NateW

Do you want to make quicker / tighter carving turns, or quick back-and-forth skidding turns? The only way to get a tighter carve is to get a higher edge angle. More speed helps get more inclination, though it can also mean covering more distance between carves as you switch edges. For a given speed you can use more angulation (bending your body to get more edge angle). The best tip I've heard so far for angulation has been "drive your knees into the turn." Toeside is pretty straightforward, heelside it helps a lot to have your hips over the back of the board - or should I say it's much harder if your butt moves to the inside of the turn. With your butt out back, you can easily push your knees to the inside, which raises the edge angle, which tightens the carve. This is something you can practice at low-to-moderate speeds and then apply to higher speeds (at least, that's the approach I took when I got a new board with a 30% larger sidecut and had to really work on this). For skidding turns, I find that it helps to think of my front foot as travelling straight down the fall line, with my back foot swinging back and forth behind me. And it helps to get the board light when changing edges and rotating the board - extend your legs quickly as you finish a turn, and/or suck your legs up quickly as you switch edges.

People who cut in the lift line. Closely followed by the guy who ran into me from above while I was between carves today. At least he was smart enough to accept responsibility though.

Probably the 9th, both days if I'm lucky.

I doubt I'll be doing any midweek riding while I have my current job. On the other hand, I'm probably going to take a few weeks off starting late January.

I was just writing in a quad burn thread, here's a definite relationship to that factor. More lean makes tight heel side carves a little easier, but not dramatically so. I've been riding position 5 for a while and my heelsides are still as tight as my toesides. Standing taller feels a little less stable at first, but on the other hand I think that's a fun exercise. Experiment and see what you prefer.

If you have Raichles, set your lean adjusters to 5. It makes you stand taller. The good news is, it helps a lot with quad burn. The bad news is, it feels kinda weird at first. I started riding this way last season, and at the time I liked it. I felt like standing taller forced me to be more precise about my balance, which made things interesting (in a good way). This season I'm starting to think about going down to 4 for a while. Something doesn't feel quite right. I moved my stance forward when I put the bindings back on, and I think that might be part of the problem. The jury's still out. But, it definitely helps with quad burn.

I dunno, that board looks a little big for you. Can you even reach the top of it? How big is that thing anyhow? 300cm?

I run 55/50 angles. Separation is a matter of taste, I think. I ran 45/30 for a long time (on wider boards) and liked it. It started to bother my knee after a while, now my "wide" board (23cm) is set at 45/40. But if your feet are ducky, 15ish is probably reasonable. For the longest time I alternated between 3 and 4, and couldn't decide which I preferred (often 4 front 3 rear). I but have been experimenting a lot with both boots set to 5 for about a year now. It forces me to be more upright, which felt a bit weird at first but I like it the more I do it. I guess the moral here is, do what feels good. More boot lean is probably better at first, to help keep your CG low, for stability. For carving, I try to keep my shoulders facing forward (relative to the board, not the hill). For moguls or short-swing skidding turns, I try to keep my shoulders facing the fall line as much as possible (no matter where the board is pointing). I don't think much about the angle of my hips so much as the placement - hips over the board, not to the inside. I try to keep my 'rear' hand forward of my knees at least, often I put both hands forward like riding one of those razor scooters. Shred suggested the 'trailing hand forward' thing to me here a couple years ago and my heelside carves instantly improved. For me it was the key to good posture. Getting in is easier when standing. As someone else said, if sitting, lean on your front hipbone, rather than your tailbone. This gets your hips aligned with the bindings. It it naturally to feel like you back leg is really twisted whenever you bend your knees? No, something isn't right. Have you tried putting your boots on, latching in, and try standing and crouching with some different shoulder and hip angles? And tinker with your binding setup as much as you want. It should be possible to crouch and stand comfortably. And about setback... I moved my stance forward a couple cm last season, and a couple cm further this season. Now I'm about 1-2cm behind center. When my stance was further back, I had to lean forward as I crouched, a lot like the photo Jack posted. As my stance has moved forward, I need to bend more at the knees and less at the hips, or my weight gets too far forward. I'm not sure if that's inherently more difficult or just now what I'm used to, but it's been a bit of a challenge. Leaning forward to lower my CG just came naturally... Moving my stance forward, bending at the knees, and keeping my spine more upright, has been an experiment, and it's a little awkward. 1" doesn't sound to me like much setback. If your comfortable crouch has significantly more weight on your front foot than on your back foot, you might want to move your stance back another inch or so - that will have your weight more centered on the board when you get into that comfy crouch. I'm curious what other people think about the connection between setback and crouch posture and weight distribution.

Partway through the day I had this tiny sharp pain in my right foot. Top of my foot, where it meets my ankle. Thinking it was just a wrinkle in my sock, I stopped and pulled it up tight. That seemed to fix it. A couple runs later, the pain is back. Pulling up my sock didn't help. So I sat down next to a ropeline and pulled my foot out of the boot to have a look-see. When my foot came out, there was a quarter balanced on top of it. As in, 25 cents. I have no idea how that got in there. Anybody need to make a phone call? Maybe I can scrounge another ten cents out of my left boot.

When I took my TD1s off last spring, I put the mounting screws into the discs and screwed the plates down onto the discs. All the screws were in place when I put everything back together a couple days ago. I have in the past put the mounting screws into the board, just finger-tight, for the summer.

