how fast can u go??

[skategoat]

Linus:

It was mid-week and the run was empty. The only hazard was the lift towers. I stayed well away from those. And, as you know the runs at MSLM are straight. No danger of going into the trees. All in all, it's a pretty good place to do speed runs. That is, when the patrollers aren't watching.

Henry

[Linus]

All in all, it's a pretty good place to do speed runs. That is, when the patrollers aren't watching.

Henry

Last season, I was at Bluemountain with my friends doing some speed runs until a patroller came and cut my ticket off. :o :o :o

[carvedog]

I was clocked with radar on a downhill course at 68 mph. That was with a check turn thrown in at the top of the face. The next run I went faster ( no check turn) but the gun wasnt there then. I still nearly pissed myself both times. This was on a Factory Prime 173. It felt about like a 135 as I passed the halfway mark on the face. At the bottom it felt like I didn't have a snowboard on at all. There was a pretty good roll in the runout that I never even felt at the half speed course inspection run.

I straight lined one of the bowls on a powder day with lots of light freshie and I know I came close to the 50 to 55 range. I usually turn lots in powder but the Frontier was flowing and so was I, so i kind of didn't turn.

For those speed demons out there, Sun Valley has several areas where there is no speed enforcement at all. If you ski in control and don't endanger anyone you can go as fast as you want. These are not the green runs.

Jerry

[Allee]

"In the 60s, the US military dropped a man from a weather balloon (102, 800 feet) and his body came close to breaking the speed of sound at 614 MILES per hour!"

I saw the vid of that, and it was one of the craziest things I've ever seen. The guy just up and jumped off into the stratosphere!

[skategoat]

Last season, I was at Bluemountain with my friends doing some speed runs until a patroller came and cut my ticket off. :o :o :o

That's cause you're a young punk. The patrollers tend to leave us greybeards alone.

[philw]

looks fast!!!

Deja Vue all over again here. That image doesn't look fast, it looks Photoshopped. Badly. The way the motion blue extends in front of his leading hand is kind of odd, don't you think? Funny how the blur hits his body bit not his helmet. Perhaps they're moving independently.

Here's one from an FIS competition last year:

Looking at that he's just starting his run, hence the stance is open and the tip of the board isn't contacting the snow. Bindings are releasable, by FIS rules. The same rules prevent you riding the full course on consumer gear: don't even think about it.

GPS readings: I think imperialist bombs are guided by slightly higher specification systems. Consumer devices are innaccurate over the short term.

In practice watching speed snowboarding is awesome in the real meaning of the word. Having spent some time shooting this, I don't believe anyone on any piste anywhere could possibly come even close to the speeds run by these guys. The track is steeper than any piste, it's iced up and prepared in fine detail. It's straight, which is just as well as you steer with your fingers. The boards are dedicated; the crash barriers are huge; there are no people within a large radius.

Depending on the course and ability, speeds are anything from about 100km/h to 250km/h maximum. The maximum is an FIS rule: technically you could go faster with steeper/ longer courses, but that's not the way the sport is going. The timed section is 100m long. The run-out is the major part of the course. You're not even allowed to stand up before a certain point at the bottom of the course.

Sun Peaks is the only place I know of over there which does speed, but they don't allow snowboarding if I remember correctly. Something to do with the piste area not being big enough to do it safely.

Snowboarding just feels faster than it is.

[Mike Tokar]

I did the speed weekend at Hunter Mtn, NY that Stan mentioned, and took 3rd place with 66mph on a coiler 196 in '03 (also did 56mph on my mtn bike that same day, 3rd place again, 2nd loser behind the same 2 guys). The hill they ran the race on was a little wimpy thing toward the bottom of the mtn, but they made a nice little starting mound to give you a boost.

The rules don't allow you to turn in the course, and even though the board has a 7mm taper and a 17+m sidecut radius, it still feels like it wants to hook up when you ride it flat.

As for stance angles, I'd keep them to what you find most stable for you. I ride with both angles the same, and with the angle dictated by the board width.

66mph didn't feel that scary, but it would be a lot more stable if you were allowed to just cruise down a few steep headwalls in succession and be on one edge or another. I think I could go faster more securely that way, but then again it could just feel faster because you'd feel some G's even if you're only making shallow turns.

PSR - please post some details on the tuck! I've experimented with the basic hut tuck, and an 'asym' tuck with the lead hand on the lead leg and trail hand tucked behind, as well as both hands forward like the start of the 'swing-wing' fighter drill you taught me. I think that tuck is probably more important than wax for going fast, so please share the wisdom!

Please bring the radar gun to ECES!!!! If we can get a carvers only trail, maybe we can get everybody to get the feel of how fast they're going when they just ride normally. I'd be wary of trying to pull off a real speed race scenario safely. It takes slope control and course prep that would take away from some of the fun.

See you at Stratton on the 25th!!!

MT

[FTA2R]

other than standing up / extending hands to maximize air resistance, how do you stop when going 55 mph +(assume you have maybe a few hundred feet). I personally would be scared of trying to skid stop b/c catching an edge at the speed could be very dangerous.

ps what up PSR!

Barry

[Gleb]

Speed is what really made me want to go into alpine boarding. When i gain some experience, I will try for some of those speeds.

