b0ardski Posted March 13, 2015 Report Share Posted March 13, 2015 Yea I like the flexiness for pow riding of the "rattraps" but even if I turned my keg into a 6 pack they're still a bitch to release, and finicky to engage some times. My Nitros stepins are a breeze in or out but waaaay stiffer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
That Guy... Posted March 14, 2015 Report Share Posted March 14, 2015 Thanks for the morning laugh! :) A few weeks ago I rode my freeride board with my old Burton Step-In Race Plates mounted. Wonderfully convenient at the top of the mountain, but I discovered when I got to the bottom that getting out of them is a serious pain due to the tiny release lever that sits down lower than the heel of the boot. I admit it, I could stand to lose a few inches around the waist, and bending down that far and flipping that lever is no longer very easy. But then last weekend an old friend of mine rode with me on his Factory Prime with step-ins, a setup that he hadn't ridden in years, and he had just as much trouble getting out of the damn things. And he's thin, so that made me feel better. --mark In a fit of motivation spurred on by laziness (wrap your head around that!), I ran a cable up from my Fintec heel and out the top of the vent in my pants, ending with a pull start handle from a Honda line trimmer. No more bending over at all. The handle is at hand level, so I just pull it as I'm coming to a stop and pop out of the binding. Because, you know, I couldn't be bothered by the incredible burden of bending over slightly to reach down to mid calf or so where the handle usually is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markbvt Posted March 16, 2015 Report Share Posted March 16, 2015 Because, you know, I couldn't be bothered by the incredible burden of bending over slightly to reach down to mid calf or so where the handle usually is. I admire your dedication to convenience! --mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st_lupo Posted March 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2015 Days 2 and 3!!! The family and I went up to Kvitfjell this past weekend and the weather was absolutely awesome! For the past week the temperatures had been alternating between between lows of around -8C and highs of +3C. The runs were perfectly groomed, the sky was a brilliant blue and the mountain wasn't overcrowded. The snow was definitely super hero quality starting with a nice firm texture early in the morning and giving way to a slight softness with a piquant aftertaste of Swix red later in the day. Just to make you all jealous... I spent the past week reading and rereading (and rereading) the advice and technical columns here. I might not be the sharpest tool in the box so I can't say I fully appreciated everything that was said, but I do notice when certain concepts are repeated again and again. Two things stood out as important: angulation (the pencil pinching exercise) and keep my eyes in the direction that I am travelling, not on the fall line. So we set out for the slopes early on Saturday and that was going to be my focus for the day. The first run was a green dot and things didn't feel too bad. First, I tried to do the pencil pinching exercises. That was an absolute revelation! Seriously, "pencil pinching" and facing the right way on the board (plus some significant help from the snow conditions) just boosted how I ride significantly. I almost look back at my last 25 years in softboots with a bit of regret since I now understand why I plateaued with my riding in Norway. The Toeside Problem seems like absolute essential NOOB reading, regardless of a toe problem or not; it really hammers down how cant angle and proper weight distribution is rooted in your stance and ability to bend in the right direction at all times. For the past 25 years I've been hanging out with the "A" gang, but the techniques of the riders in the "B" gang (and why it worked) had just never occurred to me. The reason for some of my weaknesses in softboots just became painfully obvious, and throughout the day, the engineer in me kept smacking the back of my head and saying "idiot". I mean it is painfully simple and obvious, like e=mc^2, right? That was a big lesson learned and I decided that if I did nothing else this weekend I would practice a shed-load of turns while exaggerating the pencil pinching. I would flop around so much people would think I had lost my 3rd vertebrae. Now this was improvement! King of the green! My family, of course had other ideas. While looking at me like I had lost my mind, both my oldest daughter and my wife who is teaching our 5 year old daughter to ski, tell me that preschool is over and it's time to graduate to blue. I was ok with that (no choice really) and it went tolerably well. There were a few rough patches that sent my body spasming back to the "A" gang stance out of pure instinct. It seems like I will have to unlearn some bad habits in order to learn good habit, or some zen hocus pocus like that. One thing I have to admit to is that the pucker factor builds every time my turns point me towards the trees or a tower or a person while my speed increases. The one question that keeps floating in the back of my mind is what happens if I don't make the transition to the next turn? Speeding across the trail towards the trees at max speed is not something that I'm exactly used to. Riding in hardboots feels like a trust exercise in some aspects; I've got to throw