ;-)