kipstar

The thing I like about the Madd picture is that the guy doesn't have his hand in the snow. The thing I don't like about most of the other pictures is that the hand is on the snow for ...for what? To balance? To look cool? Wherever possible, it is better to keep your hands away from the snow: - it screws up your stance and balance points - if you ride a while you'll burn through gloves like crazy - you WILL break or sprain fingers and thumbs (i've broken my little finger on my heelside hand twice, and thumb once on the same hand, from getting a bit lower than I thought on the heelside, and my other thumb on the toeside) As you get really angulated, it is inevitable that your hands will end up close to the snow (as per the you could do worse than this link) - which is fine. But unless we are talking hip within a few inches or so to the snow, or on super steeps, then I think I may be in the minority in saying, keep your hands off the deck as much as you can. In NZ snow the conditions get very choppy; riding through a mix of ice chunks and hardpack; if you clip one, you can easily tear your finger muscles and sprain your fingers. The style comes from getting your lower body close to the snow, rather than upper IMHO Good stuff! Kip

Kiss me. I may be a Prince. Of Egypt. Or not. But if you don't kiss me.... you will never know!! Kip p.s. Not you D-Sub p.p.s. B'day person....You are a woman right? p.p.p.s. Ah, what the hell, I'll take anything; no women available around here for someone as "koht gaeng" as me

If you pain is like mine in regular raichle ski boots (which it probably is) then it feels like your foot is being crushed slightly from the area behind the big toe (in the actual foot) across to the bunion(ah that is the word I think) behind the small toe on the other side. This is usually the widest part of the foot. The pain manifests itlsef as often being pins and needley or cold in the early part of the day, then after a bit of swelling and exercise during the day ends up as a very tender pain with shots of pain particularly riding hard into heel side turns. It seems for many people (like myself anyway) the feet aren't exactly the same size or shape, so the pressure points are slightly different on each foot anyway. The rear heel, and front top of the foot plus width of the foot are the areas that hit me anyway. Pressure points for width of the foot or the top of the foot are what makes your feet cold. Fixes - first up is obviously a foot bed; it stabilises the foot, so that the foot doesn't collapse when you move weight forward (as in a toe turn); it also stops your heel from moving around as much. The reduction in movement prevents rubbing and so on; so the boot can be a tighter fit. To widen the boot, there are various techniques; and usually the process must be repeated several times. 1. Identify the spot (usually a round piece on the small toe side of the foot) 2.Insert a stretcher, something like a G clamp that expands outwards with a rounded off metal lump placed on the offending spot, with some pressure 3.Put in boiling water (without liner) or use air dryer type heat gun, gently, to heat up plastic 4. Put in cold water, or leave to stand, so plastic sets in new shape 5. Repeat a few times sometimes, depending on the quality of the boot, to fix Sometime there is a piece of liner that is cuasing the pain, which can be cut/ground/dremmeled off - but I think with the new thermo liners this should not happen. I am hopeful that these raichle indys are going to fit my foot; otherwise it is a waste of another $230 via the bay of E for junk. Already been there with the crud UPS boots, so I guess my last choice is heads I suppose ;-)

thanks guys; excellent advice. I therefore will stay looking for the 19.5cm to 20cm waisted boards; that will be the "real deal" when I make the transition to these soft boot Raichle indys then. I am told they are actually quite stiff, so it will be a laugh if they are stiffer than my raichle ski boots! Kip

I have been investigating this, 'cause I am coming to Tahoe for a month in mid Feb/March, and staying in Reno. So, I will advise what I know. You can get some good deals at the casinos; specifically the dumpier ones which Sun - Thurs have good rates; for instance Circus Circus prices start at $32 USD; and there are a couple of casinos cheaper again. You also save at the casino 'cause the breakfast and dinner buffets, while being slop, and also super cheap. A half decent prime reeee-ib is cheap (or used to be). My investigations reveal that: Mt Rose has a deal $54 USD lift ticket including shuttle ride up to the mountain from the casinos and back per day They have all these crazy deals depending on the day; like $99USD for Fri,Sat, Sun or Sat,Sun,Mon Incline is also cheap with some deals as well, but you would only want to do a day here, because it is kinda small; still quite cheap; Diamond Peak I think it is called Of the big resorts, Alpine Meadows is the cheapest, with $39 tickets non holiday. This is MUCH cheaper than Heavenly, Kirkwood, Squaw etc some of which are around $55 - $60 per day. There are some little resorts like Homewood, Donner etc - but they are ok for a day, but not really so good for long times, friom past experience. I have only driven past, but Mt Rose looks like da bomb from the road side, and they have what appears to be decent lifts and decent prices. Plus the shuttle means you can sleep off your drunken stupour from all those free bloody marys from the night before while doubling down on all those 11 vs. dealer 6 with a 10 in the hole, on a + count of say +5, true count +10 with 1/2 a deck to go. Not that I card count or anything ;-) And of course, you can theoretically fly in. Although if it is snowing, then that can be a 3 hour wait for a friggin taxi, so make sure you arrange casino to pick you up. The nicer casinos are the ones slightly out of the downtown; although silver legacy used to be the nicest one in town. Find out more from reno locals about this. Check out tahoecarvers.com for more info. Kip

