First night on hard boots and my 158 Hooger Booger

[Da Hooger Booger]

Hey guys! Tonight was my first night, took a good 3 or 4 runs to get used to the stiffness, i never realized how stiff a stiff setup really is.

Things i noticed/observations:

-felt like i was alot taller, riding on top of the snow, and felt more rigid

-much bumpier ride than soft, but this is justified

-very fun once i added some finesse to it

-found myself i think it's called augering, where the front portion of the SCR is digging in too much

-the stiffness seemed to be helping me lay down trenches pretty fast and getting the hang of the technique

-wasn't used to the responsiveness and control, noticed i was gaining speed too fast, figure i need to get faster in edge transfer

-old Wombat bindings that came with the board held up fine

Felt great once i got the hang of it, really is very little margin for error in hard boots too. I was pretty sore in the legs. Got a ton of the weird looks from people wherever i walked/rode on the hill. The uncomfy ride made me wanna go home eventually, it was really busy/chewed up.

[newcarver]

Welcome to the world of hardbooting. Ride will get smoother and easier with practice. Comfort has a lot to do with your boots fitting correctly and getting a comfortable binding stance/angles. Weight transfer is king in controlling the board. Check out the bomber tech pages for drills to learn good technique. Keep at it and you will be having tons of fun with the hardboot setup. I pretty much switched to hardboots for almost all riding. If you get the right board, boot, binding combo you can ride anything and have a blast!

[philw]

Interesting to hear how that feels; I never really went through it as I started on ski boots.

One thing which can take a bit of tweaking is the lean on the boots; depending on precisely how that's set you can either increase or decrease the pressure you put on the front edge, which may be related to your augering feeling. On the other hand most people would tend to be too far back, so if you're not then that's good.

Got to watch the speed until you get used to it. I nearly killed myself on a mogul field the other week which I hit airborne off a cat road... I thought my (metal damped) board was doing Mach 1, but it was doing Mach 2 and I don't have those skills.

[BlueB]

Well done! Keep up good work.

I was pretty sore in the legs.

Let me guess, you went out on the ski boots, the ones you described in another thread, and you didn't put any toe/heel lift in those Wombats...

Anyways, few points to focus on, in the beginning:

Equal weight and equal moves of both feet, until you get hang of it. This is the best way to pressure the edge right through and get the board to rail without any skidding. Later you'll go into fort-back weight transfers. One step at the time.

Gaining speed, yes, it's part of carving - there is very little friction going on to slow you down. Keep it on the mellower and wider runs in the beginning. Hold your carve at least perpendicullar to fall line, to controll the speed. As you get better, you'll learn to get the higher edge angle, right in the beginning of the turn, resulting in tighter turning and more speed control.

[Da Hooger Booger]

That's exactly what i did BlueB! I rode them flat. :P Thanks for the help, i'm glad i found this forum! :)

I was surprised with the bindings, they were pretty good, they sqeak a little under flex, but very little play between the inserts and the binding, i think the bail's are 6MM, so yeah they were awesome to start with, it's amazing too the increased amount of pressure you can exert on your board with a stiff setup. The HB feels like a piece of gellatin as of now, thanks to an actual stiff setup!