johnasmo

Sorry I didn't notice this before your Thursday ride. I was so busy riding out our closing week that I wasn't paying much attention to the forums. Hmm.. I guess that's true of my whole season. But I can catch up now. One trick I used to get toe side turns initiated quickly was to channel my inner Ryan Knapton. If you watch his soft-boot carving videos, you will see that he gets very compact and then pushes out with his forearm at snow level very early in the turn. Just thinking about doing the Knapton forearm slide without breaking at the hip will exaggerate your up/down body movement. You don't actually have to touch the snow -- that's too hard on gloves and sleeves -- it's just the getting low at the start. Going in low and extending will initiate faster than falling over from upright, and visualizing a Knapton forearm slide will have you do that without thinking about the details. After initiation though, my arms come up and its about body angulation and pushing knees low to hold the rest of the turn. That said, I have trouble pulling it off when visibility is low. It's really hard to commit that fully to start a hard turn when you can't see how smooth the snow is. The 8RW will start going pretty fast if you're too casual about leaning it over. The 8RW has an inflection point were it goes from riding like a long sidecut to riding like a short sidecut, and foggy weather puts me just on the wrong side of that inflection point. I also added a Superconductor 175 this year. Got it in early March. I found myself more comfortable on it for low viz or chopped up conditions. I thought it would act like a downsized 8RW, but there's more to it than that. I think the 8RW may have a more efficient carve, with the ability to hold an edge under low traction, but the Superconductor a more lively and active ride when edge hold wasn't an issue. It might just be size and radius, but venturing a guess that the 8RW behaves more radially and the Super more progressive? Neither is an accurate description, as I bet they both have a long-short-longer kind of sidecut progression, but maybe they have their tight spots positioned differently. Where edge hold was the attraction of the 8RW, a lively slalom-y ride seems to be the Super's appeal. Neither is particularly comfortable on uneven grooming. Metal seems to dampen irregularities better when boards can't cut through to something smooth. Both liked smooth hardpack or smooth under loose piles or spring slush (the Super was really fun in spring corn!), but once the irregularities push back firmly, metal dampens the hits with less commotion. I did a lot of afternoon-to-last-chair days, and I was usually on a metal board by last chair.

Local Bike Shop? No. Local Board Shop? No. Local Bank Stoke? Yes! Spotted on local TV. For those carvers familiar with Big Mountain, aka Whitefish Mountain Resort, check out the local credit union ads: (Yeah, this should be in the WTF thread, but who's looking over there this time of year? ) They made two edits with different footage. Here's the second. P.S. Parkin launching chair 4 lift station.

The move to .4mm titanal has made things ride stiffer and more torsionally rigid than before. I'd suggest the AM core just keep it from ending up too harsh, but then go long and narrow with it to keep the focus on carving.

Yup, and then on into the trees between Pig Shoot and Lower Mambo. Came out by the generator. The gladed areas are spectacular, but the trees are fun even where they didn't clean them up. Good fall lines through, not fighting blind corners; sets a high bar for other resorts.

Up high is where they parked out the trees into glades. Below the Jeep road(s) is where it goes back to nature. Still more open even there than a lot of what we have at Whitefish. You can see the areas marked as glades on their map.

Inkaholic, I think I sold you that board! I recognized the top sheet when I saw it outside the lodge. It was used when I got it too. Sean made them to last. Like the mod you did.

A shout out to everyone that's been uploading photos to the MCC Photo Album. Thanks! There are some great photos shared there. https://photos.app.goo.gl/PsHRsAsEMfUJWU9o9

Yes. 160 Jones Hovercraft. I considered selling it because I found myself choosing another board (Nidecker Megalight) for 4 - 6 inch snowfalls, or after the big dumps are all cut up. But for deep and fresh, the Hovercraft is a blast. After this week at Turner, it's earned a permanent spot in the quiver.

You can probably click off three runs an hour if you try. I had 14 runs both Monday and Tuesday, with time for lunch and farting around. Doing 30K - 35K of powder puts it in heli-skiing territory. You would be lucky to get half that in a day of cat-skiing. Even after two days of our group beating on the fresh powder, there were good lines to be found in the trees. Not track free, but still what I'd call a powder run. You can see for yourself. I switched on the GoPro for last run on Thursday. Here's the raw clip; top to bottom.