I am just getting back into snorg borg after a long break, and have an aim to represent my country in parallel GS. It shouldn't be so hard, since there isn't exactly a queue of Thai snowboarders. In fact, ah, yep, I am now the captain of the national team. Just jokes, but seriously, I am reading some bizarre stuff here. 1. racers are riding flatter angles than before 2. racers are riding softer equipment than carvers?! I realise that there is a LOT of variation in courses, turn radius, conditions, pitch and all that stuff. But all that said, here is my question (as effectively a newbie to this new style racing, last time I raced was 1997): - with a 27.5 mondo point foot currently in ski boots, but switching to a pair of Raichle indys, what sort of width should I be looking at for a GS board? Are racers going to all these 18.5cm waist boards (which seem mighty narrow to me) or 19.5 or wider again? I know a large chunk of this is personal preference, but I would love to hear thoughts froma lot of the racers on this site, or people who hang out with them.... what sort of board dimensions are appropriate, and how the pros tend to set them up.... Kip

still skidding those turns are ya>! Friggin heck; showing me this sort of stuff; it really makes my mouth water... MORE MORE MORE! As the bishop said to the tea lady. This at least my idea of perfect conditions. Were you like the only person there?! Great stuff. Kip

Jack I have examined that picture and I think you need to learn some new stuff. There are a huge number of mistakes with your technique. Of dressing. - no trendy headband from the 90s - no turtleneck with the name of the resort printed on the front - no neon!!!???? My faith in your advice is shattered ;-)

If the wind is blowing at all, go straight for the top, Chair 23 and hit the paranoids plus scotties, for some (I learned a new word off this forum) "WINDPACK".... buffed smooth by the wind blowing up the slope, you can lay down hard carved turns all day. There might be a few bumps on the way, but if you wanted it super smooth and flat, you might as well be on Chair 2 or 3 with the crowds. The windpack is the single best part of riding mammoth ;-)

>>I forgot the name of the documentary, but it was on professional car theives. They said that all extra anti-theft devices do is increase the time it takes to steal it. I think that is the point; if it is a board locked near a board that isn't, thieves will probably go for the easier pickings. I think that the thefts mostly are due to tourists to the area; at Mammoth the thefts used to be boasted about by quite a few Aussies and Kiwis (of which I am one). Er a Kiwi, not a thief. I think that the feeling is sometimes one like, well Americans are much richer, especially LA people, so we deserve it, and of course many didn't have proper jobs, so taking a board back home paid for some of their trip. Of course, we are talking about a tiny percentage, but if you are on the wrong side of the equation, then life is not so good. The binding thing is one way. Another is to use a screw on one of the unused insert holes, attach a loop or lock to that, then drill out the head, so it cannot be removed easily. When you need to take the screw out, just file in a screw head and whip it out then. That said, I've never locked gear at any of the resorts I've ridden, and never had anything swiped. Still, as they say ya can't be too careful. FOr that reason I ride really old ****e gears, and deliberately spend my entire day looking like a retard; this means that anyone seeing my gears thinks they are for morons, and thus doesn't steal it. I suggest you try my approach ;-)

THis was explained to me but someone like Jack probably has a stronger (and better) opinion. 1. You naturally stand with a slight difference between the feet 3-5 degrees 2. The additional leverage off a slightly flatter back foot helps drive out of turns, especially toe sides. What I have noticed; when I used to ride face the nose style, then the back foot angle could be higher with heel lift mandatory. When I ride Swiss super rotation style (not sure how to call this but this is what I was taught by Swiss racer coach guy) for cruising around the hill, the heel lift seemed less necessary, because I was now flexing along the angle of the boots, rather than with my hips facing forward more than the angle of the back foot (if that makes sense). I have never ridden angles higher than 55 degrees; for me it is 55 front, 50 back; I used to ride 51 49 and the slightly bigger differential seems to help power through the end of the turn on the toe side. Mind you; about 4 years since I last rode, and it could all be different now ;-)

