tufty

The second frozen-backside video (post #12), at 3:18, shows the perfect tool for avoiding lift-line crowding and topsheet damage. Also, they're frickin' maniacs. I wanna ride with them.

I was walking back to the car with the skwal over my shoulder, young kid points at me and says to his dad "that's like one of those funny snowboards, isn't it?". Dad says "no, it's a mon.... actually, I don't know what it is". As I'm taking my boots off, the kid comes over and asks "what /is/ it?". Cue quick explanation of what a skwal is, why it's different to a snowboard, alpine board and monoski. He asks if I snowboard. "Yes, but only alpine", say I. "I've seen that, it looks loads more fun than snowboarding. I'd like to try", says he. Astute kid. Spoke to his dad, hooked him up with my mate who still has a few alpine rigs for hire in his shop, including some kiddie-sized ones. One more for the pack, maybe.

**** me, they did that to your €1000 board and you're not down there removing hands and legs with a freshly dulled chainsaw? You're a calmer man than I. Another base grind is not guaranteed to bring it all back to spec, and is going to further shorten the life of your board. Likewise bringing your edges back to 88°. Far as I'm concerned, theres one solution, and *only* one solution to this. Shop replaces your now damaged board with a new Kessler and gets to keep your old one. No discussion. I've had something similar to this last year (although done to a rather less expensive board) when I took my rather aged slalom board in to be tuned. The brand-new-hire unskilled goit that did the job took my edges from a rather blunt 88° to - umm - 92°. Christ alone knows how he managed it. Shop owner drove me down to the nearest place that stocks alpine gear, watched as I picked my new board, then picked up the tab.

If you want to get serious about hardbooting, (and, indeed, extreme carving), I would strongly advise hanging up the softboot setup for the season (or, at the very least, saving it for pow days). It's hard to work on style if you keep switching the equipment, stance and angles out from underneath yourself. Yes, it's initially hard, but you'll probably progress further if you force yourself onto one sort of equipment only. 50/45 is a very low set of angles for a hard setup - are you running a wide board with small feet, or do you have boot overhang? If its the latter, rectify it now. That's also a pretty big difference between the angles on your feet - the further you go "forwards" with angles, the less difference you will probably find you need. Remember, it's not -15 +15 duck stance. Bringing your angles closer together should help with pain in the back knee, too, as you'll be torqueing it less. I'm personally running 64/64 on my setup, which is generally ~20cm waist board and 27.5 boots (I'm running 90/90 on the skwal, but that's a whole different kettle of fish).

Not so strange really. With skwal, there's no real "front" or "back" side, so although it feels "wierd" to have the "wrong" foot forward, it doesn't change much in terms of how you ride. Even with a "powder" skwal like my Panther 178, as long as you swap the bindings from side to side (this is how I discovered it - I lent the board to a friend who is nominally goofy, and then decided to give it a shot like that due to lack of tools on site). With alpine, you're completely reversing *everything*, even with high angles.

Tried this last year, after finding that it didn't really matter which foot I put in front on the skwal. Didn't work at all on an alpine setup. skwal : fine "regular" or "goofy" (but terrifying to ride switch). Blast 160 SL : "regular" fine forwards or switch. "goofy" - impossible.

Hardly. All the web designers and coders I know, without exception, use macs. It's probably closer to 1 in 10 ;) Windows users, on the other hand, use a browser called "the internet".

Snowpro twin. OK as these things go, but weedy bales.

Probably actually meant 'modules', as in the various park installations. That's what they call 'em over here. So, guy saw my skwal last week. "What the **** type of ski is that?"

Just got back from 4 hours of intensive skwal. Not to rub it in, but it was, as they say, ace. Hero cord and no people, although visibility was a bit limited. I know where you're coming from, though. Last season we had a mere 80cm /cumulative/ snowfall from the start of december through to the end of april. Man, that sucked. Simon.

Sorry Bobby, but we have 2m of 100% natural hardpack over here, with over 6m cumulative falls since 10 Dec, and a cold front incoming. We had 2 feet of powder this morning, another foot expected overnight, then blue skies and sunshine. I'll be skwalling tomorrow. Like I was today. Muahahaha

Skootch-leg free since nineteen-ninety-three

tourist : I've never seen a monoski like that before me : that's because it's a skwal tourist : oh, that's what they look like. never seen one before. one ear-dragging descent later, the same guy caught up with me as I was drinking a coffee with my mate. tourist : so... where can I get one? I want to ride like that

Our new 6 place Leitner just had its pylons put in place. Went to see the helicopter dropping big chunks of steel yesterday : terrifying. 2 pylon sections in place with a 2 crews frantically torquing the bolts at the bottom and in the middle whilst the helico placed the head / gantry assembly on the top. I'll see if I can't scrounge up a photo or two later (my colleague had his big camera, which is why we managed to get half an hour off work to go watch...)