I can't visualize what you're talking about, and a quick search didn't find me any likely photos. Can you point me to an example? Thanks.

My Raichle 324 cant adjusters are blown and I'm locking them into place. (I had all summer to do this, but like a true procrastinator I put it off until now.) I had to drill the bolts out of the hinges, to get the adusters apart, and I still can't get the remaining bits of bolt out of the T-nuts. So, I need new T-nuts, and to my surprise neither of the pretty-well-stocked local hardware stores had something suitable. I figured I would end up buying regular round t-nuts and trimming them a bit (if you've recently looked at the inside of a can adjuster you know what I mean), but they don't even have that. They just have woodworking T-nuts with little spikes, which might work but I'm hoping for better. Actually I'm told they're called "slab base weld nuts." Anyhow know of a supplier for such? Thanks.

I made a set out of UHMW several years ago. I got the material from a plastics shop that carries a billion types of plastic.... It didn't occur to me until much later (when someone told me) that cutting boards are the exact same stuff. I wanted to put 4x4 bindings on a Nitro Diablo that had 5-hole inserts. Custom homebrewe UHMW binding adaptor riser plates worked great. I used a table saw to cut them, and drilled a bunch of big holes to lighten them. The drilling was probably a waste of time - with two sets of hardware, long bolts, t-nuts, etc, they were doomed to be heavy. But I rode them for a couple years and was happy. When you drill that stuff you get confetti instead of chips and dust. :)

Prior has an all-mountain carver called the 4x4, or 4WD, (I forget) and Coiler makes great all-mountain boards as well. www.donek.com www.priorsnowboards.com www.coiler.com I just ordered my second Coiler. Bruce will mutate the boards for a modest upcharge, so I got a taller tail for fast backward sillyness, and taller nose for psychological reasons.

I noticed a couple of days ago that someone ordered a custom FC with just the specs I want for my next board. That's gonna save me a couple hundred bucks. Newton, whoever you are, you rule.

Sounds good to me. Especially if there's a Donek to try out!

Did you get thermoflex liners? They will almost certainly solve the length problem - I have about the same 1.5-finger shell fit, and my toes are happy. The liners are molded with toe caps on your feet, so there will be room. I suspect that thermo liners would fix the top-of-foot problem too, but I can't say that from experience. I have ski boots with regular liners that have that same fit problem (top of my foot is killing me after just a couple runs), and I'm going to get thermoflex liners for them in the next few weeks because I *think* it will work out well, just based on how well they have worked for me to solve other fit problems. Perhaps someone else can speak from experience though. IMO you're probably better off using a small shell and thermo liners, than a larger shell and regular liners. It costs more but the fit and performance are much better.

Actually we were talking about different things. I was thinking of turning the lower parts of the binding around 180 degrees, and leaving the top plate where it is - but i think that this would reverse the cant settings... It might solve the bolt problem, but unless you're using 0-degree cant discs, it would probably create a bigger problem, by giving you outward cant.

What if you remove the toe and heel blocks, rotate the whole binding 180 degrees, and put it back together? Would that put the 'base' of the three-screw triangle at the heel, so you have two screws on either side of the heel block rather than one screw right under the middle? Bear in mind I don't have a TD2 in front of me to experiment with, I'm just looking at the photos above, so this might not be at all feasible.

I watched some kiteboarders a week or two ago, and started wondering if there were any harnesses with hooks on the back, so you could ride toeside edge. Anyone know if that's been done? Changing directions would be a challenge, but I bet it would be pretty cool.

If memory serves, Randy clocked me at 51 when I visited Tahoe last year. I don't think I've ever been over 50 other than that run... and probably not over 40. I suspect my usual 'fast' cruising runs are about 25 or so, perhaps less, yet still it's very rare that people pass me on the slope. It's kinda funny how fast 50 feels on a board, compared to, for example, a motorcycle. When I did slalom racing I was in the middle of the pack on a board, and not very below the top on skis, but I'm sure even the fastest guys were well under 25. GS, SG, or DH racing would surely be a lot faster though.

I just got off the phone with some people at a startup in St. Louis who expressed interest in hiring me, or at least interviewing me further... so I'm wondering if I want to relocate. So right away the first question that comes to mind is: how's the boarding out there? I have no idea if there are even any mountains in that area. Is anyone here from St. Louis?

Etobioke, Canada. And I probably didn't spell that rite.

Sean's offhand remark about injection-molded wood got me wondering... I had a foam-core K2 Gyrator back in the 80s, it turned to crap after the foam broke down. Has foam technology improved to where such boards might actually last for a while? I notice wakeboards are using foam cores, but I doubt they have to flex like snowboards. Or some other non-wood core material... How about a many-layered sandwich of glass/carbon/kevlar/tyvek?/whatever-fiber interleaving with some kind of plastic? What's so unique about wood? It's kind of interesting to me that it hasn't been replaced (successfully) by something cooked up in a 3M or DuPont laboratory.

Not for money, but I've done some for fun... lots of skate ramps, a few car stereos (speak enclosures, amp racks, a motorized amp rack in my old VW bug back in the day), and a not-very-pretty stereo cabinet for my dorm in college. Been thinking about building a computer desk lately, might have to dust off the table saw.