my weight around and stand in some positions that (for now) feel pretty unnatural and vulnerable and trust that the board does it's thing. By mid day on day 2 I was pretty much doing the following pretty consistently on the blues. not my best run but pretty far away from my worst: The thing that kind of annoyed me at this point was my tendency to lapse into doing lots of quick and short turns and not crank into full 180 degree turns. I kept imagining myself like a hyperactive chihuahua when I really wanted to be running with the pitbulls. Regardless, it was fun and I convinced myself that every extra turn now helped me get further away from my old, bad habits. Finally my wife and youngest daughter peeled away for some alone time and my oldest daughter said it's time for black or at least red runs. Like mother like daughter; when it comes to snowsports they don't cut anybody slack, and I was getting kicked out of the nest in a big way. I'm up for red at least and yip yip yip I start the top of the nearest red slope like that hyper chihuahua. Since the board is pointing mostly down the fall line I get a big burst of acceleration and freakout and push the eject button. SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID. That approach isn't going to work. I tried making a deeper swooping turn. Again a huge burst of acceleration and suddenly all of the other skiers in front of me started looking more and more like moving insurance liabilities. The remainder of that run and the reds that followed pretty much went the same way. I kept trying to carve turns until I loose my nerve and then skid to get my speed back in my comfort zone. The ski hill finally closes aaaand it's miller time. This is Norway so it's actually Fat Aas beer time. My oldest daughter comes up to me and fist bumps me and laughs, "If you bought that board and fancy boots to keep up with me, you just wasted a bunch of money." Like I said, no pity in this family. Day 3 is just as beautiful as day 2... I could get used to this! I started off on the blue runs in spastic little doggy style, yip! yip! yip! I tried to concentrate on making bigger turns and immediately I can tell I'm kinda sore and really loose (in a bad way) compared to saturday. I could carve, but I couldn't CARVE. I spent a couple of chair lift rides trying to debug what's going on. Knee-knee-hips-tuck, pencil holding... Finally I think about where my eyes are looking, I had forgotten that. Having gotten used to those short turns, my eyes were used to focusing on the fall line and as a result my head was lagging behind my snowboard by up to 30 degrees or so in each turn. As a result I got to be acquainted with this dreaded counter-rotation of which BOL constantly speaks. Getting my eyes refocused in my direction of travel cleaned up a lot and it was crazy how slow the snowboard could go and still carve turns at the end of the green run. Here's a question then: when initiating/transitioning a turn do people keep their head/sight locked into the direction of the board, or do they lead the turn with their head, or what? Having my head completely fixed in the direction of travel felt kind of like tunnel vision. Leading each turn with my head, so that I was looking about 5 degrees ahead of where I was travelling seemed to work really well but then my head was swiveling a lot and it didn't feel completely natural or efficient. What is preferred? Does keeping you head loose but moving your eyes have the same beneficial effect? After I realized that my point of focus needed some improvement, the day picked up significantly. All too early my family was pooped and called it a day. I said I wanted "just one more run" , and found myself approaching the red slopes from Saturday. There was nobody around to crash into and I really thought that if I could just attack a red run (and not wuss out) I could shut up those little dog turns once and for all. On the other hand, I thought, I could start out really aggressively, panic and loose control and pretzel myself on a tree or tower. It turned out that on that run whatever is left of the 19-year old in me finally clawed up through the bills and mortgage and the overtime and won out over good sense. Finally! My sensible side was still spluttering arguments as it fell of the board and 19-year old me started a sweeping toe-side turn over the first drop that would let me make my first traverse at a moderate angle. The last voluntary thought I had was wow, my body reacted and bent in the right directions for the turn almost automatically and the board just stuck to the snow, now I'm learning! 25 years of bad habits were finally getting eradicated :) At this point the board really started picking up speed (or so I thought) and my whole world became this white strip of snow sandwiched between two walls of evergreen death, plus the occasional snowmaker of doom. I was on the first real steep and the transition to heelside initiated pretty much where I hoped, and I was please. And then it hit. I thought my first traverse across the slope was pretty fast. I quickly learned that I hadn't even left the starting gate yet. I was completely unprepared for the acceleration I had as my heelside carve began to parallel the fall line! I was also completely unprepared for how little speed bled off after I was back on the traverse- "Too late!" came the answer as transitioned to toe side and arched my back over to my heelside. This was immediately followed by the little kernel