More MCC in the news. Flathead Beacon Article. FYI, Flathead refers to Flathead County in Montana where the forks of the Flathead river feed Flathead Lake. It is home to the towns of Whitefish, Kalispell, and Columbia falls as well Whitefish Mountain Resort and the western half of Glacier National Park. It's why Glacier Park International Airport's code is FCA (Flathead County Airport). https://flatheadbeacon.com/2019/02/06/craving-the-carve/

I remember that day! March 25, 2018. Airblaster Freedom suit. Coiler VSR 177. The "New Cut" side of Ptarmigan Bowl. Sweet day.

Hmm... Plays for me when I'm logged in to YouTube. They must figure the creator already has the music. YouTube's agreements with music publishers seems to change every few years. My soundtracks come and go. They used to just silence the audio; kinda harsh to block the whole thing. Oh well. I could create a vimeo account, or wait out their next deal. Or re-cut it with a new soundtrack... but that just wouldn't be the same.

Video Stoke from a week ago. One week to go. They'll groom wider for our event. This was the day after a powder day, and the open bowl grooming was for skier bail out.

Conditions for the WTF are looking good. So far there haven't been any bad thaw/refreeze cycles, and the new snow over the last few days has been dry and be over and gone by Wednesday night. Thursday and Friday should have hero groomers. When do you arrive? What time will you be riding?

Video from the Big Sky weekend reviewed last April. Dave is the Orange onesie, I'm the Lime onesie. The orange board Dave was riding on the first day is a Superconductor. The grey and black I was on is an 8RW. Not sure what model Mark was riding. Dave and I were both on our 8RWs the second day.

Ron, I had a chance today to snipe the second box. But I thought it might be yours so didn't. Would have been hilarious, no?

I too would like to see a Titanal version. They're good boards without it, but could they be even better with it? It's not just marketing hype. Titanal has proven effective at keeping carving skis and snowboards calm and controlled in harsh snow conditions -- dampening out vibrations and shock waves that otherwise harsh your mellow when you feel all the commotion down below. I'm not a morning guy, so I rarely ride perfect corduroy. I'm an afternoon carver when all the fresh cord is long gone, so I value comfortable rides. When switching back and forth between the non-metal Thirst and my metal Coilers, I could feel it -- the harshness nibbling at the edge of my bliss. It's not limiting what the Thirst boards can do, but how comfortable they are while doing it. Heck, even the noise is a type of harshness. Whether you hear it or feel it, you're sensing it. The only way I see it happening though is if Mark and Bruce were to collaborate on some boards. Mark making some WARP cores and letting Bruce press the final boards from them using his Titanal supply. Like two mad scientists creating the ultimate weapon. I'd commission such a piece, but what are the odds they'd collaborate?

Agreed. Rides/feels shorter than a 185. Another difference between Dave and I is that my preferred size most days is 175-ish length, 12-ish sidecut. Dave likes long boards, 180+. Yet we agree that the 8RW is delightful. I think it rides closer to my type of preferred boards (uniform flex), Dave might think the same (stiff mid/tails). It's got a softer flex than all my Coilers, regardless of their size. Sidecuts appear around 11 toe-side and 12 heel-side, and its very light. Turn size seems to be entirely a function of edge angle and sidecut geometry, not how hard you push it or where you shift your weight. That's what I meant by angulation above, board angulation. If you are slow to edge, it will run long. Fast to edge, it will run tight. Pushing to add pressure during turn initiation is to maintain rider balance during fast transitions rather than being necessary to de-camber the board. It's soft enough to de-camber to the turn size just with your weight once the turn is locked in. It won't straighten out like a race board once you go static, you can just hold the turn as long as you want/need.

