tufty

Lift plates are really easy to make anyway. 12" Plastic felling wedges provide a really good starting block (they give you around 4-5° of lift). If you get crafty with a belt sander, you can add some cant as well, and they're plastic, so they are a helluva lot softer on your board than big alu blocks. What's also worth considering is getting hold of a pair of snowpro "race" binders (6mm bales), ditching the base plate and machining up a new flat plate that more or less matches your sole length. The toe and heel blocks have canting built in (one leans left, one leans right, works a treat on a skwal), and with a custom base plate matched to t-nuts in your wedge, you can space your mounting bolts further apart than the stock 4x4 pattern allows. Basically, drill your wedge to match your board binding mounts, bolt that to the board, and then bolt your baseplate to the wedge. Custom binders for the price of a pair of old snowpros, a couple of felling wedges, some t-nuts and a bit of alu plate.

I don't have either, but they look to be using the same end blocks as the Highlander alpine binding (which I do have), and which adjust cant and lift by wedging under the blocks. The phiokka bindings are very solid, but not overly or easily adjustable. I don't know if the bindings come with wedges from new, I got mine second hand and machined up my own wedges from HDPE chopping boards. The under-binding wedge looks too hard and sharp edged, I'd be much happier with a plastic one like the thias bindings had. To me, sharp edged alu blocks bolted to your skwal look a lot like a buggered board waiting to happen.

Frankly, that's your fault. If you leave your stuff lying about, it's gonna get put away or get stuff put on top of it. Make yourself a rack, use it rather than leaving your stuff lying about, put a big "do not touch" sign on it. Problem solved.

I count 6 :P

Just 5 syllables The second line has 2 more and 5 - that's haiku.

skis on my topsheet I do not appreciate. Sorry. Did that hurt?

two metres of snow I'm dreaming of perfect arcs but I'm shovelling

It's not actually grease, rather a mixture of rubber powder and rust that accumulates on the cable and gets washed off the cable onto the suck^H^H^H^Hclients when it rains. Still tastes horrible, though.

Certainly not in France. We have 2 big bits of season this year (Xmas/New Year, which is minor, and 4 weeks of school holidays in "February", which is where we make 75% of our money). Most years there's also a third period (Easter school holidays around the end of April). Where I work we're generally relatively busy the rest of the time as well, but there are a lot of resorts which are totally dead outside those periods. It's rare for resorts to stay open much beyond the easter break.

You might want to contact Phiokka direct - http://www.phksnow.com/uk/skwa_uk.html

Depends on what you mean by "best". It's a helluva lot nicer to ski on if properly groomed, but it doesn't last as long. There's little wrong with artificial snow, as long as it's made properly, and it lasts way longer. Again, if it's properly made and groomed. If you're blowing slush, then you're trying to make snow with too high an air temperature to start with, it'll be horrible to ski and groom, and won't last properly. It's a waste of time, in short. As for snowmax, I don't like it. I think it may well be banned in France - we certainly don't use additives any more and I don't know of any resort over here that does.

Not running the snow cannons when it's not cold enough to form snow would be a good start.

I don't think that's entirely general. We generally only get surly when people get arsey. We may also laugh behind your back when we've warned you about something, you do it anyway, and it all goes pie-shaped. As long as you (or anybody else) don't get seriously hurt, of course.

Phil. #1, I'm with you. I've had an AT ski to the face due to the leash after a binding release (silvretta 404s). On the other hand, I didn't lose my ski. #4 has been covered by nutmeg. Personally, I hold the board on the leash whilst clipping in my front foot, but it's horses for courses, really. You're right, though - using a leash may, in some very exceptional circumstances, increase the risk you incur personally whilst snowboarding. In those cases, such as heliskiing, you may well be right to advise against their use. However, the purpose of a leash is not to protect you, but to protect other resort users from your equipment should it "escape". It's highly unlikely for most of us that wearing a leash *whilst riding* will improve our chances, and, indeed, a leash could be stowed anywhere at that point. However, when you're clipping in, and when you're on a lift, it's pretty much essential protection for other people. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's managed to unclip a board whilst on a chairlift (it's happened twice to me), or slip whilst clipping in the first foot (happened to me on skwal the other day). I also use my leash to attach my board outside restaurants (not for security purposes as much as to stop the board getting jostled and running away; if, like many people here, you are running boards > $1000 with another $500 of binding / plate hardware you probably want something more substantial than a leash for security purposes, but I don't - all my equipment put together cost less than $750, but I digress.) In 11 years working on the slopes, I've seen more than my fair share of "runaways". Usually the results are more material than corporal, but I've seen a few hospital trips as a result. The common factor in all of them was lack of leash, or leash not attached. It comes down to not putting other people at risk, or at least minimising their exposure. The hell with me, I'm taking a risk I personally feel comfortable with, but the kiddie downhill fro me who gets a 180cm board to the back of the head because I don't think a leash is worth the minimal effort it takes to put on might see things differently.