of doubt that "I should stop while I still can." I am so grateful that those thoughts came in that order since I just committed to go with it and ride this thing out. My world shrunk even further, the trees and snow-makers disappeared and there was only a blur of white that I had to stay on at all costs! I don't remember where I was looking or where my hands were but there are three things that I remember quite clearly: 1)"CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOOHOOOOO!CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOHOOOO!" (replace CRAP with your word of choice multiply by 100 and you start to get the point),2) sucking my knees up into my chest in preparation to have some range of motion to push the board back onto the snow when I crested each drop, and 3)at no point did I try to skid the board out. There might have been some ugly bad turns but there weren't any skids and the direction of travel followed the board's nose the whole way. In just one short run I had managed to drop a whole 25 years from my age, awesome! Happy just to be alive, I let rip with a big yell and pumped my fist into the air a couple of times. I know I'm a n00b and for anybody who was watching I'm sure it was a lot less impressive that what I was feeling, but that sensation of teetering between equal parts of pure terror and pure ecstasy with only a thin strip of metal separating them was pretty gol-darned-ding-dangalang intense! That "just one more run" turned into 6 more. Time just didn't exist for me the rest of that day and I only stopped because the lifts closed. Luckily I was on the right side of the mountain. Each run went pretty much the same way... I started cruising from the top of the lift to the start of my run and I would gesture with my hands toward the backs of anybody downhill from me and use force of will to steer them away from my run. I must have looked like a nutter. I would then get another fix and bomb down my run (with varying degrees of success). A quick cruise back into the chairlift, and sit the whole ride up in a sublime state of bliss. I was now king of this mountain, and I was a good and benevolent king, provided the peasants stayed off of my run. Yep, I was an ass! So... if I thought I was hooked on carving before this last trip... that ain't nothing compared to now! This keeps getting better and better! Also a big thanks to BOL, for being so friendly, approachable and helping us n00bs get our stuff together a lot quicker than if we had to learn this in a total void. It's kinda hard to get a feel for what is possible on a particular slope/snow conditions without any/many people to mimic on the local hills. By the way, that was an impressive amount of feedback regarding getting locked in to my bindings and it helped immensely! No longer a chump, I now proudly lock in upright with my fellow bombers! Beckmann AG's advice really helped as well as the general consensus that getting back up toe-side is easiest. Many Thanks! TL;DR -------- Progressing. Pencils gouged in waists. Yip! Yip! Yip! CRAPCRAPCRAPWOOOOHOOOO!!!. Thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gendzwill Posted March 17, 2015 Report Share Posted March 17, 2015 (edited) Thanks for that very entertaining story! Just watching your video, I see that on toeside it looks OK but when you transition to heelside your shoulders are rotating back. With the arm movement, it looks a little bit like you are trying to initiate your turns with your upper body and not your legs/hips. One drill you can try to fix that and get a more quiet upper body is to put your hands on your thighs. Your description talked about coming across the fall-line and having trouble with speed (and rapidly approaching hard objects). The video showed only little swing turns so the following is just speculation based on your description, but it is likely that you are not completing your turn enough to control speed before changing edges. To learn to control speed on steeper slopes, try the J-turn drill - put the board on edge and keep it turning until you turn up the hill and stop. You may think that you are really coming across the hill before you transition to the next turn but probably you are not and that's why the speed is getting away from you. Once you have the feeling for the point where the turn is really completed, you can work on the edge change and hopefully coming back around more in control. Edited March 17, 2015 by Neil Gendzwill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jatkinson Posted March 17, 2015 Report Share Posted March 17, 2015 "CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOOHOOOOO!CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOHOOOO!" I love this! As a fellow noob I am enjoying following your progress, and can relate to being dragged onto steeper runs than I perhaps should be by my wife. Our resort has a run tracker app that lists your max speed for the day and I was getting quite a lot of trash talk about being slower than her. Fixed that last weekend! (yes I know that the speed readings on a phone aren't particularly accurate, but the loser buys beer after riding) This week I had an interesting/scary thing happen. On a very boring cat track that leads from the chairlift to the actual run, I was not paying much attention and doing little relatively low speed cross under type turns. I must have lost my balance a bit and really dug the edge in to catch myself, because in the space of about half a second