johnasmo

This pic is from the Big Mtn thread (Nov 23rd, 2007 posting). It's BOL's very own dredman circa 1988 stylin' on a barfoot.

Opps. Voted 100+ in the poll before reading the 6 hour minimum. 114 days on snow and counting, but 6 hour, lift-assisted cuts a lot of those out. Let's see, I have 28 days at about 40,000 vertical, so those are probably full days. 50 days over 30,000. 72 over 25,000. 82 over 20,000. Don't really know how many of these count as 6 - 8 hour days. You can spend a lot of hours at a resort and still not log much vertical, eh Doc? There's another thread/poll about vertical feet over here: http://www.bomberonline.com/VBulletin/showthread.php?t=20367.

Finally a thread where being a computer geek (trade) and a snowboarder (passion) come together perfectly. Big Mountain (Whitefish Mountain Resort) tracks vertical using pass scanning data from each lift, so it's easy for those of us riding here to know our Big Mountain totals. A list of the top 800 pass holders is here http://www.bigmtn.com/?a=bigvert/fantasy. However, being a computer geek, I do my own tracking and I know not only how much vertical I've ridden, but how much was done on each of my boards and how much was done each day I rode. Go ahead, make fun, but remember that someone else started this thread... Seventy five people here did over 1,000,000, so that's pretty passe. Big Mountain is now closed, but I logged a verifiable 104 days and 3,227,454 feet. Including other resorts and days skinning up on my split board, I'm actually at 114 days on snow so far and closer to 3.4 million feet. I do all my board tracking in terms of 2088 foot runs (chair 1 at Big Mountain). It's pretty easy to get 20 to 25 runs in a full day at Big Mountain, but breaking 30 pretty much requires a full day plus night skiing (Friday and Saturday nights only). Having a day job, my weekday riding was compromised, but I still averaged almost 15 runs a day. I had 3 days over 30 runs, 8 days over 25, and 23 over 20 (weekends no doubt). My biggest day this year was 79K over 11 hours of riding. This is verifiable through the resort's lift scan data. Last year I had a 89K day, but their day and night hours of operation were longer then. 100K might be possible at Big Mountain, but it would take not only stamina, but exceptional luck at the lifts -- no lines and no stops all day; doubtful. Almost exactly 1/3 of my riding (still over 1,000,000 vertical) was carving groomers on alpine gear with hardboots; the rest was soft booting, which I prefer for powder and trees. Living the dream in Montana... I moved to the mountains a couple years ago from Minnesota precisely so that I could ride as much as possible, so that's exactly what I'm doing. If you want 100+ days, but aren't getting it, consider relocation!

I'm running a 19 and 1/4 inch stance right now, and in the don't fix it if it ain't broke vein, I think I'll stick with that because it feels good and is working well. If conditions demand tighter turns, I can get on another board. I've always got a few in the car. Today was a Violator day all the way, so it finally broke the 100 run mark. Yesterday was too icy, but late in the day they had a couple inches of fresh that got groomed in overnight, which makes the perfect storm as far as the Violator is concerned, leaving a firm but carvable hardpack. It lasted all day since it stayed cold today in spite of being sunny. Trenches were running 1 - 2 inches deep in the morning, and again when I returned late in the afternoon. That's hard enough to keep from getting lumped up by all the skidders, but with enough edge hold for the Violator to absolutely rail. Knees were a draggin'.

Team Shred was at the Big on Sunday. Amputator and Violator re-united. Things must have gotten really warm on Saturday while we were at Turner (which was friggin' awesome by the way) because conditions went from bad to worse as the temp kept dropping. Finally carving was abandoned in favor of a Rick's Alaskan Clam Chowder tailgate party.