Thailand is probably the best prepared; major shortage of RH negative blood; positive blood levels are fine, but RH negative is very rare among Thai people. Major companies all have donated food and water and other necessities; everyone is trying to pull together to assist. That said, it is still a disaster zone. Sri Lanka and India are the ones that need a lot of help; no infrastructure and thousands dead. It is indeed sad that more warning could have saved so many. There are a lot of tragedies in this world, this one was totally unexpected. Kip

Anything less than a genuine knee deep is pretty much totally rideable; you can even ride asyms in powder of that sort of depth; Bumps are no problem; in fact is is kinda fun to just leave the bindings where they are, and ride soul style, all weight in the back foot straight through the bumps. Over knee deep, and it starts to get hairy. The skinny boards just don't have enough floation; if you come to a halt, it is really hard to get going again.... at most resorts you don't get that sort of snow so many times per year; never in NZ; I've had maybe 10 days in total in my life deeper than knee deep all over the mountain?! I guess a swallow tail and softies is the way to go.....

It really is unreal the amount of damage. I live in Thailand, in Bangkok, and this is the only news around at the moment. Thailand has never experienced a tidal wave before; especially of this nature; the warning systems were all on the opposite coast. Many people heard the wave coming, like the sound of a jet, and headed to upper floors or higher ground. A lot of tourists and the people who work on the beach and in resorts were the ones who passed away or got hurt. It struck at 9am, and basically from the reports of people there, the sea sucked back hundreds of meters, exposing the rocks and then roared back in. Most of the people on low lying islands were just swept out to sea. The sea seemed to just rise and then not recede again. There were several natural warnings, which the larger resorts and many fishermen saw;crabs carwled up all over the beach starting early morning, and animals were for the most part very restless, even in Bangkok and other cities a thousand miles away. One of the members of the royal family here has died. Hundred of tourists and Thais enjoying the day after Xmas have died; thousands are injured. Businesses will be bankrupted because most insurance companies won't pay for acts of god. It is all very very sad, and at least everyone is pulling together - with water, food, medical support, financial support, no questions asked transportation to their home countries. I was in USA for the northridge quake in 1994; the damage was far less than what we are seeing here on TV. If any one has family or friends needing help here in Bangkok, please PM me, or contact me directly via email kipsan@gaysornbkk.com Kip

This is not so normal, and I good bootfitter should be able to fix this. I suggest you go back to Footloose, and ask for the guy called Cordy I think his name is - their "master blaster guy" Canting should help, and there may be a slight change to the cork. BTW Do you stretch before you ride each day? Specifically, you might like to consider stretching your calf msucles, doing lots of ankle rotations and so on. Additionally, if you do sports that will build up your foot strength that may help. You should consciously go through wriggling all toes before putting on your boots; massaging the base of your foot right in the centreso that nerve runs in the right place is also a good idea. Get some decent quality socks. and Check they aren't bunching. Make sure that your boots are warm when you put them on; not a good idea to leave them in the car overnight for instance! As a last resort, get voltarin or similar anti inflamatory cream, and smear generously on your feet before riding. It works. But it also will make you bald eventually, so be careful about that ;-) I'll be honest; other than the current pair of Raichle ski boots I have also had pain in every pair of boots I've owned. It really is worth spending time going through piece by piece to isolate each sore spot, then fix it. Incidentally, when my riding improved, my foot pain really started to reduce. If you have try to ride a little more relaxed, and not do too much of the face the nose style or leaning way out extreme carving stuff, your feet are under far less stress, and the turn is transfered into using more rotation rather than powering up your feet so much. Especially on the toe side turns - in fact for a while I used to be able to lay it down with my boots completely undone; riding off the balls of my feet more and against the tongue, rather than lifting my heel at all (which I couldn't since it would ilft straight out of the boot. Just for end of day runs and the like. Kip

nice one.