the board really hooked up into a carve that sent me flying head first off the edge of the track and 20-30m down a rather steep bank. I suspect this is what getting "highsided" means. I was lucky that it happened where it did, as there were not too many rocks and I missed all of them. If it happened 5 seconds earlier I would have gone down in a bunch of jagged high alpine rocks and would be rather unhappy right now. Moral of the story: I will be treating the board like a loaded gun and paying attention at all times. Also, I will give steep rocky dropoffs a wider berth from now on! Cheers and happy carving. JJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beckmann AG Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Here's a question then: when initiating/transitioning a turn do people keep their head/sight locked into the direction of the board, or do they lead the turn with their head, or what? Having my head completely fixed in the direction of travel felt kind of like tunnel vision. Leading each turn with my head, so that I was looking about 5 degrees ahead of where I was travelling seemed to work really well but then my head was swiveling a lot and it didn't feel completely natural or efficient. What is preferred? Does keeping you head loose but moving your eyes have the same beneficial effect? Looking where you want to go is always a good plan. Your head, however, does not apply any direct inputs to your board. Nor, for that matter, do your hands or arms. Rotating your head is a poor substitute for doing the 'right' thing with the appropriate body parts. As you become more adept at working the board, you should find that you can look about with ease; to where you are going, and from where you came. From your video clip, its apparent that: 1. You're not timid about tilting the board, :) 2. Most of the edge action to the heel side is derived from kinking at the waist. As this movement also directs excess pressure to the front heel, the duration of that arc is limited, 3. Your hand/arm movement is devoted to counterbalancing the movement of your midsection. -The pencils you want to pinch are hanging in space parallel to each edge, not parallel to each boot sole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack M Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 I see a lot of potential in that video. You have some work to do, but you will get there. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 st_lupo - I love your storytelling! CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOOHOOOOO!CRAP!CRAP!CRAP!WOOOOHOOOO!" Man, I love that feeling! It doesn't really go away, it just lessens with practice. I think if that feeling fully goes away, I'll get bored and quit. I think of that tinge of fear as the edge of learning. You don't really know how it's going to go, but you're going to learn something either way. Either you fall and learn what doesn't work, or you pull off something cool and learn what does work. Can I turn harder if I do this? Nope. How about this? Yes! Repeat as needed. To someone riding the lift, they may not see the slow progress I make through the day, but I'm almost always working on something on my rare days on the snow. I get the same thing racing cars. After a good run I'm smiling and happy. After a great run my hands are shaking with adrenaline. Every now and then I have trouble speaking afterwards - my brain is just overflowing with joy/pride/new info/whatever. Those are the runs where you can feel everything going on at once, and it seems like you can predict everything that happens. a.k.a. 'The zone' that so many people seek. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philw Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Looks good, looks really very good for three days. For athletic people who can already ride (and I mean *ride*, not sideslip), that's how it should be. I suspect those who have real problems haven't really figured out soft boot riding: the hard gear is less forgiving of poor technique, I think. Maybe someone should ask you to write a piece for here. I mean, the "accessibility" of the sport is apparently a big problem, so stuff which helps other people do what you did in three days may be useful. I think many may feel the transition is impossible, you showed it can be easy. On the head thing, personally I feel that I am always looking around, as I always want to know what's to the side of me in case I want to turn there. That's partly why helmet cams don't work for me. However if I look at some icy hard pack ( ) I don't see that my head is doing much other than looking downhill - there are a few places I make checks and I may have cut out more. I'm not claiming to "do it right", but that suggests that the head is not in fact involved in steering, which drills aside makes a lot of sense, at least for forward-facing stances. What you describe sounds right to me. Your arm action is a bit late 1980s. Nothing wrong with that, but most people would have their arms lower and waggle them around less. Static arms would be more common; wave them around when you're about to fall. That said, you're doing shorter radius turns than many here would - you'd not need to waggle your arms for longer radius turns. Still shorter radius turns work better with a quiet upper body: the action is all below the waist, as the actress said to the bishop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kieran Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 