Does "steering" have a rolle in a pure carved turn?

[BlueB]

If you voted "YES", please explain what stearing means to you and the moves you do.

If you simply don't know what is the "steering", please vote "NO". If you don't know about it, it can not be important for your riding.

By "pure carved" I make no allusions to Pure Carve (Cliff Ahumada & friends) or Pure Boarding (Joerg Egli). I simply mean nice, clean carved, pencil thin, edge to edge, no skidding, all parts of the edge travelling the same path, C turn. The CARVE.

[Transistor Rhythm]

Total pressure on the board and shifting weight back and forward. I'm still just starting to figure it out though.

[tex1230]

I would say that steering includes how tight you want to make the carve. more entry speed and more pressure at initiation = a tighter arc, less speed/pressure = wider arc...which I would call steering (how much bend you put into the board)

[Chris Houghton]

Anything with a blended/cycloidal/elliptical/variable sidecut needs to be steered with body position fore/aft to get the size of carve you desire. I guess if you don't realize this you could end up on the tail and leave the trail at a high rate of speed - as some of us have in the past.

[Jack M]

No, it doesn't.

[RideGuy]

"nice, clean carved, pencil thin, edge to edge, no skidding, all parts of the edge travelling the same path, C turn" == 0 steering?

If the steering angle == 0, how are you steering at all?

[piusthedrcarve]

I'm voting for 'No'.

If we ride on nicely angled, well groomed, and no up & down slope with perfect snow condition, 'Steering' got nothing to do with creating 'pure carved' turns. But as we all know, there are so many variables mentioned above and many more, we NEED to 'steer' to get turns what we want.

[KingCrimson]

Between them on an infinitely wide slope? Probably not.

But in carving something steep with varying width, often I don't find myself entering at an ideal angle. Steering the board prior to the carve means I can squeeze in an extra turn or two.

Racers make pure carved turns, but they can't always make a clean transition to hit the fastest line. In this case, it's hard to argue steering doesn't have a role in a pure carved turn.

[softbootsurfer]

Steering is to me Intent...IMO

Either I am Leading the Board or the Board is leading me...

[b0ardski]

steering has a role, does that mean a pencil thin carve uses steering?, not if your in a static position and locked into the boards ideal radius. i.e. along for the ride!

If any mid carve movements such as tilting the board to a higher angle of attack(tighter carve) or lower angle of attack(bigger carve), or tilt the front knee to heelside increasing torsional flex or pulling the knees together(sorry Jack) to increase longitudinal flex or pushing hard with extra extension at the end of a carve to tighten the carve and increase braking effect, or, with vsr, weighting the tip or tail, then you're steering.

These are all steering movements that alter the direction of travel the board is in, and don't necessarily prevent a clean,thin track in the snow.

[Jack M]

pushing the board with your feet such that it yaws out of the path that it would naturally carve is steering. it has no <i>role</i> in a <i>pure carved turn</i>. end of story.

[b0ardski]

so "pure carve" is "along for the ride" and turn size is more or less predetermined by the size of the radius, speed of entry and angle of attack (assuming this is maintained throughout the turn)?

Jack's stance is obvious:biggthump

"pure carve" is "along for the ride", in this case I'll change my vote to no

ps makes for a boring discussion:sleep:

[Neil Gendzwill]

I think Jack explained it pretty well - steering as far as I understand the term is the antithesis of the carve.

[RideGuy]

pushing the board with your feet such that it yaws out of the path that it would naturally carve is steering. it has no role in a pure carved turn. end of story.

Pushing the board with your feet so that it changes turn shape to me would be a change in pressure control. There are other ways to adjust your turn shape other than adding pressure. You could also adjust angulation/inclanation, turn completion or speed.

"Steering" can only happen with a steering angle. "Pure carving" whether it be dynamic or just sitting static on the edge does not use steering.

[b0ardski]

this has got me thinking

a "pure carve' on variable sidecut requires steering movements to counteract the change in radius as the board is pressured along the longitudinal axis (fed) through the turn?? or is "pure carve" on a vsr static position creating an altered rather than perfect radial C turn, or is "pure carve" on a vsr an impossibility??

Does pure carve mean perfect radial C, or tip to tail of effective edge following a perfect arc?? Physical impossibility on a vsr??

Sunshine and 4in of fresh at Schwietzer:1luvu: I'm off to steer my 173 ID (vsr)

[Jack M]

Pushing the board with your feet so that it changes turn shape to me would be a change in pressure control.

To yaw is to skid.

[RideGuy]

To yaw is to skid.