>>wearing them at jaunty angles well, i DO like this idea for a helmet. Wally Snipes: be careful what you are accusing people of who don't wear a helmet. How would you feel if you hit a kid, and killed them with your fancy helmet? Check out the injuries of American Football vs. rugby - aside from the fact that AMfootballers don't know how to tackle properly (joke) a fair few of the injuries are cause by a rock hard piece of plastic colliding with the soft flesh of a person. Besides which your little story is asking me to take responsibility for ensuring some kid I don't know and collide with is wearing a helmet.... you are totally confusing! For many people like myself, I ride within my ability, I know what is going on around me, and I choose not to be a moron. Judging by a fair few of the people (both helmeted and non-helmeted) that bomb green/blue/black trails with skant regard for anyone around them, I would say I am far less likely to cause an injury to myself or anyone else. With or without a helmet. There are several other areas which are far more critical in reducing injury which no one seems to be mentioning, because many think that a helmet is a big issue: - riders not being complete tossers in crowded areas and causing injuries to others with reckless behaviour - education and maintenance of the park to prevent dangerous jumping behaviour - restrictions on the number of people on runs, and compatible riding styles and levels (e.g. limiting ticket sales) - preventing knee injuries - stretching and prevention through fitness - teaching carvers to friggin look slightly uphill when turning at right angles across runs - riders not smoking it up or getting drunk Until someone can show me the levels of injury caused to head vs. knees etc; and then show me that: - head injuries are a significant injury risk to people not in the park and therefore I am moderately likely to suffer from one - that a head injury is significantly damaging to me (e.g. brain damage etc; I've had several concussions from boxing and that's no problem) or others - that head injuries are significantly reduced using a helmet - that wearing a helmet will not increase my likelihood of suffering a head injury through worse vision, aliens, etc - that the ROI on a helmet outweighs other measures (wearing a brace on my knees, wrist guards, new bindings, other lame measures) then I might consider it. The survey above is a sample size of well under 100, and the number of the subset using a helmet is 17; I would not consider using research like this for a market research on some aspect of advertising, let alone making a decision regarding investing a significant amount of money on something of what seems to me to be questionable benefit to me. I do not buy the "well I am better off from wearing one, so you should be too" argument. The logical extreme of this is that someone who sits around and doesn't snowboard is least likely to suffer a head injury on the snow, and therefore I should do like them. There is a risk/return element to most aspects of sports, and until someone can demonstrate that there is a significant risk I am incurring by not wearing a helmet, that would be prevented by wearing a helmet, then I choose to stay in a wool hat. For a country based on freedoms, it amazes me that in almost every thread about personal freedom, there is an ongoing accusation that people need to be protected from themselves with laws of questionable benefit. Kip

>>If you stand flat-footed in riding position and bend your knees, your back foot comes off the floor first, unless you shift your body back Only if you are the face the front guy. Try facing inline with your feet angles, and this issue goes away. So this is why the extremecarving guys can ride flat and flat. That said, I agree, it is easier with heel lift/cant on the back for sure ;-) Kip

Yo which ski boots did you switch from and which raichles are you in now? I am doing the same switch (after trying before with other naff boots) and am really worried that they will be all soft and spongey. curious.... kip

simply awesome! This is what makes me wanna race so much!

I see that ebay is selling lift tickets online; a lot of people going to the Warren Miler film mostly. Anyone ever buy tickets last year? Mostly they are expire in Jan; I am coming over in Feb/Mar.... so these won';t do. So... my question... does the bay of E continue to sell tickets throughout the season? And also of course, can they be trusted? And are there better deals than this to be had in other ways in the Tahoe area? What's the dealio? Kip

Go with Mammoth in general. June has good grooming, true, but it is not particularly steep, and IMHO it is boring and the lifts are in some pretty odd places - on some of the runs you end up having to bomb across these big flats - especially around that lame cafe at the midstation. Mammoth gets quite crowded, but if it is blowing up the slopes, and buffing out the cornice bowl and scotties, then go for some high speed blasts using either the gondola (all the way through the crowds on chair 1 area or chair 23 respectively). Just in terms of speed, it is hard to beat the gondola's speed; what about 8 minutes for a 1km of vert. You could easily do 4 or 5 runs in an hour and wear your self out most nicely! The nice open groomers though will be fairly crowded... halfway between warming hut and the main side are a few easy groomers; super slow chairs, but not so crowded. Chair 12 side sucks. Backside is too hard to get to, and wastes time. Chair 18/Chair 2 (I think the names may have changed now) are the best carving runs, BUT like chair 1 they may be quite crowded. A lot of the imports from LA have to drive back so often the afternoons of a holiday weekend might now be quite as bad as you think. You may also be able to snag a cheap pass off someone else doing a halfday - check on this board maybe even! It depends though; with not much time, June does have its merits; half a day is not enough time to get bored with the about 5 good runs on the upper mountain (the top right side is the best area, if I recall correctly); although you have to waste time going up to the midstation I suppose. Plus June is basically all easy groomers which is probably what you are looking for. If you could somehow tilt June up an extra 10 degrees it would probably be quite a good mountain, as it is I have no idea how it manages to stay in business ;-) Kip