I thought my first traverse across the slope was pretty fast. I quickly learned that I hadn't even left the starting gate yet. I was completely unprepared for the acceleration I had as my heelside carve began to parallel the fall line! I was also completely unprepared for how little speed bled off after I was back on the traverse this never really goes away. the silberpfeil is happy to go in a mostly straight line, but it wants to turn - and fast. to bleed off speed you can kick the tail out a little bit (inelegant imo) or continue your turn uphill a bit (much better and more fun). the latter comes into play with cross-under turn styles, and is hilariously addictive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markbvt Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Your form in the video you posted looks a lot like the style adopted by European slalom racers in the late '80s/early '90s, when asymmetrical boards were all the rage -- upper body mostly facing down the fall line, board moving around beneath you. Here's a question then: when initiating/transitioning a turn do people keep their head/sight locked into the direction of the board, or do they lead the turn with their head, or what? Having my head completely fixed in the direction of travel felt kind of like tunnel vision. Leading each turn with my head, so that I was looking about 5 degrees ahead of where I was travelling seemed to work really well but then my head was swiveling a lot and it didn't feel completely natural or efficient. What is preferred? Does keeping you head loose but moving your eyes have the same beneficial effect? The advice to look in the direction of board travel is not an absolute; the idea is to get you facing the nose of the board instead of the fall line. Once you get comfortable squaring up your upper body with the direction of travel and it becomes second nature, you won't have any trouble turning your head independently to look at whatever needs looking at. Another good exercise is to pretend there's a steering wheel or handlebar attached to the nose of the board, and to keep both of your hands on it (you don't need to pretend you're turning it; the idea is just to get your rear hand forward and roughly level with your front hand). --mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
two_ravens Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Here's a question then: when initiating/transitioning a turn do people keep their head/sight locked into the direction of the board, or do they lead the turn with their head, or what? Having my head completely fixed in the direction of travel felt kind of like tunnel vision. Leading each turn with my head, so that I was looking about 5 degrees ahead of where I was travelling seemed to work really well but then my head was swiveling a lot and it didn't feel completely natural or efficient. What is preferred? Does keeping you head loose but moving your eyes have the same beneficial effect? As you get more comfortable and everything starts to 'slow down' for you, you'll probably want to start looking around more. When riding my old hill I mostly shared the terrain with racers, so I looked over my shoulder almost every turn, heelside and toeside. Good skiers, but FAST, and they weren't always in control as much as they liked to believe. Only got hit once, but he was doing about 60 mph, so once is enough. Even on a hill with fewer racers, you'll have the occasional straightliner, so being aware of who is behind, as well as ahead, plus scouting your next few turns is always a good idea. Thanks for the stories - looks like you are making amazing progress!!!! Carve on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st_lupo Posted March 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 Thanks for the great input and encouragement everybody! The family and I are heading up to Geilo for the weekend and it will probably be my last two days of riding this year. So I'll end the season with three days in softboots early this season and 5 days in hardboots, all in March. All in all those 5 days in hardboots has transformed a pretty bleak and warm winter into a really kick-butt season that I won't soon forget. So this weekend I'm just going to focus on repition of what I learned in the previous week, and see if I can get those pencils parallel to the board's edges. So this weekend I'm just going to focus on repition of what I learned in the previous week, and see if I can get those pencils parallel to the board's edges. I'll also try cleaning up my upper body movement and to be prepared to prevent counter-rotation on my heel-side turns. It became really obvious while doing "zombie hands" last weekend that my facing tended to lag the board's direction by up to 15 or so degrees when I transition. I'm not sure if this was just inertia pulling my hands out to the side or if it indicates a general problem? I've always had a problem figuring out what to do with my hands while riding. The past three trips on hardboots they've been flapping around to help keep my balance while I concentrate on other things. On softboots I don't need them so much for balance, just catching me when I fall and bending/tapping any overhanging branches in order to dump snow on friends when we're riding through trees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beckmann AG Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 I've always had a problem figuring out what to do with my hands while