Sorry Shred, I didn't notice your post until now. The verdict on the case of the Coiler Violator 188 is... Guilty of extreme carving hooliganism. I love it! It's not a board for all conditions, but when the snow is right, it's oh so fun. I had it out yesterday, riding with it's cousin Das Amputator. I can't turn as tight as Redman on Das Amputator yet, but I think that's me not the board. I'm riding pretty centered on the inserts, with a fairly wide stance, and that seems to be working fine. The schtubby nose works great. My log shows it's been out 13 days so far, for 90+ runs on the Big Mountain. Of my alpine boards, that trails only the Donek Vlad Carve 175 at 22 days and over 200 runs. The reason being the frequency of snow conditions for which each is preferred. I start with the Violator as first choice, but the snow has to be just the right firmness for me to feel confident laying it all the way over and completing turns. You need to commit to putting it high on edge or you quickly run out of hill. If the groomers are too icy, I skid the day away in softies or something more slalom oriented (e.g. Factory Prime); something that will turn without being fully committed to dragging body parts. Softer and I tighten things up with the Vlad or go even deeper and tighter with a Prior 4WD if things are really soft. I'd say it's my overall favorite carver to ride, having so much edge hold and being so stable and locked in at full lean, but it has the second narrowest preferred snow conditions of my apline boards. The narrowest in my case being my Prior 4WD. That may sound odd for an All-Mountain board like the 4WD, but I prefer softies for fresh powder and tracked powder off-piste, leaving only groomer duty for my hardboot setups. Then of the groomer conditions, the 4WD only comes out when things soften up to the point where the trenches are running several inches deep (e.g. groomed over fresh snow, or late day spring conditions). My usage log bears this out, as the 4WD is third behind the Vlad and Violator in usage this season for alpine gear, and alpine is running about 30% of total riding (it's been a good powder season). In conclusion: Me like. Get down or get out.

Is that a snowboard, or are you just happy to see me?

Only 108 vertical miles alpine, but I'm making amends... The sun's been out all week at the Big Fish.

Indeed, there was light snow overnight, but Sunday morning was a return to good carving at the Big. Ed's had only a light snow over the corduroy. The Violator came out of hiding and was very fun again -- there's no replacement for displacement. Snow was still pretty soft though, so groomers were toast by 11:00 and it was off to the powder for the rest of the day. Photos are the Violator in action, Toni Matt waiting to be trenched, and Corkscrew basking in the sun.

From Friday's Snow Report: "The visibility is great on the summit this morning. The groomers have been at it all night trying to lay some fresh tracks on the runs. The chair 2 area will ski great today. Fast soft corduroy for everyone to enjoy." Got all tingly at the mention of corduroy, but "soft" is about the only part of that that was still accurate at opening. I did manage half a dozen good alpine runs before switching into powder mode (softies) again for the rest of the day. I'm lovin' the F2 Respect 176 I picked up for a song last spring (DJ's Boardshop eBay). It's working great in these conditions. My final pics of the Hawaii and Ohio crews are attached. See you next year?

The Hawaiian Crew was out all day today. First pic 9:40 AM, top of Ed's. Second Pic 3:22 PM, top of Toni Matt, and still smiling!

Exhibit A: Last week Exhibit B: This week But then, some of us like powder. Doctor, you should have come with Dave and I after Lunch today. Patrol had *just* opened Hellroaring Basin and we had fresh tracks from the Picture Chutes all the way to the chair. A season defining run! WoHoo!

Attached is a mini vid of Dave Pow Sticking under Picture Chutes. You can't fit much video in <97KB. Maybe we should start a BigMtnExpreSes YouTube site? Hellroaring.zip

Yesterdays carving was worth celebrating, but last night's champagne went stale by morning. Cold wind blew all night; left none of that 8 inches on the groomers, and what did find a home on the mountain was wind packed pretty hard. I wasn't expecting it to blow all night AND all day, but it kept the resort mostly shut down today. I got stuck on chair 2 last night for 30 minutes when this wind and cold arrived and caused some kind of safety fault. Then today, chair 1 never ran, and chair 2 didn't spin until almost 2 PM. After sampling the t-bar and chair 3, I went home and got my split board and made it up for a run through Good Medicine, but those that didn't weren't missing much. Forty or so days of good snow, and now she's an ice cube for the next week. No worries, should thaw by next weekend. :)