For now, my fastest on skis is near 55. nothing special but fun nonetheless.

[NateW]

I suppose the ideal location would have an uphill slope behind the speed trap, so you could just coast up the other side to get your speed down.

When I did my 51mph run for Randy's radar at Northstar, I stood up briefly then had to put the board sideways to shed speed. I think all of us did, as the runout zone wasn't very long, and led into another steeper section and/or another trail. None of us fell, but at least in my case the skidding resulted in an ice blast to my face that was still quite unpleasant.

[Gleb]

At Sunday River, the run "White Heat" would be perfect for a speed trial. That is only if you have the balls to do it. Ridiculous.

[Ironduck]

Radar works pretty well for speed measurement but my experience with it is that it is no fun when what ever you are measuring is hurtling at you, out of control, at 50+... I have had a hard time convincing people that they don't need to risk their life and mine by running too close to the gun to be sure the speed is measured. A good gun will pick up a person on a snowboard 1/8 mile or more away.

A couple of alternatives: A GPS on the board (or rider) alleviates the need to have anyone in the line of fire and it lets the rider pick when and where he wants to go fast. If you are using radar, it works just as well from behind as in front. If you are going to be in front then a tree in front of you might be a good idea. Or mark a course that keeps the measurement guy at a safe distance. A voice recorder or video camera is handy for recording the speed data.

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Bob

[skategoat]

GPS is the way to go. I stick my little unit in the radio pocket on the sleeve of my shell and it gets perfect reception.

Someone doubted GPS accuracy but I'm willing to bet it's as accurate as a consumer level radar gun. Here's a study that backs that up:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15519597&dopt=Abstract

[Neil Gendzwill]

That study looked at people on level tracks. How well does it work when the slope is steep?

[willywhit]

http://www.ragged-mt.com/ski/downhill.htm

[~tb]

That study looked at people on level tracks. How well does it work when the slope is steep?

To Echo Neil's post. . . I dont think that GPS takes change in elevation into account in speed very well. I could be wrong. Anyone (jack, bob. . . gadget geeks of the world) have better info on this?

[skategoat]

GPS is aware of elevation. I can't imagine it's difficult to program the software to take change of elevation into account when calculating speed. It's simple geometry.

If I'm wrong, and GPS assumes that everything is flat, then your actual downhill speed is faster than the indicated speed. I think.

[gmarsden]

GPS's generally only output course and speed. By definition this is in

a locally level (horizontal) plain. The GPS itself works in 3-D space

and will be well aware internally of the vertical component of your velocity. If it outputs

it at all, it would be a separate message or displayed variable. If it is available

you could RSS (sqrt of the sum of the squares) of the speed and vertical

velocity to get your true speed. Otherwise divide the displayed horizontal speed by

the cosine of the slope angle to get your actual speed.

- Greg

[Neil Gendzwill]

I believe Garmin makes one model with a built-in altimeter that does all this math for you, may be wrong.

[kjl]

Did you read this part:

"Traditionally the front foot should be set at about +70' and the rear foot at about +35'. "

Can you imagine trying to run at those angles? I think I'd dislocate my hip on the first heelside.

Doesn't Jeorg (pureboarding) ride angles something like that? Maybe not ~70 up front but certainly 55+ and I think the back foot is ~30

[Ironduck]

The GPS measures speed from a doppler calculation on the signals it is getting from satellites seen from many angles. These satellite speeds are on the order of 5,000 mph and the GPS can measure speed with an accuracy of 0.2 mph or better. If it is smart enough to do that, it should have little difficulty dealing with a little elevation change.

Bob Dill

[Gleb]

I'm almost 100% sure that most modern midgrade gps units take elevation into consideration, especially waas enabled ones. We should have a test and compare.

[Jim]

I noticed that my 4 year old Garmin (sold last year) searched for exact elevation for several minutes while resting on a table.

[Linus]

Doesn't Jeorg (pureboarding) ride angles something like that? Maybe not ~70 up front but certainly 55+ and I think the back foot is ~30

He sets his binding angles f:53 r: 20+

[philw]

The FIS rules are publically available (google...). In summary from what I remember they just use optical timing devices 100m apart. So there's a ruin down, where the riders accellerate, and they can see the timed section ahead (marked by a line in the snow and little break-away flags). No one's within 300 meters of it in any direction. They hit the timed section as fast as they can, then there's a middle section where the track flattens out, but they're not allowed to stand up. Once they pass another line in the snow it's judged to be safe to stand up, so they stand up slowly and then use air resistance to slow down. Finally they stick one or two big skids in. I saw someone crash down in thisi decelleration zone and they took out most of the [very large inflatable] course padding - even when they're doing to relatively slow speeds they're still going like stink.

GPS: again, google for it. The problem isn't particularly the ability to catpure four dimensions [sic], although the absolute accuracy varies depending on what you can see. From GPS machines I've worked with, they don't capture cooked data points that often; their averages can be taken over a relatively small number of points; and they severely interpolate (depending on which specific device you're using). Normally that's not a problem, but occasionally you will find the device "ringing" as you turn a corner, or coming up with a speed which you know you, or your vehicle, isn't capable of.