riding. Do nothing other than observe their 'behavior'. Realize that hand/arm movements are serving a purpose based on how you are manipulating your board, and that they will become quieter as your inputs become more effective. At which point you might fold a paper airplane, pull an espresso, text a friend, or practice your ASL. Sen-choo pm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st_lupo Posted March 27, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2015 (edited) Looks like the season is over for me so this will be the last I post on this thread. Days 4 & 5 (at Geilo) ---------------------------- My family and I took a trip to Geilo and had two half days on the slopes. One of our girls wound up getting pretty sick so the wife and I were tag-teaming between care duties and ski/snowboarding. My wife got early morning and late afternoon runs, and in my darkest/jealous moments I keep thinking of how she had the early morning groomers and late day deserted runs. My preciousssessss!!! In honesty though, no complaints at all (just too short of a day). Saturday was again awesome weather and I could almost imagine I was still living in Colorado. The start of the day was a little discouraging. I was expecting to start off exactly where I stopped the previous weekend. No can do! It took about three runs at maximum awkwardness before I limbered up and things started rhyming again. After that I was on full afterburner on a blue that was every n00b's dream: wide open and silky smooth at the top with a pitch that just seemed to serve up a perfect speed. Here you could really plan out your turns and push your learning in a controlled way. Not the super wicked experience of last week's red runs at Kvitfjell but a solid slope that served up lots of confidence and helped create steady improvement. I started developing a preference for my heel side turns. They weren't 90 degree inclination but they were solid and reliable and went pretty much where I wanted. My toe side improved a bit too, but was more erratic. It varied from not exactly a disaster to actually brushing my inside knuckles on the snow for a couple of seconds while not having a complete toilett butt stance. After four runs of confidence-building I learned that a crash at the higher speed of a carving board makes you hurt more. Somehow I wound of getting thrown head first to the snow, with my arms instinctively extending in front me. My left hand lodged in the snow and my elbow just locked into a slightly hyper extended position. Basically the 90 kg of me+gear wanted to keep travelling forward and I felt my elbow trying to double over backwards. Luckily drinking milk as a kiddie meant nothing broke, but I did have to take a horse-pill of an ibuprofen to keep going that day (and one to sleep at night, and one to ride the next day). I got a little skittish and took some red runs to get a grip on that, but overall I was a little bit timid on those. At the end of the day I went back to the blue for some really fun times. I felt I was really getting a good handle on my heel side turns and was consistently placing the apexes of those turns so they were around 6 inches from the netting that separated the edge of the trail from the far away horizon. At the more choppy sections I started concentrating on completing 180 degree turns and was rewarded in seeing how effective that was for controlling speed. On Sunday we headed back up to the hill and I remembered, oh yeah, we're in Norway. The sun was gone, just grey skies and equally grey flat snow. The wind was howling, ice was poking out here and there and the chairlifts were closed. The t-bars were running though, so I had that going for me... To paraphrase the old saying about beer: T-bars are proof that God exists and that he hates snowboarders. Other than (maybe) childbirth, nothing proves love more than being dragged up a 45 degree incline by nothing more than a thin hook that you shove in your groin. The only good thing about the t-bar is that they almost never shut down due to weather. I took Duke's idea and put a camera on the tail of my snowboard. So below is my butt cam. This was probably my last day this season so I guess this is the sum total of what I've learned in my first season of carving. I thought I was concentrating on squaring off to the board and relaxing the upper body, but there is still some twisting going on (body lagging the board). I was excited to see some boot-out; it makes a n00b feel all grown up! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v7DNfkoQ9-U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zEp4w_kT0q4 I guess the summary for the year is I love this stuff, and I love being this excited about snowboarding again! I have to say that I'm really impressed at how freely folks here give their time to help us beginners out and at how helpful the information is! The gear that I started with works perfect for me. The most expensive piece of kit, the boots, fit like a glove, have good support and work with my current stance. The bindings do what they are supposed to and didn't make me poor. The board I think is great. It might not be drool worthy, but it was unused, affordable and it never spanked me for doing something wrong. It also feels like a board that I'm not going to grow out of any time soon. I guess the one last question that I do have before ending this thread is how do you all make it through until the next season??? Edited March 27, 2015 by