David Kirk

I've not shared any photos of my autocross/canyon running car is some time. I built it in 2014 and have been racing it hard ever since and it's so much damn fun. I've been making improvements to it every year and it keeps getting lighter (1230 lbs now) so it goes around the corner like you're being swung around on a rope...and with 250 hp it pulls pretty darn well. Here's two shots with the car on street tires, one on its race slicks and one being driven at 10/10ths at an autocross event. The only thing that corners harder is a Kessler on chalky hardpack! dave

For the past few seasons my wife and I have enjoyed watching snowboard and ski World Cup races on the Peacock app. It’s been very good coverage overall and they seemed to cover every event. Yesterday we tuned in to watch the women’s ski race from Levi and found that Peacock is not broadcasting most of this years ski races. Instead they are being streamed live by something called Skiandsnowboard.live and one needs to pay for it of course. So we paid for one day just to see how it was and frankly it sucked. Grainy pixelated video that stops frequently to buffer that makes it almost impossible to watch. On top of that the commentator didn’t seem to know what he was talking about and that made it bad all around. This morning I looked for the Snowboard PGS schedule on Peacock and it looks like it’s gone and will be covered by the new place too. Bummer. So…does anyone know of a streaming service that will carry board and ski racing that isn’t skiandsnowboard.live? There’s got to be something better but I’m not having luck finding it. Thanks in advance. dave

I think the CX and FX are different boards. The X-1 is the boardercross board. Mine is a 169 and I think the waist is 25.9. dave

About 2 years ago I got frustrated with my everyday board (Tanker 187 Wide) because the radius was so short (11m) that it felt hooky in trees and bumps and it folded up like an accordion when pushed hard on a groomer. I’m 6’4” and 185# and I wanted something with a longish effective edge and a longer radius so it would have a higher comfortable speed on a groomed run and not feel busy off groomed. What I really wanted was a board that would handle a shallow powder day (6”) and then lay trenches when I left the powder and pulled out on the groomed trail. It was then that I bought a used Oxess 170 cm boardercross board with a 17 m radius. The 17m Oxess was a revelation. Smooth and damp and happy off the groomed and fun at mach II on a groomer. It was nearly perfect….nearly. The 17m radius was long enough that you needed to be on a fairly steep run for hard carving to make sense. I felt I needed something with a slightly shorter radius that would carve hard at medium speeds. At the very end of last season I took delivery of a custom Oxess X-1/14.5. I asked the good folks at Oxess to make me the same board but with a 14.5m radius to allow hard and deep carving at something less than warp speed. I got one day in last year and it was a wonderful tease at Big Sky. It was very firm and the board had such great edge hold it was hard to believe. But a more well rounded test had to wait for this year. This year I rode it a lot. On any day that we got enough snow for full-on alpine race boards to not make sense I rode the Oxess. It would carve the piste like a race board and then I could pull off into the trees or the edge pow and float around….and then do ass-draggers back on the groomed. It was of course never intended to be a powder board but it handled that very well (keeping the Tanker 187 for truly deep days) and it carves as good as most race boards I’ve ridden. Our season ended today at Bridger Bowl. The off groomed was 1” of fresh over corral reef. Not good. The groomers were a mix of near bullet proof to awesome hard chalk depending on the aspect and sun exposure. The Oxess carved conditions that many would think of as unusable gave great feedback as to how much grip was left at any given time. I could have ridden a race board today but those I was riding with would be popping in and out of the trees and a narrow race board would blow for that. The Oxess was totally in its element. The edge hold is frankly shocking and it took some time this year to trust it. As long as your body is stacked up over it well, it will hold. I could not be happier with this thing. It’s fun and playful and has the edge hold of a full-on race board. It will skid and pivot and float off-piste and then dive in deep and hard on corduroy…..and then carve seriously hard conditions well enough that your slalom ski buddies can’t figure out how you are carving when they can’t. Fun. It makes nearly all conditions fun. It’s going to be a long summer with this thing in storage. Dave

I took a fall on Hillman's Highway about 25 years ago and I'm lucky to be alive to talk about it. I was hiking up, board on my back, when a cold front rolled in. The snow went from easy hiking to cramp-on only in just a few minutes. The problem was I didn't have cramp-ons. I lost control trying to get my board attached to my feet and slid on my back, head first, 1200' vertical feet just missing the rock wall on rider's right on the way down. I eventually caught on something and star-fished to a stop at the bottom. It was a very long and scary ride. A friend on skis was able to bring my board down to me so that I didn't need to hike back up. Had I hit the rock wall I'd have been toast. Tuckermans is the real deal and not to be messed with. dave

