Steve Dold

"This content requires Adobe Flash player 9. Would you like to install it now?" I guess not!

I think it depends on what you want. I like the terrain off of the main high-speed lift, but I can see where someone who is a better carver might be bored with it. It does have a lot of flat sections. That doesn't make it a bad resort, or even a bad carving resort. It's just not for everyone. But for guys like me that don't get in 30+ days a season, and don't mind shallowing out the turns in between the steep(er) sections, it might be just the thing.

On my trip to Aspen this past season my wife and I went to Buttermilk, Aspen Highlands and Snowmass, and we had the best time by far at Buttermilk, thanks to the easy parking close to the lifts and lodge, and the terrain was just what we wanted. It was about 1/3 the hassle of going to Highlands, and 1/100th the hassle of getting in/out of Snowmass. I'll never forget what a pain it was navigating around snowmass's streets and condos, dealing with the gondola, etc. and what a relief it was going back to Buttermilk. If the masses carved, I'd be a lot more nervous on the hill!

Hey Dave, glad it wasn't more serious. How do you think it started, was it hot wood from the bandsaw?

Tick, you are a genius. I need to write this stuff down. It's stuff like this that's making me really look forward to being a dad.Sorry for hijacking the thread!

Thanks Dave! We're really excited. I might get lucky and only have to pay for Junior college or beauty academy. Actually things aren't too bad, I did get the OK to get a season pass for next season, so boarding isn't out, just no super-damp metal boards for a while. The rest of you guys can laugh all you want, it'll happen to you someday. :rolleyes: Chris, I didn't realize that's what they were for. Cool.

It would be fun to experiment with devices mounted to the board that could "dampen" it while riding. Just something mounted under the bindings, like a layer of some material. I just found out that I'm going to be a dad :) Which means that, no matter what technology brings, I won't be buying any new boards for the next 18 years

I'm buying it from a friend of mine who is a small dealer for Ibis. The Carbon Mojo is pretty new but it's gotten good reviews so far, I've been riding one (borrowed) and it's great but I have nothing to compare it to in FS except for an old Specialized FSR Comp that was a lot heavier and bobbed quite a bit. The DW-Link on the Ibis is supposed to just about eliminate squatting and it seems to do it pretty well, it was the first thing I noticed riding it because I expected it to ride like the old FSR. Check out the reviews on mtbreview.com or ibiscycles.com. The disk brakes are great but take some getting used to because they work so well.

That's funny Dave. I used to fly RC a lot but never helis, they scared the crap outta me. I have been thinking of getting back into planes but the last thing I need right now is another hobby draining my finances. I'm switching over to mountain biking, I ordered a new bike that should arrive in June, and I have between now and then to figure out a way to pay for it :rolleyes:

It sounds like you need to make a thread's worth (or two) of adjustment in a bail, using the instructions that come with the bindings. There's no need to shave any material off the boot. Read more here.Edit: Whoops! Sorry, I thought you were talking about TD-2's.

Let us know what you find. I can't think of any reason that those pieces would be curved on the bottom, unless they were sliced on a band saw that was pushing too hard, something like that. I don't know how they make them.

I'd call them and talk about it, if there is a problem with some of them they will want to know about it. On a flat surface mine don't rock at all like yours do in the videos.

Corey, the only problem I could see with your system is if the center disks aren't flat on the bottom. They should be flat to make even contact with the board. You could check that by setting them on something flat, like a table saw surface. Mine don't rock at all the way you described, but if the cant disk (big triangular thing) was a little curved, I wouldn't care because it's made to have movement anyway as others here said.

Vlad's right, I had a board nearly ruined by corrosion in the inserts over last summer, storing the board in the waterproof board bag didn't help either. Whatever moisture was there after my last ride sat in there all summer and really crapped up the inserts

Probably because even with fore/aft flex, they are still much stiffer laterally than softboots.