Dr Zone This is all excellent factual based stuff. However, the sample size of 70 is mighty small, and the circumstances surrounding each injury are probably far more important than whether a helmet was worn or not. Since you asked this question - circumstances surrounding each injury - please outline so we can learn more. I doubt we could then do much deeper analysis, since we'd be dealing with samples of like 10 people or less, which is starting to send the error right up. 17 people wearing helmets? What if most helmet wearers tended to be more advanced riders, and thus better able to know how to fall? I work in marketing database management and market research - if I presented stuff like this, the first comment would be - are we to believe just 17 people and make decisions based on this? But I am not a statistician...maybe medical studies can somehow factor this away. Back to the issue of what the root cuase of the problem is: for instance if all injuries were sustained in the park, irrespective of wearing a helmet or not, then logically, one could say "not riding the park makes snowboarding a whole lot safer than riding the park" - am I understand this correctly? I think helmets make a whole lot of sense in the park, race courses and for big jumping. But for carving? Just don't see that is serves any point - especially in somewhere like Tahoe or Mammoth where it is almost impossible to find something hard to run your head against - well excluding some of the himbos from LA with them big pecs and arnold style musselly dussellies. Kip

Well, all good ideas; THe first run of the day, I usually use as a warm up to centre up on by board. I don't have my boots fully tightened, and I make a conscious effort to ride at a low speed doing the following drills on a groomed intermediate slope: 1. Feeling the edges: a series of skid turns in very very quick succession; rate is probably something 1-2 a second. THe purpose is to familiarise with the point at which the edge breaks away. Similar to a push pull but not carved and this keeps the speed very very low 2. Gentle carving with ongoing forward backward body shifts - going into a series of gentle simple carves at low speed with no up/down body weighting; simply shifting weight from the front foot right on the nose all the way to the back foot near the tail and back; around 2 to 3 complete weight shifts back and forth during one long slow carved turn 3. Tighten up the boots to moderate 4. Cross over/cross under/cross through turns - the fun begins. Go through each turn type - I am a big rotator (I first boarded in USA west coast, where people don't really rotate much, then a Swiss guy taught the other style instead which is a bit more practical in variable NZ snow) so work on each turn type, consciously varying speed and radiuses; however keeping all the turns in the medium to low speed zone 5. Fully tighten boots and ride! I don't know why but the first 2 steps always set me up for a good day. When I rush to get cranking I always have poor timing and not quite as balanced; the conscous effort to think about things initially always has me set up well at least until lunch! As for touching the snow as per some of these pics....hmm... it looks not so good, it wears out gloves, and it serves no purpose. Plus, if you ride in somewhere like NZ with lumps of ice around, one day, you'll break or sprain a finger when you hit something. Better to keep the hands away from the snow, and use your edges IMHO During riding over the day, I like to think about my eyeline, and my turning points in advance of actually turning. I usually have a line planned, then I try to stick to that on the way down. I don't really think about the hand positions, but having seen videos they seem ok. I often try to think about being smooth and efficient; hence the need not to stuff things up by putting my hand in the snow! Kip

Come on here; if someone has a bad product and terrible service, they deserve to go bust. If someone has a great product, but not always perfect service, then they need to improve. If enough ppl like what they are doing, they should be able to make money out of it; if Madd are not good enough business ppl to run their company at a profit (despite sellling in advance, having decent demand for their product and selling at a higher price than competitors) then I would say they don't need engineers to help them; they need someone who knows how to to run a business to offer some advice on cashflow management, customer service, pricing strategies and procurement. If Madd are reading this, then hopefully they have a good understanding of how they need to improve; summary: - awesome product - poor logistics - poor customer communication Our existance as alpine riders owes nothing to MADD; if I recall there were a ton of boards around before MADD, and there are still a fair few around now. As a potential customer, I think they have some ways to improve, and most of it is fairly easy compared to making a better board; just basic improvements with email to customers! I am not an American, but surely one of the founding principles of USA is freedom to state what we think?! Then again, maybe this is all just a wind up, and I am falling for it?!!! I say...bring back the Checker Pig!! Kip