About 5 weeks ago I was out carving hard and hit a deep soft spot and almost went over the bars. It would have been better if I just went with it and didn't fight to stay up because in fighting for it I tore a muscle in my very low back. The pain was profound and sharp. I went home and iced it and figured it would be fine the next day. It wasn't....not even close. The following day I could not stand up unassisted. I went to my sports doc and he diagnosed it and told me I'd torn the muscle and needed to stop doing anything that causes pain. I took 3 weeks off and then found that I could ride my all mountain board (lower stance angles using different muscles) so did a few days here and there letting pain be my guide. Today was the first day back out carving hard and it felt so very good. I spent about 2 hours on my Kessler custom 168 and then switched to the Kessler custom 180 GS board for an hour before calling it a day in an effort to no overdo it. It was a bluebird day and the groomers were just firm enough to allow hard charging and the place was empty. So good. The Bridger Bowl Instagram page used a photo from today on the 168 for their daily post. I nice welcome back! A bit of time on the heating pad and it's back at it in the morning before it gets silly warm and turns into cycling weather by the end of this week. Thanks for reading. dave

When I was a kid riding in soft boots we used to take out Burton 3 buckle bindings and modify way the highback attached to the baseplate to allow it to move sideways...it was fixed in the center/back and the sides could go up/down. It worked pretty well but I gave up on it about 30 years ago when i switched to hard boots. Keep working it! dave

I'm curious - what is the design aim for your new idea? What is the advantage of your idea over a traditional highback binding with a 3rd strap? As someone who has done my fair share of product development in the bike industry I ask out of genuine curiosity. dave

Typically pain in that part of the foot is due to the ankle rolling inward slightly and making pressure on the side of the foot. There’s a few things that would probably help out - - custom foot bed - A quality pair of custom foot beds will put your foot in a neutral position and keep the ankle from rolling inward. The pain should go away and you get the bonus of having better alignment and being able to put power to the board better. - high volume custom liners - Given that you are running out of adjustment room with the buckles I suspect that you have a low volume foot and/or a thin liner. If your foot is low volume you need a thicker liner to take up the space between your foot and the shell. The thin liner will not support the foot well enough in a high volume shell like the Deeluxe and when you crank the buckles down hoping to hold the heel in place the foot collapses to the inside causing your pain. Many don’t know that moldable liners come in different thicknesses or volumes to deal with this….and a molded liner that started off too thin won’t get any thicker. - high volume custom liner II - boot shells are designed to flex properly when they are using about 1/2 of the buckle travel range. If the foot and liner are too small in volume for the shell it will start to distort and collapse and it won’t flex as designed. It can lose it’s natural feeling motion and progressive flex. The rider might feel high pressure at the top of the tongue because the cuff is no longer a cylinder as designed and it becomes cone shaped. If you put on your boots and buckle them how they are when you ride and then look at them from the side you’ll probably see that the tongue and rear part of the cuff aren’t parallel but instead get closer toward the top…..in effect making a cone shape. This is not good and you are missing a lot of performance and comfort from the boot. If you're like me and your feet are low volume and your calves are skinny the Deeluxe shell will be distorted and unhappy. Put a high volume liner in (along with the proper footbeds) and you’ll be much happier. I’ll bet if you go to a good pro boot fitter and have them look your boots and feet that you’ll hear something similar to the above. A normal mom & pop shop that just molds liners and calls that ‘custom boot fitting’ isn’t enough. Look for a real boot fitting shop that specializes in this and you’ll rider longer and better and smile much more. Dave

Life's too short to risk riding stuff that will hurt you when it fails completely...and it's about to fail completely. dave

PM sent. dave

The liners are paid for and shipped. Thanks all. dave

You know I have no idea if they are the stiffer version or not. They came out of the new Deeluxe track 425 Pro patrol boot. Does that tell you what you need to know? dave

One and only bump to move these. If they don't sell for the new price of $65 then I'll donate them to our local ski charity. dave

Palau Liners - new - never molded - size 27 I recently bought some new Deeluxe boots and they came with these very nice Palau moldable liners. I replaced them with a different liner because my super skinny, baby-bird-like legs need a very high volume liner so that I don’t rattle around in the boot like a clanger in a bell. These are brand new and never molded or modded in any way. I bought the new boots, pulled these out, and now they are just going to gather dust so they need a new home. I’m asking $80 shipped via USPS to the lower 48 states. Paypal only. I will ship as soon as payment is received. dave

That was fun. I grew up skiing in central NY state at mom & pop areas and loved them. Quirky, different, odd and fun. I didn't ride at a "resort" until I was older and the attraction of those areas was a mystery to me. I didn't get it. Slowly I spent more and more time at bigger areas and learned to embrace them but the small local hill still has my heart. Twenty + years ago my wife and I moved from the east to Bozeman, MT in no small part because of the wonderful community ski area here Bridger Bowl. I was the supervisor in the snowboard school for a few years and my wife has been a top shelf ski instructor here for 20 seasons now. It's home. These people are family. The lifties know my name and on a slow day they step out to where they can see me carving turns and there's much yelling and screaming. Patrol sees me coming to the top of the lift and they walk out to hand me a pancake with Nutella on it just because. I don't get that when I go to Big Sky just an hour down the road. I hope to travel back east next winter and do some carving under the lights at Woods Valley and Snow Ridge where I grew up....600' and 800' vertical and it's going to be awesome. Thanks for posting the link and for reading my story. See you on the hill. dave