Hey Joel, last year my Kirkwood unlimited pass was $360 in a big group buy that a bunch of us do every year. At over $60 for a day ticket that payed for itself pretty fast. Keep an eye out for any posts or emails that might go around asking about that deal on the Tahoecarvers site. Also my wife took a snowboard lesson at Kirkwood last year and at the end of the lesson, they offered her a deal called the "First Adventure Pass" that gives unlimited lifts, rentals and lessons for one year. Talk about a bargain. It's not valid on lift 5 and 10 (the blacks), but it was still an amazing deal at about $300 (that included the first lesson & rental). Only catch is that you can only do it once, it's supposed to be for "beginners". Ask about it if you have anyone going that hasn't already had a pass there. Our season was crappy (warm) and I haven't gone this year much, but did break even. Most times I go 20-30 times, that's around $1500 in passes. Sometimes stay in South Lake Tahoe for $55/night at the High Country Inn. OK place and you can walk across the street to the Lake Tahoe Pizza company.

Scott Firestone has pretty good write-up about this here. I think he did a good job and it makes a lot of sense. Go Scott. I think Bumpyride has a very good point. Technically we have the right of way for now, BUT if we don't ride like we have some of the responsibility, we could see rule number 8 appear that will read "Always look uphill before making a sudden, unexpected maneuver, and yield to others". To a skier trying to pass, each one of our turns is a sudden, unexpected maneuver.

Amen brother. I think that would be a good thing to do.

Go to Aspen sometime around the 10th of February

Widening would be easier than lengthening. Is that all you need? I widened my right AF-600 using a device I made to push from the inside while heating with a heat gun from the outside. It worked fine and I got about almost 1/4" of extra room. The trick is making something to push fairly hard from the inside. Mine was a couple of shaped wooden blocks with a threaded rod between them that pushed the blocks apart when turned. I'm pretty sure I've seen shop tools that do this on the internet. I'd suggest a bootfitter for a nice pair but for an old pair that cost next to nothing, why not? I don't know if a hair drier would have worked, it might have but you have to be pretty patient since it takes a while to heat up the boot. It might help to heat the whole thing up to maybe 150F in an oven first, then pull it out and hit the spot with the heat gun right away.

"The angle of the knees and ankles makes it almost appear the rider is about to sit down into a chair." Or a toilet? Well, maybe it'll get a few people interested in carving.

I think you got it. I meant reasons not to do it the way you were thinking :-) I think when you flex your board, the end of the binding will dig into the topsheet. These plates don't flex. You can buy disks that have 0, 3 or 6 degrees of tilt (toward the nose for rear foor, or tail for front foot). If you have a tilted disk, you need a long bumper and a short one, but if you order the ones for the disk you have, they will be right. They are sized to fit either 0, 3 or 6 degree disks. In the 0 degree set they happen to be the same length. And you are right about the pre-loading of the bumper. At the very least the bumper should touch the board, but I prefer to have some compression going on, to be sure that the bumper is going to help distribute the force as soon as the board begins to flex. At each end of the plate, there are two holes to choose from where the bumper can mount, plus the option of using a flat washer or not with the bumper, to "fine tune" how much the bumper squishes when you tighten the binding to the disk (which is already mounted to the board). Somewhere on this site is a much better write-up on the setting up of these. Let me try to find it. Here it is: http://www.bomberonline.com//articles/setup.cfm

The bumpers reduce the pulling force on the insert as you guessed, so if you don't want toe or heel lift, get flat TD-1 disks and the bumpers for that disk (equal heights) of the softness you want. Make sure there is some compression of the bumper as you tighten the binding to the board to pre-load the bumpers. I think 1/16" or so should be good. Reasons for doing it are scratched up topsheet, odd flex pattern, screws that need an extra washer that doesn't fit too good, inability to adjust (rotate) the bindings, and knowing in the back of your mind that you did it weirdly. A bunch of us have extra parts and if you decide to get the parts we'll be happy to look in our junkboxes and try to get you what you need.

Wow Sammy, you really got that thing on edge. Nice!

Felix, have you ridden a Coiler EX, G-Force or Donek Blade? What other wide boards did you compare the swoard to?