Evidence of Carving

[KingCrimson]

Last day of the season..I'm at 3 and a half days on hardboots now.

Still on ski boots, but I widened out my stance a LOT and canted my back foot..everything's much better.

As made obvious in the video, this was some STICKY snow.

Check out the almost completed push-pull carve :D I wasn't going fast enough to stay up..

It snowed all day, but they are still closing after tomorrow Anyway..I think I angulated a little bit..it's a start, I wasn't even setting my downhill edge before today. I have a problem with how efficient carving is though..Either I'm doing relaxing carves and going mach 39, or forced skids, which scrapes up the few inches of fresh, wet pow and leaves bare ice for everyone else. You can see some of the crazy austrians, also coming in at Mach 39. They go so fast, they are already back on the chairlift by the time their spray hits you.

As always, telling me to bend my knees is appreciated. Actually, I did bend my knees while carving..just not while slowly gliding, because the nose likes to get lost in that stuff..

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<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VZ0u0dHsDM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="350" width="425"> Also found these babies on the wall while buying 2 dollar wax in Bishop. A Lacroix Asym and a Rossi WITH those awesome bindings. There was a Gordon and Smith on the wall as well, and it had inserts like a newer snowboard, but they were arranged in the manner in which you would mount 2 piece bindings. The Lacroix was in beautiful shape with LOADS of camber, the Rossi had less, but look at the condition it's in! What a sinful waste of sub par, beautiful gear!

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[willywhit]

not bad theo. You're gonna have to show your dad how to use the ZOOM feature on the camera, tho. Or have him get below you and shoot UP the hill.Zoom in and zoom out gradually, then zoom in close.

It'll look like you're going faster than you really are.

Mach 39 ? Let's see some of that.

study those blip.tv clips

the only "awesome" bindings are BOMBER BINDINGS.

[AaronG]

Theo, you're doing great for the amount of time that you have on a hardboot setup. The relaxed carves to Mach 39 seems to be an affliction that most people encounter when starting out carving. What usually happens is that you start out with nice carves, as the speed starts to increase your turns become larger and larger and your speed keeps increasing. YOu then find yourself going Mach 39 and then have to resort into skidding to get your speed back in check. I know, I have been there myself. The trick in controlling your speed is to get in and out of the fall line as quickly as possible.

The biggest thing that helped me carve the intermediate runs is to be conscious of hand position, hands always out front, like riding a bike. Look to where you want to go, rotate your head as you initiate the turn. Pick out a tree or other item and lock your eyes on it, the board will come around quickly getting you out of the fall line so your speed does not increase.

Another thing to help with your carving is riding with other carvers who have more experience. They can critique your technique and offer words of advice!!

[KingCrimson]

One thing I've noticed is that I'm basically standing 90* to the board, even though my bindings are 60 and 60. Is that a problem that I'll need to keep my eyes on, no problem at all, or something that will resolve itself?

My dad "took at least a dozen videos" but he basically was blind whenever the wind stopped hitting his glasses because they fogged up so fast. Faster than mach 39. So he was pointing the camera at me, yelling "all right!"...but recording nothing.

Really, the coolest thing for me was watching the board out of the corner of my eye. Seeing it disappear, and then shoot under me and pick me up again. I honestly hadn't ever set a downhill edge before yesterday, so speed control was much better. I had spent a lot of time going Mach 40 before yesterday, because I could carve nicely, but not proper turns. I would basically do one carve and have to skid due to the "Oh sh*t" factor.

Another problem I have, which may be related to the ski boots, is even if I'm traversing at a very shallow angle to the fall line, I go Mach 38, and due to the fact that I'm not cutting the snow as much as high angle carving, the board jumps up and down and beats the crap out of me.

I also did a cool cartwheel and landed on my head..luckily it was on a steep part of the trail where snow had piled up. Neck hurts today.

Basically, the best comment from my dad was after my first downhill edge turn.

"I thought it was gonna be a long day with you falling over, but you keep getting up!"

Oldvolvos- I'd like to hook up with you at Bear some time, as well as with Tim from Powder and Sun at Mt. High. If everything works out, I'll be an NSP Mountain Host next season, but I'm going to limit that to Baldy, where all the patrollers are actually nice people. Gdboy and Garyj are the only carvers I've seen while on HB's, but that was at Mammoth, and the drive is really just too much.

Speaking of Baldy, does anybody know who this is? http://www.shopbaldy.com/archive/large/LPMC08-30.jpg

[Thumper]

OVR's advice is, as usual, right on. Energy management was hard for me, too. Just hold your carves a little longer until you're a bit past perpindicular to the fall line. (Make sure you have enough room trail-wise) As soon as you start carving uphill, you'll hemorrage energy. The trick is knowing how much speed you want to dump before you start the next carve. Dump too much and you'll have to nurse the next carve because you won't have enough speed to aggressively intitiate. Dump too little and you wind up with your Mach 39 issue, gaining speed through each incomplete carve. The difference between the two is very small timing-wise. Another thing that helped was focusing on push-pull, i.e. aggressively initiate the carve and pushing at the start and then pulling or unweighting as the board passes through the fall line rather than trying to "G" your way through it. There's a good example of Billy Bordie doing this at the 9:40-10:30 point in this video:http://www.hardbooter.net/Video/size_doesnt_matter.wmv

[KingCrimson]

Well, last month at Mammoth, I spent lots of time stopped, facing uphill with the tail buried in slush.

Now I've been doing the opposite extreme. This happened my first days on the snow..Mach 38 (felt like mach 39 at the time) and then the seated bail due to worrisome trees. Second day, skid mania. Third day, softboot pseudocarving.

Next season..(blah!) Maybe I'll get all this together. Plus, I'll be training for ski patrol, so I'll get a lot more time on the snow where I'm forced into an incredibly difficult situation (which is the only way I ever learn anything anyway...:rolleyes:)

Also, a few variables were changed for my past run, let me know if they sound legitimate...

When angling the board to any exciting extent, it would just flex to hell and haul me right uphill. It was set to about 18 inches stance width, it is now as wide as possible, I feel much more in control, and it feels like the turning radius has widened up, being that my weight isn't all on a small focal point.

Another thing was the Burton lift/cant. I believe it's made a huge difference as well..my knees actually bend now. Keeping the cuff buckles loose helped soften things up on my endlessly stiff ski boots.

Burton Boilers in the right size are on the way, so next season, I'll actually be on some real hardboots! Also, since they are so soft, I expect that they'll be nice and versatile for patrolling.