The boots are sold and paid for. Thanks for the interest. dave

Thank you Jennifer. I appreciate the ideas. The core issue for me is that my arch/instep is so very high that I can't get the boot on. I know that seems odd but that's how it is. I can just barely get my foot into the shell without the liner in place and there is no way I can slip my foot in when the liner is in the boot. Lowering the heel by shaving the boot board might have come into play if I could get my foot into the boot...but since I can't get it on it matters little. I could have cut the top opening of the shell much wider to allow the foot in but it would have been so wide that the tongue would no longer be wide enough to cover the new wider opening. I really wanted it to work. I've been snowboarding for over 40 years with 30 years being in hard boots. I'm now in the bike business but I spent a decade working in ski/board shops doing boot fittings for myself and customers. It's been a long hard trip figuring out what will fit my very strange feet. I went to my local boot fitter because I no longer have access to the right stuff to modify shells or mold liners like I once did and he came to the same conclusion that I did I'm sorry to say. So I'll need to stick with my modified Deeluxe boots and someone else will get the feel the Mountain Slope magic of this pair of boots. Thanks again. dave

I can make the Deeluxe work pretty well. The lower shell has a very wide opening over the arch which I end up cutting and making wider so that I can get my foot in/out. The shell over the instep is also fairly thin so when I cut it back the new edge isn't too think and I can grind it back to blend it in. There are aspects about them that I'd like to improve (and was hoping the MS boots would take care of) but if your feet are so far outside the norm that you can't get your feet into the boot it hardly matters. I think the MS boot would serve most everyone very well and I was hoping it could work for me. dave

Thank you for reaching out. I brought the boots to my very experienced fitter and he confirmed what I was thinking....due to the super high arch it will not work for my foot. The very first thing I did was to take the liner out of the boot and put my bare foot in it. My arch is so high I have a lot of trouble even getting my bare foot into the empty shell. That unfortunately is not an exaggeration. I then took the insoles out of the liner and tried to get my foot in the boot with the liner in place and I can't get my foot into the boot. I know that sounds odd but I can't get my foot into the boot. The only way I'd be able to get them to work would be to remove much of the upper part of the shell covered by the cabrio tongue of the boot....and even then it would be very tight. My fitter tested my instep height and it comes out in the 98th percentile...in other words my insteps are higher than 98% of the people measured. I'm not surprised by this. I can't even get my foot into slip-on shoes or slippers. This does not speak to the boot at all...my feet are very odd is the problem. I've been using Deeluxe boots with the shell heavily modified (removing much of the shell below the tongue) and that will have to do. Thanks again - I want it to work and it won't so now it's time to get someone else a chance to ride in these awesome boots. dave

I’ve always wanted to try Mountain Slope boots so I recently purchased a pair directly from Mountain Slope and had them shipped to me in Montana. I knew that due to my extremely high arches and insteps that the chance that they would work for my feet was small but I really wanted to try it. Yesterday I visited my boot fitter and he didn’t think that he could make me happy due to the shape of my feet. So the brand new boots are for sale. The only thing I did with them was slip my foot into bare shell to determine if they could be made to fit. They have not been modified or used in any way. The liners have not been touched. They are brand new and include the spare springs and parts as shown. If you’ve always wanted to try them here is a chance to do so for much lower price than buying them new from a dealer. I’d like $875 (including shipping in the lower 48 states) for them - paypal only. Buy pays paypal fee ($25). So…$900 will get you a brand new pair of Mountain Slopes delivered to your door.

I emailed them a few weeks ago about some Mountain Slope boots and I got a phone call in return the next day. I was told that he was expecting to have boots in a few days and that he'd call again when the boots were ready to go. He said the price was $1200 and that I should plan on getting different liners because the stock liners were junk. I never got a call and seeing that a pair of boots and new liners/footbeds would end up in the $1500 range I moved on and bought some Deeluxe boots from Sean at Donek. I really wanted to try the Mountain slope boots for obvious reasons but the price was more than I could stomach and the lack of a call back closed the deal. The gent from All Mountain was very good to talk with and seemed to know the boots well. He seems like a good guy and I'll bet the boots rock but I couldn't go that far. dave

Thank you Sandy - that's consistent with what I see on the Baker website. They get a lot of snow and there's not much groomed terrain....and if the groomers don't do a great job with it that seals the deal. I'll check out the other two areas you mention. dave

There's a remote chance that my wife and I might move from Bozeman, MT to Bellingham WA to live. What's the carving at Baker like? dave

I was also contacted. dave