tufty

Apart from the minor safety issues of massive knee tweakery and tib/fib breaks just above the cuff of the boots, of course.

About the only way to stop this is new account approval by moderator, with a requirement to explain why they want to be members, preferably followed by approval of the first N posts by each new account. The downside, of course, is that the mods have to deal with 40 or 50 fake applications per day, plus (potentially) a bunch of post approval. The upside is that account approval / bitchslap doesn't have to be done straight away, and there isn't the issue of removing accounts and posts. It's a pain in the ass, but automated solutions simply do not work. Oh, and I still get errors posting from Chrome on my Mac.

So, I was in Courchevel on Wednesday, with a couple of friends. One on a board, one on skis, neither of whom have done much skiing for a while (the boarder hadn't seen the slopes for 6 years). Result - day on the blue slopes, with a fair amount of waiting. So, I took the skwal, and as I was waiting at the top of a break, a skiier came up to me and asked "how does that work, then?" So, I explained what it was, and what it's for, and more or less how it works, so he said "well, go on then". Launched down the hill, 2 lightweight carves and then started /really/ throwing it down (to the point where I smacked my shoulder into the snow, thought I was going to dislocate it again), then pulled up and waited. "Wow. Just ..... wow. Where can I get one?" I pointed him to the nearest shop I know of that rent skwals and alpine boards in general, and he carved off on his skis to go and rent one. He was over 60. I got an email on Friday thanking me for introducing him to "the most fun I've had on the snow for 20 years". Then, in one of the gondolas, a guy with a lib tech board tried to explain to me that I was riding a monoski.

They're not doing anything that the boards aren't capable of doing. Duck stance and biomechanics are what's making it hard to do, and, unintuitively, what's making them have to drive the boards beyond their limits (resulting in hokups and the associated armwaving ugliness) to be able to get the board on edge like that. A forward stance, even in softies, would mean being able to carve the same angles at lower speeds, with more control and less "hooking". My $0.02, anyway.

The Rossis were damned good boards at the time, and still hold up pretty well if they haven't been totally ridden to death. Expect it to lose its "pop" quite fast if it hasn't already, but that doesn't stop it being fun anyway, it just reduces the amount of air you'll get on fast edge changes. Personally, I prefer the Hot Blasts to the Rossis, though. I completed my set again just before the season started; a 176 that I bought for the parts on the bindings (hey, 25 euros, can't go wrong, right?), but turned out to be a bloody good board in its own right, in far better nick than the one I had before (it died due to a big coreshot / edge rip out). Shame that I've since buggered my back and hard carving on a snowboard tweaks my discs just that little bit too much. Skwal and skis appear to be OK, though, so it's not a total loss season.

Now, that's interesting. A few of the kids at the club here have expressed interest in snowboard PS/PGS, but finding boards for them is quasi-impossible.

Alexey Don't worry about the flaming, there's a lot of it about these days. Far too many people getting invested into what they've "bought in" to (not just in snowboarding, just look at Apple vs MS users, and you'll find a lot of people here who simply can't accept that a freeride / softboot setup can be good). Doesn't matter if your shapes are close to those already used, either, there's only so much innovation that can be had, it's pretty much all incremental. Still, if you get "out there" with some wacky designs it might shut some of the naysayers up. Speaking of which, if you fancy making a line of skwals, I'd be up for testing :) Simon

Definitely the second photo, i.e. the "tongue" part inside. If they've been worn or stored in the other position, it's gonna take a while to get them back into shape - you'll get pain from the bit of the tongue that's been deformed by the elastic near the toes.

I'd always sworn by Amber or Pink for flat light, but then I got given a pair of Loubsol Xx Lights after repairing a friend's macbook. They're the closest damn thing to X-Ray Specs you'll ever come to. Completely unreal in flat light. Even fog isn't a problem. I'm sold.

So, anyway, I'm frickin' gutted. Managed to put my back and hip out at work 2 weeks ago, spent a week ripped to the tits with 2 injections a day of valium and some other stuff, am now back at work but about as flexible as a plank. And this weekend was the euro skwal meetup at La Norma - http://www.skwal.eu/public/index.php/post/2013/12/22/Skwal-Riding-Festival-2014. Ain't no way I could go. Spent the day looking at sunny snow, then at my skwal, then at sunny snow, then at my skwal again, and sighing deeply. I don't dare look for photos or videos online. Grrrrrrr.

Yeah, no problem.

The Guépard / Leopards that monodude has are definitely "standard" construction with a wood core. I suspect the 1[78]3°F are foam core, but I'm not sure.