If you're using AT skis without brakes on the binders, you use a leash. It's bad enough trying to find braked skis in powder, but without brakes you're stuffed : last week, kiddie of 9 or 10 managed to plant the tip of her ski in the arrival of my lift. The rear of her rental binding (the bit with the brakes on it) came out of its mounting rather than releasing properly, and the rest of her ski disappeared downhill at about mach 10. It didn't hit anyone, thankfully, instead planting itself firmly in one of the mattresses around the 3rd pylon down. As has been said elsewhere in the thread, skis generally have brakes, which is why they don't need a leash. Boards don't, and I have 6 stitches in my right shin this evening due to the fact - coming back from work, going up the final draglift, some tosser was "sledding" on his board next to it, it got away from him and hit me. I got stitched, he got his pass removed and gets to pay for the doctor's work. And my leg hurts like hell. There's no reason *not* to use a leash, but plenty of reasons why you should.

So, spent the day skwalling in Courchevel yesterday. Got lots of comments from the lifties along the lines of "that's an endangered species", "holy cow", etc. Then, as I hit the last drag lift of the day (a "téléski difficile" that I'd done at least 3 times), the spotty young oik came out of his cabin, pointed at my board, and said "c'est interdit ici, ce - truc" ("that's forbidden here, that - thing"). He proceded to try and show me how I wasn't allowed to take "his" draglift on a - umm - "thing". Which turned out to be cobblers. And next time I go to Courch', I'll be hot-gluing woodscrews to the tail of my board first.

German or swiss ebay are a good starting point, although italian ebay seems to have a certain number of boards at the moment. I don't know if italy has second-hand ski sales, like the french "bourse aux skis", but they are worth checking out as well if you can. I'd go for something relatively wide to start with, ~20cm waist (which will allow you to start with angles that aren't insane), and with a reasonable turn radius - starting off with a 17cm wide, 180cm long board with an 18m radius is liable to end badly. I'd probably look for a boardercross board rather than a pure alpine rig. You can do bumps / moguls on hardboots, although it's an "acquired taste". For chopped up crud at the end of the day, most hard setups will slice through it like a hot knife through butter.

You're noboarding on a virus?

I've been in a lot of bars, but I've never drunk tea in one. Seriously, never done a T-bar, on skwal or anything else. I don't even know where there *is* one within 100km of where I am.

I step out of the front foot. Not only is it easier to clip in, but you're better placed to slide to a stop one-footed. On the other hand, I guess it's easier to torque your knee if you get it wrong. For draglifts, both feet in.

Not that I'd go back to low cut boots, but nowadays ski boots are plastic and high cut; boy, if I had a $CURRENCY_UNIT for every tib/fib break at the top of those high-cut boots...

Realism? That's not gonna go down well. [puts up feet and starts munching popcorn]

My slalom board is currently doing the rounds of the guys (and a girl) at work that want to have a shot at alpine. 2 of them are hooked already and searching for boards and boots of their own. My skwal is getting a fair bit of use as well. I may have to source another one for my own lunchtimes...

[pedant] All snowboard hardboots … will accept them (and I'm not sure there wasn't an issue with intec heels on some models of UPZ). Ski boots will almost certainly not accept intec heels. [/pedant] I've been using my work ski boots (Garmont Endorphins) with my SG plank (saves carting my AF700s about), but they aren't terribly comfortable to use (or to wear, but that's a whole 'nother issue). The main issue is not having enough forward lean on the rear foot. They are around 1cm longer, sole-wise, than the AF700s.

You need to be real careful when you put your boots on /and take them off/ to make sure the liner is in the right place. The crimp will eventually go away, a hairdryer might help but the best thing to do is to put them on properly and wak around with them for a few hours. I run my RAB oddly, mainly because I ride a skwal most of the time. It's a personal thing, but I'd set the forward lean as you like it then make it pretty tight. Frankly, the RAB is a bit of a badly-designed waste of time anyway, IMO.