If I'm skidding then I'm not "pure carving".

EDIT: I'm an idiot. That's exactly what you are saying.

[astrokel]

When riding a motorcycle (when you're not a superhero and can't slide the rear end at will ) you are always carving (not sliding). There are things called double (or multiple) radius turns that one is forced to work and adjust to when you enter on one radius and leave in another. You definitely CAN go through the entire curve with one steering input but sometimes have to adjust.

You CAN definitely "steer" or adjust a carve radius by adjusting your angle on the board by your compression or extension on the board. I don't think it's what you want to do in an ideal carved turn but I do it all the time to find the ideal line on a less than ideal piste. Also what is it that you're doing when you're entering and leaving a carve?

Maybe the question should be clarified to is there "steering" at the apex of the carve?

[leeho730]

For me, steering is the movement in which a rider rotates the board along the body axis, which is achieved via rotating the hip.... This is done so that the pressure is distributed towards the edge rather than towards the base during a carve where a snowboard is tilted to around 80 degrees.

But if I'm wrong, please correct me on this...

[RideGuy]

Steering angle is the difference between your line of momentum and the edge of your board. If the line of momentum = the edge of your board then the steering angle is 0. If the steering angle is 0 then you are not steering.

Below is a turn with steering.

[kjl]

I voted yes. Yes, definitely.

A caveat: if you are talking about just ONE carved turn (like the J drill, where you set your edge and ride it around until you come to a stop going uphill), then no, you can just set your edge, not worry about yaw, and ride the thing around.

If you are talking about linked carved turns, yes, for sure.

The board does yaw a lot over the course of a turn: 180 degrees if you are completing your turns. I suppose you could make the case that if you are leaning over 90 degrees you are really "rolling 90 and then pitching up through your whole turn", but the fact remains that the whole "body+snowboard" mass rotates quite quickly through 180 degrees around the surface normal of the snow, and during your turn transition, you need to completely reverse that angular momentum into your next turn. Sure, if you engage your edge hard enough, eventually the sidecut will reverse that angular momentum for you, but in my opinion you can make the transition smoother, easier to engage, faster, and more gracefully if you purposely start rotating your upper body and start reversing that angular momentum early, and then steer the board into the next turn.

I'm not oversteering into a skid, I'm preemptively steering it into exactly the yaw speed that it wants to be turning due to the sidecut in the next turn.

In my opinion, one of the reasons a lot of people have really slow and/or awkward transitions is because they don't steer enough (they move their weight over the board and switch edges, but it takes some time for the angular momentum (yaw) to turn around, and during that time they are in a weird, vulnerable position requiring some flailing and/or waiting to get back to a nice carved turn going the other direction.

[carvedog]

I voted yes. There are so many variables in any "pure carved" turn I couldn't do otherwise.

Within a pure carve ( no skid at all ) the exit of the turn is influenced by your speed going in, how high of an edge angle you pursue, how early you go to your new edge - so many things.

If this argument devolves into "there is only one pure radius for each snowboard" then count me out.

[Jack M]

If this argument devolves into "there is only one pure radius for each snowboard" then count me out.

Heh... it can't devolve into that because that's not true. ;)

I think we all agree on what a pure carve is (god, I hope), but I think the problem is different definitions of steering.

I agree with RideGuy's diagram, assuming the downhill direction is down my computer screen. If your board has that kind of "steering angle" during a turn, at that moment you are not purely carving. So by this definition of steering, the answer to the <b>OP</b> is no.

Sometimes its necessary to do that, like if you have too much speed or not enough trail width.

BlueB wins "most clever troll" award for March. :D

[carvedog]

Heh... it can't devolve into that because that's not true. ;)....................

BlueB wins "most clever troll" award for March. :D

Bwaaaaawaaaa.

Agreed on The Award. Hats off to BlueB.

[Puddy Tat]

Nope Fin took that with the softbooter segregation poll. I think BB's probably get's an honourable mention.

I voted yes based on how I can tighten or widen the carve radius by shifting my weight forward or back through the turn (board is a Schtub). Obviously this isn't a gross steering input, and is typically decided prior to me dropping into the carve anyways.

I'm an EE not an ME so I may be inadvertently violating the definition of steering here.

What about multiple radius boards, according to Jack's PGS shootout riding the KST 185 with your weight towards the nose, middle, or tail resulted in different radius turns (tight, medium and long respectively). Isn't this steering through a carve or was Jack skidding the KST?

Or maybe I'm confused and the definition of steering requires a more gross change in direction?

Dave