practicing on a regular all mountain board

[jgchuidian]

Hey all,

 

I'm fresh at the alpine snowboarding scene, however I have been snowboarding since 2004 (soft boots, all mountain board).  I was wondering if its possible to get a feel of what alpine might be like on my board.  I've seen alot of alpine boarders angle their bindings to the nose of the board, so I was thinking if I read up and did that on my regular board it would prep me for alpine boarding.  What's your take?

 

BTW I searched the forums and didn't find a topic like this, so if there is already one out there please point me to it.  Thanks.

 

J

[Mr.E]

Sure- going a little steeper in your soft set up, then eventually switching to moderate angles with your plates and hardboots on your freeride board is an easy way to walk into changing one variable at a time. Many of us still ride hard boots on freeride boards when race decks aren't right for the snow or terrain. Since carving isn't all about the gear, you can also start working on soft boot carving drills to help get a foundation when moving over on the equipment (not making assumptions about your riding now- just talking in generals).

 

Take a peek at the articles and resources here: http://www.bomberonline.com/resources/ 

 

There is good info there on equipment and set up, as well as skill drills you can work on now and as you migrate equipment.

[ExcelsiorTheFathead]

I rode hardboots on a generic softboot freeride board when I was first starting out to help me get the "feel" of things.  I had a Prior 4WD at the time but I wanted to work out some boot and binding adjustment issues on a platform that I was used to before switching to the higher angles.

 

There are limitations to this, of course.  You can only increase angles on an freeride board so much.  Once you start to get "underhang" where your toes and heels are well inboard of the edges, you will lose the ability to pressure the edges.  This will make it harder to initiate turns and to skid to a stop.  So I think you will still have to ride relatively low angles to keep your setup controllable, depending on the size of your feet.  It is easy to recognize the odd feeling you will have when riding a setup with angles too steep for the board.

 

I met a guy once who rides "normal" alpine boards of 20-21cm waists in a skwal stance with angles above 80.  He claims to like it, but that much underhang seems weird to me.

[Corey]

The articles Mr.E linked to will be a huge help. Oops, looks like the link has changed though. Try: http://www.bomberonline.com/resources/newcarver/new_carver.html

I found that I really needed to slow down on freestyle boards as the sidecuts are quite tight. Doing 'the norm' at slow speeds will reveal how tight a freestyle board wants to carve! Going fast just results in a high-speed skidded turn.

All these skills transfer very well to a hardboot setup.

[knobnose]

I started many years ago on a "sort of" alpine board (maybe a Kemper?) with three strap bindings and Sorels with a moderately forward stance. Switched to a proper alpine board shortly thereafter ( a Mistral asym and ski boots), but still prefer soft boots and a dedicated powder board (Fishcuit) with a forward stance on powder days. I could never get comfortable with the square stance and find that an alpine stance works well for me on a short wide board with soft boots, and as above, it carves ok at low speed.

[jgchuidian]

Thanks for the input all! So i tried an alpine setup on my board the other day and all in all it went ok. I was able to understand basics of an alpine carve though I was not able to get as low as i Waned to. Corey was pretty accurate, when I would carve, the board would wannt to make a really tight one, almost like a J turn making transitions slightly more difficult.

I set my bindings up about 45 F and 40 R. It wasn't as comfortable as I would have liked, but I still need to tweak it a bit. I`ll try a demo board tomorrow maybe.

[Neil Gendzwill]

45/40 is about the limit for softie setups.  Don't worry too much about getting low.

[Mr.E]

Many 156-165 ish freeride board have side cuts in the 8.5-9m range. Radial sidecut slalom boards of similar length had similar side cuts right up until recently (they have lengthened out with the new camber profiles). While softer in both length and width, the carving technique and turn size will be close enough for learning- soft or hard boots.

[jtslalom]

There is no limitation on how steep you can set up soft boot bindings. I ride 60 front and 63 back. I drive my back knee into my front on soft boots just like I had on hard boots. Look at my video on soft boot riding in the video section. Carving snowboards can be done on any setup on any angle stance. It's not about equipment but rather rider performance. Like I constantly tell every rider who wants to carve, you can do it on the equipment you are currently riding. It's a matter of adjusting to it and learning how to do it.

[markbvt]

I learned to carve on a freeride board with softboots and three-strap bindings. This was in the mid-'90s when softboots were really soft. A stiff modern softboot like the Burton Driver X with tongue insert installed is nearly as stiff as many hardboots, and provides good edge response even with two-strap bindings.

 

On my softboot freeride setup, I rode with stance angles around 30/15, and gradually increased these a bit. When I got my first alpine setup, it was an asym race board, and I used stance angles somewhere around 45 degrees. It didn't take me very long at that point to move on to a narrow symmetrical board and 60+ degree stance angles.

 

My point is, that progression can happen fairly easily if you're already comfortable carving on your freeride setup. I honestly couldn't tell you how I learned to carve on mine; at some point I just got it. My riding advanced to the point that I understood how to carve instead of skid my turns. So by all means, work on carving on the setup you've already got. That will give you the basic feeling. Then transition to an alpine setup for a step up in performance.

 

--mark