st_lupo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markbvt Posted March 27, 2015 Report Share Posted March 27, 2015 I guess the one last question that I do have before ending this thread is how do you all make it through until the next season??? I ride a motorcycle. Which actually means that it's snowboarding that gets me through the winter. :D The funny thing is how many similarities there are between the two. --mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kieran Posted March 27, 2015 Report Share Posted March 27, 2015 oh dear oh dear. orange trousers and orange boots. oh dear. ;) booting-out and even bindinging-out in some of those turns. good stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st_lupo Posted May 4, 2015 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2015 Luckily my first choice in boots was sold out. The lime green boots with the orange pants would have definitely made me the flying mandarin. This is my last post on this thread. I swear. Probably. Short version is that my awesome family arranged a quick ski trip to Hemsedal for my birthday and we had three days of excellent late season weather. There are some stories to be found in this trip; coughing up a lung-full of slush, loosing my GoPro butt-cam and having some kind soul send i back to me, and flying down one run at just a hair over half of my wife's best top speed (all while clenching to keep breakfast from winding up in my shorts), but being honest this is more of a vanity post. This is me showing off the total of what I've learned on my first 10-day season on a carving board. I've got issues to work through, and despite a natural preference for camber boards, I know which end of the spectrum my style lies in lordmetroland's last thread . I found a great medium wide blue run that the alpine teams usually use for slalom practice. On day one it was well groomed and things just clicked. I made about 8 back to back runs on that track to focus on simple things like increasing inclination and improving consistency. The end result for this season is *drumroll*... The heelside The toeside I'll admit I'm a bit happy with the results that I was able to achieve this year, and owe a big debt to the BOL community. Promise that in the future I'll limit photos and videos of my butt to very specific problems, if need be. Just so it's not all about me here are the final observations of this now ex-1st year noob. *Turning: the first couple of days it was really obvious that banging the shins into the boot initiated the turns (as opposed to more calf-muscle contraction/extension of a softboot setup). Over the rest of the season that feeling disappeared (become less in-your-face) and I realized that to go that extra mile, I had to also focus on my knees (driving them into the snow) and ankles (fine adjustments for stability?). Angulation: keep your upper body away from the snow. *The A-team versus the B-team: The Toeside Problem. I've said it before: the pictures in that article were really illustrative for me. I knew which group I was in, and I knew which team I wanted to be in. *The mental game. This is surprisingly huge. When learning the basics, spend time watching good riders on youtube and visualizing yourself doing that. It sounds all zen and hippy-like, but I think it helps organize your thoughts at a slower than real-time pace. After covering the basic mechanics of the norm, your head is the biggest helping or limiting factor of the sport (imho, at my level anyway). Unless you're on clapped out 15 year old gear, trust it. After you understand the basic mechanics, you've gotta commit to the carves and trust that your gear will catch you. There is no black-magic, just physics and geometry. People with reasonable softboot ability have the body control to do this, you just need to read and understand the articles and have confidence in yourself. I've started a couple of days on red runs with really hard (nearly icy) conditions, and I couldn't do anything because I was convinced I couldn't hack it after the first few blowouts (likely due to my own timidity). I was useless on blues too until I had a reset by carving (not cruising) on an easy green to get my confidence (in my gear and in myself) back. After that, the exact same red runs (at nearly the same hardness) were much more successful. Read the tech-articles that are beyond you current skill level and know what to expect. *Green runs are actually carve-worthy. Everyone in softboots knows that green are for babies and you can't get enough speed to to anything there, right? This last trip I had to rethink that. I was really really surprised at how slow you could go while still carving deep turns. It really rewards good balance and early planning of your transitions (otherwise you stall and drop), but most importantly it lets you push your boundaries and experiment in a pretty safe way. I'm sure I'll soon be pestering for more tips on both technique and gear, but for now I've got one bike to put into hibernation and two to take out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kieran Posted May 4, 2015 Report Share Posted May 4, 2015 Luckily my first choice in boots was sold out. The lime green boots with the orange pants would have definitely made me the flying mandarin. that is a great shame, as it's a well-recognised fact that the green boots are faster. even if you're colourblind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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