This. Especially poles. Also, don't even think about trying to skid off your speed until you've worked out how the damn thing responds. Remember, the 183 is an absolute beast. It doesn't want to even think about going slowly. Remember how, when you first tried an alpine board, it threw you into the snow the instant you "wimped out". Any skwal is that, squared. The 183 takes it to a whole 'nother dimension. My first descent on the "bunny hill" (well, 200m from the car park to the first lift) resulted in at least 10 hard crashes (and I mean /hard/, instant ejection onto the hip) as I tried to skid off speed. "The Norm" is the way to go. You /will/ fall over. You /will/ get bruised, both metaphorically and physically. You will /certainly/ get laughed at. ... BUT ... after a few minutes, you'll be blasting past those who were laughing at you mere instants before. I've tried a wide stance (as wide as I could go), and it simply didn't work for me (although it makes skidding easier). I'd suggest trying the "standard" 4cm separation as well as a wider stance. Oh, and definitely come off chairs with the front foot unclipped. It's way easier, you have loads more control. Drags are easier with both feet clipped in (like alpine boards, but easier, as you're not twisted out of kilter), once you've got a handle on the whole "staying upright" thing. Above all, have fun. Simon

Yeah, I know, but IIRC the 183°F is cap construction, not sandwich. You can definitely feel the difference. I rode a friend's totally knackered* Guépard 173 (what monodude's got his hands on, only the shorter version) back to back with what appeared to be** a mint 173°F - it was chalk and cheese, the sandwich board was waaaaaaay more fun to ride. Also, I dig that leopard spot thing they have going. * used damned hard, all the time, hardly any camber remaining, barely any edges left and some really nasty gouges in the base. ** Admittedly, it wasn't exactly new either, with a few nicks and dings in the topsheet, but it had almost zero "pop" compared to the Guépard (or even to my Panther 178, which is hardly new either).

Man, what a score. 300 bucks + shipping to yurp is too rich for me, though. Shame, I'd have been up for one of the 183s. Been looking for a good one for years.

I'm not convinced of this at all. Slap a pair of skis on someone's feet and drop them onto a black (or even a red or blue), and they will take the skis off and walk down, or go ask the lifty (i.e. me) if they can go down on the chair. Ditto snowboard. I see this regularly, usually accompanied by tears and much wailing at the boy/girlfriend who has taken them waaaaaaay outside their comfort zone. Skiboarders, "snowscooters", and "veloskiers*", just "go for it", totally out of control, until they hurt either themselves or someone else. Skis, snowboards, skwals etc make the user aware that what they are doing is hard. It's very obvious that if you get it wrong, it's gonna hurt. skiboards, veloskis, snowscoots and the like make staying upright, spinning around, and bombing down steeps feel ridiculously easy, but are just as difficult, if not more so, to actually control as actual skis / snowboards, etc. Sadly, the realisation of this happens a fraction of a second before you seriously injure someone. * veloski :

"Ankle Snappers" The main problem with them, apart from the enormous number of injuries with non-release bindings, is the illusion of ease. So you find users who are absolutely out of control on slopes they wouldn't have dreamt of going near if they were on skis. Case in point - /today/ at work, one helicopter evac on my lift, 9 year old who was hit from behind / uphill by a totally out of control "skiboarder". Day one on the slopes, first time on skiboards or any other snow sliding implement, second run, *black slope*. Skiboarder OK, concussion, broken femur, tib & fib and a free helicopter ride for a kid who's been skiing for years. That said, might be interested in your binders, for skwal use. Shipping will probably be prohibitive, though, I'm in communist frenchystan.

Nah, not crazy, but keep it to when you're out with the wife. Monoskis, to paraphrase a guy I used to work with*, are like mopeds - great fun, but you wouldn't want your mates to see you going around with one. * He was talking about fat girls. He was a teeny bit sexist.

I went 324 to AF700 (although not "modern" AFs). Never looked back. For my feet, at least, the SB's are horrible in comparison. I did have to have the toes lightly punched; on the other hand I no longer have cold feet. I couldn't even think of putting on SB-series boots now. The AFs fit better, flex better, and are much stiffer.

Hah. I've not found a ski large enough to mount as a skwal, or, at least, not a *single* one. Although I find myself toying with the idea of mounting a "nordic skwal" from an old nordic ski, just for laughs and to counter that "cross country snowboarding" video (the one with "skooching"). Also, it would be funny to actually use, try and convince people that on busy days, restricting people to nordic skwals allows us have 2 people on every nordic run :)

I might have to give Aluflex a call. IIRC their titanal skwal was around 700 euros, and they're supposed to have a test site up in Les Carroz this year. I gave one of their alpine boards a shot last year, it was a blast.

I think of it as avoiding the snow. Doing the mental (and, to an extent, physical) opposite of reaching for the snow, actively avoiding it. If you do that, you reach a point where you simply /can't/ carve any lower, the snow has come up to meet you. Then people come up to you in the lift lines and say things like "how do you do that", "that looks so fluid", "you're beautiful to watch" and so on* Bryan touched on it when he said And that's it. Reaching for the snow results in unbalance, bending at the waist, "toilet stance", overall ugliness and, of course, busted wrists / fingers / shoulders. Don't do it. * at which point you will trip over your board and fall over like a spastic, but that's life.

What are you making, Ace?

Oooohh. Let us know how it goes.

Totally naked. Not even any sidewalls :