Writing my review first, then I’ll read the rest of this thread. The 8RW’s super power is staying hooked-up on ice, the kind of ice you get from spring thaw and refreeze cycles. It does that like no other board I’ve got, and I’ve got a few. Though built in Idaho, east-coast ice riders should definitely give it a try. Two demo runs on dredman’s one icy morning in late March convinced me I needed one, as nothing else I brought to the hill that day could stay hooked up. Hopping on the 8RW after struggling to keep any of my Coilers from sliding out was a real eye opener. I first contacted Mark April 2nd via the thirst website the day after riding Dave’s. Mark hand delivered a fresh 8RW on April 20th in Big Sky to ride the resort’s closing weekend. The weather was classic Big Sky spring – below freezing overnight, sunny and 60 degrees by afternoon. Good test conditions. On day one, I rode only the Thirst. On day two, mostly the Thirst but I switched in the afternoon crud to compare against a couple of my Coilers. On day three I did a better job of switching back and forth as the day warmed to help with this review. The 8RW is a 185 alpine board. It’s asymmetric, with tighter sidecut on toe-side, and the sidecut centers are offset from one another, oddly with heel side more forward than toe. The core itself is said to be constructed uniquely as well, but I didn’t push Mark to divulge his trade secrets. He said sidecuts average somewhere in the 11 to 12 meter range. It rides shorter and softer than expected for a 185, so don’t fear the length. It’s non-metal. You can tell that from the weight and sound. It’s light, but loud. Yet it rides damper than it sounds. I didn’t find it as comfortably damp as my metal Coilers, both of which were based on Nirvana Balanced cores (which are great afternoon crud busters), but it rode smoother than I was expecting for a non-metal board. Apparently, metal isn’t the secret to edge hold after all. A dialed shape and flex must be the real ticket, as the 8RW had insane edge hold on the morning ice. Heel side I could carve hard right out of the gate; toe side felt a little more tentative as I sorted out my toe-side technique, but still stayed hooked up better than most anything else. I’m guessing this magic results from a very clean distribution of edge pressure along the running length. Stay centered and gentle and there’s no part of the board overpowering the meager available grip. Technique? Don’t drive the nose; stay centered, or even slightly back on toe side. The feedback it gives tells you it will overflex and bite you back if you drive the nose too hard. Heel side turns I would drive more weight on my forward heel (I’m regular), but finishing toe side turns had me consciously focusing pressure on my rear toe. So I was still guilty of some weight shift, but keeping it between the bindings. It varies turn size by angulation more than shifting pressure. Whereas Coilers you can vary significantly by shifting weight as well, the Thirst seems to prefer you do it all from the center. To turn tight, it wants to be put high on edge early, responding well to a push-pull riding style to lay it over and get it de-cambered early in the turns. If you don’t get it over and de-cambered early, you’ll be making a big turn and have to wait to slow it down on your next turn. The faster you can make the transitions, the more fun the run. My Coilers let you roll on the angulation and pressure a little more gradually starting with the nose and rolling back when you want to go tight, or staying centered or back if you want to go long. This characteristic may be what leads to my perceived difference in grip between toe and heel. Even though the toe-side sidecut is tighter, my perception is that I’m doing a bigger, faster turn on toe-side. That may mean I’m rolling on the angulation and pressure more slowly on toe-side. Heel side I must be getting my hip down faster. With a Coiler, you don’t have to rely entirely on board angulation; you can also shift pressure to the nose to tighten the turn initiation. So probably my bad – rolling in too slow and picking up too much speed. On the other hand, inspecting tracks from the chairlift showed that although heel side was always pencil thin, as the snow got softer there were some toe-side turns that left a slightly wider track. There may be something about the board’s asymmetry that is simply better dialed-in heel side than toe side. That’ll need to wait until next season to evaluate, as my lift assisted days are over for now. The downside to laying it over so quickly is that you are obligated to push to de-camber it early by extending yourself early, which can result in having little extension left to save yourself if it does start to slide later in the turn. A slower roll-in lets you stay compressed and keep some extension in reserve. The wet-glove test. I felt like I was staying lower longer on my Coilers for some reason. Not like in-early, out-early and on to the next turn like a race board. I was holding onto the turns just as long, but I think the apex of the turn might have been earlier and shorter on the Thirst, so less time to get gloves soaked touching the snow. Bottom line is that the 8RW is a great board. To be comparing it favorably to the best of my Coilers is astonishing. It bests my Coilers in edge hold on ice, but I can’t yet say it’s better in all conditions. My Bruce builds have a broad power-band, so to speak. The 8RW worked well from ice to slush, but as edge hold became more abundant, my NFC derivatives matched it for fun factor with a slight advantage in my mind on comfort and ease of use. That might just be my familiarity with them and this being my first days on the 8RW. Coilers are just so easy to ride, so forgiving of error. To be in the same ballpark is high praise for the 8RW. Dave and I are both big Coiler fans, but we often don’t like the same boards. I lean toward softer mid-section boards like Nirvana Balanced, Dave more toward VSRs or NSRs or Nirvana Energy. But we both like the 8RW, so it should appeal to a broad community.