The runs felt even better on Sunday. Thanks to me wrenched back, I stuck to softies so I could take it easy and stand up straight, but Eric was a man on fire on the Perlstein Skwal. He was laying it out at mach 10 on every run. Maybe something to do with finally having a helmet? The groomed runs have finally got over that icy gravel feeling they had last week. It was snowing today, but stopped at the end of the day, so with a fresh groom on that it should be extra sweet Tuesday morning (if there's any visibility). Hope I can get up there.

Great weekend at Targhee, Dave! I didn't get any pictures of you ripping up the powder on your race board Saturday, but I did get these of the Hot Asym 155 that came out to play on Sunday.

Nice core shot, Dave. We can repair it next week, along with this weekend's damage. I think my P-Tex gun is still loaded with a black stick from when we worked on Melissa's skis last spring.

We've just been goofing off near my house in the evenings. Just getting started on the longboard thing, really. Timing is everything, I have a business trip to Montreal next week, but maybe the week after? I just got the shiny bits out of my shoulder this week, so I probably should lie low for few days anyway...

Even though I do plate bindings at +65/+60 or so on carving boards, when I switch to soft boots and freestyle boards I'm usually around +15/-3. It's like two different sports. Don't try to adjust the angles to fit the board, fit the board to your feet. Size the board so your rear foot can be at low angles with just enough overhang so you can roll the board from edge to edge with little effort. Too little overhang and getting it on edge takes too much effort. Try as you might, you won't be laying the board over as far as with hard boots on a carving board, so if you've got 50 - 60 degrees of clearance from the board edge to you boot toe and heel, you'll be surfin' just fine.

Dr. D, looks cool. Where to do ride it? Full leathers? DRedman and I just got a couple of Tierny Rides T-boards, and have been goofy around on long boards. You should come up to Whitefish and play with us!

No problem to send in two boxes if you'd like. It would probably cost you less to ship if you can leave them on the board, assuming the shipping cost is mostly going to come from the length, but it's up to you. Looking forward to getting it out on the snow!

I love eBay! Just won your auction. Hope you're not disappointed with the price. The Vlad will be moving north to Whitefish, Montana, to take a new job as a trench digger at the resort formerly known as Big Mountain. We'll be holding "Donek Days" where it (me) can try in vain to keep up with dredman's Das Amputator.

Since I tracked my board usage as well as my vertical, I can report that out of 117 days on the mountain, I rode 22 days on the board I consider my powder board. That's just under 20% powder days. So the "carvable" days actually far outnumber the powder days, though the days that were good for nothing but carving groomers (too lousy off piste) was probably about the same at around 20%. Riding 4 days after surgery may sound a bit crazy , but it was Dave Redman that put the silly notion in my head when he said, "falling is not an option." Having spent more time riding than walking this winter, I figured, I can do that -- not fall that is. We clicked off over 100 runs that last sling-bound week. Dr. D. I'll make you a copy of the pond skimming DVD I made from my video clips. Unfortunately, your run caught us off guard standing around at the base, so I missed your approach down the hill and barely caught your icy plunge. :(

I've been riding a Burton Triumph 169 when soft booting this year and really like it. I know it's pretty mainstream for this crowd, but it's been fun to ride. Pretty stiff. Wide but not super wide. It's got a tighter sidecut radius than hard core carvers will want, but then again, that's what the hard boot setup is for. I prefer soft boot freeriding for powder days and off-piste, and I've been happy with the Triumph for that.

I have a friend that keeps breaking the rear bail on his Burton race plates. I don't have that problem with TD-1's, but can anyone here help identify where replacements for the Burton bails can be obtained? He's running out of pairs to cannibalize...