CaRtharsis

Welcome to the club!!!

Is there anyone the the Sugarloaf area that has contacts at the resort for possible group rates? Not sure about the rest of you but the sooner I am able to provide my wife with a firm date, the better my odds are at getting it. Work, school and children keep us busy!

Thanks AMK. I changed the title so as not to be confused with official ECES discussion.

Not even if I ask real nice and promise to make pancakes for you this year? They were a hit with my housemates last year.

Since I'm tired of the heat and the bugs I'm ready to look ahead to better, brighter, whiter days. Realisitcally with work, University and family I don't forsee a trip to SES. So I figured I'd post up and see if there existed any interest in a meet about the same time next year (early March) at a venue yet to be determined. I know Sugarloaf was thrown around at last years ECES as a possible destination. So lets hear it! Update 07/09/10 I've finally added a poll based on the rates Ian has provided below in Post #19. To make this work we need feedback. I have never arranged this type of event so I am counting on input from those interested to help make it happen. Oh, and don't expect the planning to be on par with that of your dedicated ECES volunteers.

I believe Bruce had a very early start to his golf season this year. We did not fare well fat all or snow up here this past winter. I do believe I talked to him on a couple days where he was actually doing both!

I'd be interested in this as well as I have noticed the same thing.

Look, I am not interested in entertaining an open a discussion here on my issues with Catek. As has been illustrated above I did my venting in a thread that was germain to the topic at the time. This was a thread started by Jeff which means he will be receiving notification of posts made here. I believe enough time and energy have already been expended so lets drop this.

Jeff would you please contact me. I have been trying to make contact with you since last March regading a binding failure both via email and phone message. Chris

I just want to say that its very cruel of you to post that!! LOL JK We have been snowless since early March. Shovelled the last of it off my lawn when I returned from ECES. This season was abnormally short. I got a severe jones last night and had to spend an hour flipping through video on Youtube. December is SOOO far away. :(

Use a little vaseline on your q-tip or a small jewellers screwdriver.

So yeah the weather in Florida is actually nicer than the weather in Ottawa. Surprising huh? And another interesting fact. I've only been here six hours and I've already noted that there have been more bikini's in use here than I saw all last summer in Ottawa. Thinking a quick trip over to Daytona will be in order on Thursday.....

I have a pair of 324s as well if the others dnt work out.

Sent you an email with pics.

The bindings have 3 seasons on them. Qualifying that my seasons range from 10-12 evenings and 3-4 full days. The binding that failed had been adjusted and tightened perhaps 6 runs prior to its failure. They are removed cleaned and maintained regulary. Chris I will get a measurement this weekend. Just for clarification it was not the bolt that failed. It was the spherical nut. From the Catek website I read them to be 10mm but I will confirm. Chris

I hear that. My wife finally clued in on Sunday that the black board in teh garage is not the same board I started the season with. I tried to pass it off has her having a poor memory by she is pretty sharp that girl. My own fault for leaving it out, and having her take measurements from it several times while Bruce and I were figuring out my VSR. I'm just going to have to be a little more careful next season when Bruce builds me another!

Chris just for clarification I am not complaining about the binding. I am quite happy with its performance. It allows me to play and tweak every trip to the hill. Thats why I purchased them initially. I understand failures occur. I work in aviation and a large portion of my job in system design is failure mode analysis. It is expected and assumed that eventually any part of a system may fail. Yes my binding failed. I understand how it failed. I tried contacting the manufacturer so that i could understand better if its a random failure or something I had done to set up the failure mode. Could I have prevented this? My beef in this situation, as is echoed above, is the lack of customer service. I have approached you in the past at Andrea's recommendation to purchase items becuse you seem to be able to get a response from CATEK. I have queried them directly about parts availability numerous times in the past as previously stated with no response. So now I'm down to one set of bindings with no expectation of being able to get replacement parts for the second. Luckily with the temps forecast for the remainder of the week I won't be needing them.

I have to agree on the issue of poor customer service from Catek. I have not in the 2 years of attempting to contact them received any sort of response either via email or phone. This would consist of dozens of attempted phone calls, no less than 10 voice messages and perhaps 20 emails. Never the less I have 2 sets of OS2 step-in's and have been quite content with them up until about 2 weeks ago. At Tremblant I had the king pin snap on my front foot while transitioning into a heelside turn. Given the pitch of the slope it was maybe 100' or more downhill before I was able to arrest the slide. My left knee took some abuse as of course it was still attached to the VSR which was intent on completing the turn. That happened on March 12th. The 15th I sent them an email inquiring as to teh availability of replacement capture nuts as they are out of stock on their website. I went on to talk about the failure of the binding and queried if this is a common failure or totally a random occurance. I also asked if I should be replacing the failed component seasonally? The long and the short of it is I would expect the company to respond once notified of a failure of their product. That would make sense to me, or maybe I just expect too much? I am seriously considering ditching both pairs and moving into the TD camp. And yes I hope someone from Catek reads this and gets a little annoyed at the public laundering of issues and discontent. Perhaps then they might respond to the community they rely on for their business. My apologies to everyone for my rant.

Go North. Plenty of reports of good snow at St. So.

Anyone game for one last kick at the cat on Monday?

Hey. Any chance you will be riding there again Monday?

Anyone riding tomorrow?

Paul email me your contact info. I may try and join you Friday.

Any one ride this past weekend? I have Wednesday free and would like to get one more day. If you have any info on snow conditions at your local resorts please post up!!

Well right now I am sitting at the bottom of the lift on the north side in the back of Billys Pathfinder. I just broke the kingpin on my front foot of my Cateks. Wasn't fun. Tweaked the back knee a little but no big deal. There is still full coverage here so depending on the weather and useage I should be good for another couple weeks for sure. However my season officially ended with the broken binding. I did learn something from the experience however...when taboganning downhill on your board ensure that all of the vents on your pants are closed!!!