Depends. The resort I work at, most of the land is private (i.e. land we lease from farmers), some is public (mainly the forest, but some is what's best considered "common land"), and some is actually owned by the resort itself. I'd guess we're pretty typical. There's (at least) 3 separate ways lift companies are funded over here - fully private, fully public, or "mixed" where the resort town(s) own a (usually controlling) part of the lift company. There's no rules against hiking up, either - what we are selling is the use of the lifts, not the use of the slopes. Which also follows that we can't "police" the slopes - we can deny access to the lifts in case of non-compliant equipment (certain lifts are no-go for snowscoots, for example) or take away people's lift passes for dangerous behaviour, but we can't actually ban them from sticking their skis over their shoulder (or skinning up), walking up the hill, and then skiing down. Obviously, TWIAVBP, so your mileage may vary. But at least here, there's nothing legally stopping you setting yourself up as an independent instructor.

Fair enough, I guess. Your gaff, your rules, and all that. Dunno about the haemorrhaging cash bit, but that's probably a difference between resorts and countries. We make *serious* money Christmas / New Year, School Holidays in February and (if we've still got snow) Easter. The rest of the time, we pretty much manage to not make too much of a loss. Otherwise, everything you say is true. Costs a frickin' fortune to run a resort. That's an odd attitude, from my point of view. But then in France, the schools are independent of the resort (even the ESF), and pay *nothing* to the lift operators apart from the passes they buy (for their clients and instructors). Where I work, there are 3 separate schools giving lessons, as well as a number of independent instructors targetting "niche" stuff like snowskate and snowscoot (no alpine or skwal, though). They don't bring any money in to the lift/resort operators directly, but the fact they are there brings in clients, and clients means pass sales, means cash. We don't run the hotels, bars or restaurants, either. That said, I am *not* sure how you go about being an independent instructor over here, though. There's probably all sorts of certification and (above all) insurance requirements.

Ah, I thought there was a tiny amount. Guess I misread.

It should probably be pointed out that titanal is nothing much to do with titanium. It's an aluminium alloy that (like many others) has a miniscule amount of titanium in it. As for carbon - it's stiffer, lighter and generally better than glass.

Obviously, your operator will need 4 hands and 3 heads. Driving a groomer is a constant juggle of blade angle, lift, attitude and machine speed. The machine pictured above would be possible to use and get decent results on perfectly smooth runs on days where it hasn't snowed and the cannons haven't been running.

This. I find bail bindings *less* of an issue with snow buildup, mainly because, if you have enough snow on your boots for it to be a problem, you can't shut the bails (or you're gonna feel it). In any case, the Dakine Spike Pad is the solution (to the point where I had considered cutting one of them in two for my skis)

It's a monoboardski!

Really, what's the difference? All Gordon was really doing was "doing a quick patch job" so the flaws weren't immediately obvious in order to maximise his profit. There you go, nice little runner, hundred notes to you, squire. What's that you say, the brakes died after a hundred miles? Sorry, mate, "sold as seen". Sure, he could have said "needs new brake shoes", but he'd have had to lower his profit margin. If you've never had an item from ebay where the seller has "forgotten" to mention some little flaw, you've been lucky. Same deal. The rules are 100% the same - if you can get away with it, then do it. This is why I used the word "hypocrites". If you think there's any difference in dealing with a complete stranger on ebay or with "one of ours" here, that's exactly what you are, and you could probably benefit from rereading "The Water Babies". If you don't think there's a difference, but you're willing to sell stuff here for less than you could get on ebay, then you're an idiot. But then, what the fsck do I know? I'm a communist. I give my old stuff away.

Personally, I don't think it's desirable or appropriate anywhere. But then I would say that... However, if you accept capitalism of any form, then you must surely accept its logical final form. But, like I said, I would say that. For those that think it's acceptable to gouge people on eBay, but not here, all I can say is that you're a bunch of hypocrites. I once worked with a guy called Gordon, who had a sideline "doing up" second hand cars and selling them for a profit. "doing up" involved things like "a handful of sawdust in the gearbox to keep the noise down" and "tinfoil in the brake drums to get a couple of hundred miles of braking, rather than paying for new shoes". When challenged on the ethics of this, his reply was:

This. Stop bitching. If I purchase an object, it becomes mine - at this point I am entitled to do any damn thing I like with it. This includes selling it immediately afterwards for a profit. You, the original seller, don't get to bitch and moan about what I do with it, because you have ceased to be its owner. You have no say in the matter. You were presumably happy with the price I paid, because that's the price you sold it for. It shouldn't require a communist to explain the basics of capitalism, surely?

Is stiffer better? Hell yes. Can you imagine running a stiff alpine board with softboots and rental bindings, even if you could magically disappear the boot out problems? Or, nearer to the point, riding a pair of top-end skis, as fast as you possibly can, wearing a pair of TR9s? Or Raichle / Deeluxe snowboard boots? Even my AF700s are less stiff than my work-supplied Adrenalines, which are, in themselves, way too floppy to be put near any sort of performance ski. I hate to say it, but snowboard boots are woeful. they work for snowboarding due to short sole length, but when boot out is removed from the equation, as it is with skwal, I don't see any advantage over ski boots.