NateW

I haven't heard from Bruce in a while but I think I should have a blue flamer soon. I shall certainly post pictures when it arrives. :) Does anyone have (or have expericence with) both Coiler and Donek Freecarves? I'm curious about the differences between them, especially objective stuff like nose and tail height and shape. Come to think of it, does anyone have both Coiler and Donek boards and their respective stiffness ratings? I'm wondering how to convert from one manufacturer's rating system to the other (roughly - I realize they probably go about meansuring and quantifying it very differently).

I ride switch a lot, both skidding and carving, but I haven't really pushed myself to carve hard switch. I have frontside 180s down pat in both directions; backsides are still a challenge but that's something I'm actively working on.

Sidecut-o-matic says: 16.5m http://www.natew.com/frame_main.cgi/software/snow/html.Main

I can't do Sundays, but how about Stevens next Saturday?

Anything from Volant.

I busted a heel pin a while back - year before last, I think. It was my first or second day on those heels. They were replaced under warranty and my current heels have ~45 days on them and have been through much worse. How old were the heels that you had the failure with? My guess - based on a sample size of only 4 heels - is that they either break early or not at all. I'm wondering if your experience was the same. I like the Intec system, and have another pair of Intec binders coming with my next board.

This business with keeping the upper body upright really helped my toeside turns. All this time I've been trying to keep my upper body leaned inward at the angle of inclination, both toeside and heelside... I have no problem doing that toeside, but it's also the reason my toesides tend to be wider. I went riding last Sunday (first day since my sprain on new-year's) and tried to keep my upper body upright during toesides, same as it is on heelsides. 'Pinch the spare tire,' as someone put it. Presto... my toesides are as tight as my heelsides. At least, I have it for quick back-and-forth cross-under carving. For long 180-degree carves on steeper slopes I still have some work to do, but at least now I know what to work on. Thanks for the discussion, everybody.

Does anyone have any experience with the Goltes snowboards that Dan Yoja is selling? They look pretty... but how do they ride?

I dunno... I looked at that photo and saw Pater leaning forward (toward the nose), not upward (away from the snow). But in any case, this has been an interesting thread. :)

Just to clarify (because I really wasn't clear, at all), when I said "This guy's feet, hips, and shoulders aren't lined up. He's angulating from the hips...." I was referring to the picture posted by Digger, not the the picture posted by me. In the picture I posted (of Peter from Tahoe), the rider's feet, hips, and shoulders ARE lined up. Compare that to the photo Digger posted. Peter's carve is s what I figured a heelside carve should look like. He is not angulating from the hips at all. His angulation is pretty close to zero - with maybe something going on in his legs to reduce the board's edge angle just a bit, but let's ignore that for now. It seems to me that the anonymous guy in the first photo could get the same inclination, angulation, and height of CG, if he moved his hips to the outside - he'd have basically the same posture as Peter, but with less inclination than Peter has in Peter's photo. Would that be better technique? I dunno, I'm asking. Another way to look at it.... should the rider's spine lean inward, so that when seen from the front the rider's spine is parallel to the angle of inclination? Or should the rider's spine look vertical when seen from the front - because the rider gets lower by leaning forward? I'm having a hard time describing what's on my mind, I might have to strap in on carpet and take some photos to explain what I'm talking about.

The guy in the photo Digger posted, his feet, hips, and shoulders aren't lined up. He's angulating from the hips. Maybe that's not a bad thing? I've been aiming to get my hips lined up between my feet and shoulders, as seen from the front... Below is a photo posted by drzone to the 'post your photos' thread, that shows what I'm talking about. That's what I figured 'butt over the board' really meant... I guess I have been thinking of 'butt inside' and 'shoulders outside' as being basically the same thing.

Stuff I have: CustomCraft 170x23, 10m Coiler 174x21,13m On the way: Coiler 174x17, 11.5m Stuff I need: TBD 180ish, ?, 12ish TBD 185ish, ?, 15-16 Specs for the next boards depend on how I feel about the one that's on the way. Width is totally up in the air. But when I have all of these things, my life will be complete, and I'll be able to die happy. Every time I feel the urge to chide my girlfriend about her coats and shoes, I have to remember my snowboard fetish.

I have a set of Raichle Carbon X-Bones. (Deeluxe is Raichle re-branded.) They came with small plastic wedges that give you a couple degrees of heel lift and/or a couple degrees of cant. With both sets install, the rear binding is at about the same angle as a TD with a three-degree disc. I kinda wish they came with two sets of wedges, as I ride my Bombers with two three-degree discs.