Fernie this weekend has been wet/foggy/slow. Hoping for more favorable conditions next weekend at Big Sky. Forecast is calling for some spring sun!

It was about a foot up top, and most of the way down. Heavy, so a bit of work to ride, but good to ride pow without crowds. At Fernie this weekend, and it's rain/snow/fog. Enough to keep it slow. BC/DC playing in the village though, so will hit that.

If you talks to their tech support, here's a simple summary: The attachement PHP script knows how to add the right S3 authorization credentials for all of the site's content. The regular content proxy does not, for *some* of the site's content (mostly newer, 2017 and up?). The links, however, still identify the correct S3 content. John

Wow. I've posted 346 photos over the years. All are there in my profile attachments. Didn't know I could see them from there. Everything through through 2016 is still linked correctly to their posts, but everything from 2017 onward is linked incorrectly. Too bad. If you see a thumbnail in your attachments page(s), you can access from the post. If you don't, you can still download the content, but the post will contain an invalid link. Stop now if you don't care, but otherwise let's look a little deeper at the problem.... The good and the bad links take slightly different forms, probably superficial: good: content.invisioncic.com/n281171/monthly_04_2016/post-845-0-49395000-1460481992.jpg bad: content.invisioncic.com/n281171/monthly_2017_01/Z01_9657.jpg.4475ca2428b728a5996ea490f7e5d8f1.jpg From the attachements page, the links take a very different form: good: forums.alpinesnowboarder.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=38144 bad: forums.alpinesnowboarder.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=40158 These links redirect you to AWS S3 storage. For all I know, this is all hosted on AWS. The php script for the bad link above redirects successfuly to: s3.amazonaws.com/ips-cic-filestore/n281171/monthly_2017_01/Z01_9657.jpg.4475ca2428b728a5996ea490f7e5d8f1.jpg?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIQSK6GPSGJMTCOQQ/20180412/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20180412T200541Z&X-Amz-Expires=1200&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=attachment; filename*=UTF-8''Z01_9657.jpg&response-content-type=image/jpeg;charset=UTF-8&X-Amz-Signature=03425896abee0c53965673738317125a21887b38f05a549c25141b027ae493a0 Notice that the URL is to the same path (relative to an S3 bucket) as the bad content.invisioncic.com link in the post. The rest of the query string is to authorize the AWS S3 access. SO THE LINKS ARE OK!!!!!!!!! THEY REFERENCE THE RIGHT S3 STORAGE. IT'S AN ACCESS CONTROL ISSUE. The failing links return Access Denied rather than Not Found. So something in the invision service that normally proxies the content for these links and returns it from the content.invisioncic.com domain is failing on access control. It's not getting the authorization parameters right when it tries to get the content from AWS S3 storage. The PHP script knows how to do it right, so all hope is not lost. Another call to their tech support is in order. The failing links still identify the correct S3 storage, but the content.invisioncic.com service is not handling the security for all of them correctly. Maybe they are being mapped to some other customer's S3 credentials. John

Allee, bring the good stuff. No need for rock board; still plenty deep and their has been good carving. Toni Matt and Big Ravine get groomed early and can take a while to soften, but they've been regularly grooming other good stuff later at night. Like Ptarmigan Bowl, where they've been alternating between new-cut, the face, and the bowl aspects. The winch cat has been out regularly, so The Chute, Heep Steep, Powder Trap are getting refreshed every couple of days. They've even been grooming No Name lately. Bring both hard and soft setups and you'll have a good time one way or another.

I rode a heated, bubbled lift in Garmisch last December; it felt like I was sitting in a nice BMW. All that was missing was an in-flight entertainment system.