Two things... First, to Brad, who started this thread: try carving with your weight further forward. Just put more weight on your front leg in whatever way is comfortable, and see if that helps. If it does help, you can either adjust your style to keep more weight on that leg, or move your bindings forward to get the same weight distribution with no change in posture. Not to disparage any of the advice given so far... it's good, and should be considered even if this does solve your current problem. It's just that weight shift is really easy to experiment with, so I think it's worth trying out. I had trouble with the back of my board skidding out a year or two ago, found that leaning forward helped, moved my bindings forward and liked that better than leaning forward. My heelsides improved a lot. I'll probably move my bindings around once or twice more before I'm satisfied. And the other thing.... The guy in that photo looks to me like he's got his hips too far to the inside. I ride similarly, and have been working on getting my shoulders lower down, my spine lined up with the board, my butt up higher and over the back of the board. I always considered this butt-down shoulders-up posture to be something I should work on, but in the last couple months I've been seeing it a lot in photos posted to this site. I was gonna bring this up in the 'post your pictures' thread, but kept putting it off... and this thread is a more appropriate place. I have to ask - am I taking the butt-over-the-board thing too far, or am I right in thinking that I (and the guy in the photo) need to work on aiming the spine forward, keeping the butt up, and getting the shoulders lower and more forward?

I propose the Prow, Holistic, And Tail measurement system. Then we can git down with the PHAT numbers, yo. Shizzle.

I had a 178 as well, and still have many fond memories. :-) My board had two insert patterns, a large 5-hole pattern with about a 24 inch stance, centered, and a narrow 5-hole pattern, around 18 inches, set back a couple inches. No modern binding will work with either set. I made some UHMW plastic rectangles that acted like riser plates, with 5-hole bolts going down into the board and T-nuts in a 4-hole pattern facing up. Then I put on some Nitro hard boot bindings. It was heavy with all the extra hardware, but it was a lot of fun. IIRC, the waist is 24cm (narrow by freeride standards) and the sidecuts are 10m toeside and 9m heelside. Yours might be a little different, but that's probably close. The board claims to be a 178 but actually measures closer to 175 or 174. Someone theorized that 178 was the length of the top sheet before the tips got curled up. :-) If you measure the tip and waist widths and the running length and sidecut depths, you can calculate the sidecut radii at my web site, http://www.natew.com/ Anyway, good find. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

I rode hard boots on freeride boards for years, now I ride a Coiler AM all the time. On a freeride board, high angles (well, 45/30 to 45/40 or so) make it kind of tiring to keep the board on edge because there's so much underhang. My advice would be to stick with your current setup a bit longer before doing anything... I think there's a good chance that what you're dealing with has more to do with technique than equipment... you'll get smoother and more comfortable on your alpine setup just with more practice. If you really don't like it, a wide alpine board (~21cm waist) like the Coiler AM might be just the ticket. Hard boots on a freeride board works, but IMO it's far from optimal. You either have low angles or lots of underhang, neither of which are idea. If I could go back in time I'd tell myself to get a skinny board a lot sooner. :-)

I'd love to join you all but my knee is still not back to normal. :(

The same subcontractor that makes most of the brands you find in sports shops. Me, cynical? :)

On the one hand, there's the notion that the course was so easy the hard boots had no advantage. On the other hand there's the notion that the course was challenging enough that skiers had a 20% advantage. How can those both be true? I did a little bit of ski snowboard slalom a few years ago, and my time on skis was about 15% faster than my time on a board (32 vs 36 seconds). Low-40s vs high-50s seems like a huge difference. Skiers had a big advantage, why didn't hardbooters? I have no doubt that hard boots would be a big advantage on a more conventional racecourse (gets, etc), so what was it about this course that made hard boots irrelevant while making skis such an advantage? Do skiers normally beat boarders so handily in Xxxx-cross races? I guess I can imagine poles and a wide stance being pretty helpful when riding in a tight pack, whereas a narrow board might even be a disadvantage.

And 202.9 with a javelin.

I just scored 323.5 with a skipper, but it took at least five minutes of missing every time before I actually started nailing them. :(

I just wanted to say that some of the best carving turf at my 'home' hills is in the terrain parks, between the jumps. I suspect it's because that's the only place where I find steep slopes that don't get moguled out. And I ride in a one-piece. F**k alla you two-piece snobs. :)

Like it says on the web site, huh? Boy do I feel silly now. :) Thanks though!

Ethan: yes, both. Mark: While I don't see any drawback to the toe-lever strap idea, I also don't think it will help much. I think the binding releases at the rear, not the front. The toe lever fits the toe of the boot very accurately - much more so than the heel bail fits the heel of the boot. Also, and perhaps most important, the heel of the boot is under much more lateral force than the toe. The lower half of the shell can twist to absorb those forces. I think it's the lateral force (lateral relative to the boot (regardless of stance angle)) that cause release. I wasn't exactly watching my heels very closely when the bindings popped open, so some of the above is speculation, but that's my theory... if you set the bindings loose enough, you can pop the heel out by bearing down sideways. I think that's the same "failure mode" I experienced, just with tighter bindings and more force.