Why do you ride Alpine?

[Poloturbo]

8 hours ago, Erik J said:

I began riding alpine because I didn't know any better. I continue because it has grown to be such a part of my life I can't imagine not doing it. 

First board was a Black Snow mogul monster. Crashing through the trees and building jumps in the woods at my parents house was how I spent all of my winter. 

When the local hills started to allow boarding I bought a Burton Safari comp II from a rich kid that rode it once in his back yard. I had no clue what the board was about but the picture in the catalog looked really cool. I was washing dishes in a restaurant at the time and bought whatever I wanted with the money I earned. 

First day on my safari was in the rain. I wore high top sneakers, jeans and a tshirt. I smashed my face up pretty well with my own knees. By the time I was being picked up my clothes were ripped and I was a bloody mess. I was smiling ear to ear and never wanted anything more than to keep snowboarding forever. 

My bedroom walls became plastered with magazine pictures. I idolized guys like Shawn Farmer and Damien Sanders. When I saw Peter Bauer and Jean Nerva carve I wanted to do that but I also wanted to hit the trees and jumps.

Bought a Burton PJ with hardboots in high school and kept trying to carve and hit jumps too because nobody was going to tell me how or what to ride damnit. 

I modeled my life around the snow. I would never live more than 20 minutes from a mountain that I could ride, no matter how small. I moved to CO, then back east. It's worked so far. 

I still get after it as hard as I can, riding the whole mountain on my alpine setup, still trying to hammer that square peg into a round hole. 

That feeling of...nevermind. Jack said it. I live for this shit.

 

It's so much like my story its unbelievable. But I was rich with the Legend

20 hours ago, dredman said:

Sliding on snow is fun.  

Try carving it's even better.

[b0ardski]

hallei phuqin youla

[b0ardski]

thousand words

 

[west carven]

howdy Poloturbo

have you seen dredman sliding?... his sliding will make you look like a grom...

if you ride point.five as good as dredman... hats off to you...

[Poloturbo]

West

Was just a joke. Didn't want to insult or anything.

 

[daveo]

27 minutes ago, Poloturbo said:

West

Was just a joke. Didn't want to insult or anything.

 

I thought it was quite funny, actually.

[daveo]

I always tried to carve on softboots but couldn't. I sucked. (I still do on hardboots actually, not going to deny it.) I saw a group of Japanese guys at Cardrona on hardboots and they were 1 foot carving down cat tracks. I had never seen anything like it (actually, still haven't). But I'd never even seen hardboots or hardboot boards. Couldn't get it out of my mind. Season ended and sold all my softboot gear and bought a new softboot rig. But then ordered my first hardboot board and never ended up using the new softboot rid at all. Sold it all in the end. My first turn on a hardboot board was actually a carve and was 10 x better than I'd ever done on softboots. Think I was riding softboots for 8-10 years by then, but not exactly sure. Never looked back. Well not until recently when I bought a softboot carving board. I still suck, though.

So, I guess I'm classified as a statistician, or maybe computer scientist. Depends who is asking. I'm an engineering drop out, though, regardless of who's asking. I'm definitely a huge nerd and the technical aspect of hardboot riding always appealed to the big geek in me. I love to nerd out over gear and then experience it. It's been fun to see the advancements in technology in hardboots, but disappointing that it seemed like the progress in the softboot segment had stagnated until recently. Guess I picked the right team, eh?

[slapos]

hardbooting - fun stuff ey?

Hardbooting for me is always a never ending test lab. In the beginning (when you are not so good, putting it mildly) I tended to think that the equipment is restricting my riding and imparing it (LOL when I think about it now..). So you keep tinkering, changing, adjusting, everything from cants, lifts, forward lean, spring tension, angles, soft tongues, stiffer tongues, riding one foot and what not.

So you keep buying gear (since its restricting your riding right??) and you finally end up in place where you got the best boots, binding and board and thats when you realize you might have to learn how to ride and make that thin pencil line....

And you see this is what makes hardbooting such a fun sport for me - the adrenaline and excitement when you make your first carving turn. When finally going from the green wide plains to black narrow walls you are able to carve your name in it - Or at least an "S" ...

So finally when you got your technique right, you go back to beginning and start tinkering with gear to see what it does to your riding and the feeling....

That never ending development loop of a carver...

[Corey]

5 minutes ago, slapos said:

Hardbooting for me is always a never ending test lab. In the beginning (when you are not so good, putting it mildly) I tended to think that the equipment is restricting my riding and imparing it (LOL when I think about it now..). So you keep tinkering, changing, adjusting, everything from cants, lifts, forward lean, spring tension, angles, soft tongues, stiffer tongues, riding one foot and what not.

So you keep buying gear (since its restricting your riding right??) and you finally end up in place where you got the best boots, binding and board and thats when you realize you might have to learn how to ride and make that thin pencil line....

And you see this is what makes hardbooting such a fun sport for me - the adrenaline and excitement when you make your first carving turn. When finally going from the green wide plains to black narrow walls you are able to carve your name in it - Or at least an "S" ...

So finally when you got your technique right, you go back to beginning and start tinkering with gear to see what it does to your riding and the feeling....

That never ending development loop of a carver...

This is both the best thing and the worst thing about carving.  You see a few people getting lost in the minutia while missing the big picture.  As long as nothing hurts, tip the board up on edge and rip.  Then start fine tuning as your body commands it.  

It also depends on your goals - for some the gear really IS more important than the riding.  

[daveo]

6 minutes ago, Corey said:

It also depends on your goals - for some the gear really IS more important than the riding.  

Guilty.

I only ride 30 days per year. Probably spend the equivalent amount of time researching what my next new thingy is going to be for the following season.

I think a lot of people's experience (incl. mine) in this thread is explained by this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Edited October 5, 2018 by daveo

[slapos]

10 minutes ago, Corey said:

  As long as nothing hurts, tip the board up on edge and rip.  Then start fine tuning as your body commands it.  

Equipment in general hinders your riding least (in most of the cases), but unfortunately it takes a bit of time to realize this - at least for me!

[Eboot]

I remember talking to an American carver in Zermatt in '93  who was saying that a shift in the hips would negate the need for an asym board ...

[Neil Gendzwill]

1 hour ago, Corey said:

This is both the best thing and the worst thing about carving.  You see a few people getting lost in the minutia while missing the big picture.  As long as nothing hurts, tip the board up on edge and rip.  Then start fine tuning as your body commands it.  

It also depends on your goals - for some the gear really IS more important than the riding.  

If something is wrong I blame me first. I’m usually right (or wrong depending on how you look at it). 

[Corey]

3 hours ago, daveo said:

Guilty.

I only ride 30 days per year. Probably spend the equivalent amount of time researching what my next new thingy is going to be for the following season.

Me too.  If only my hours on here made me carve better...    Meh, I think it's still better thinking about carving than not thinking about carving.  But actual carving is better than just thinking about carving.  

It snowed here a couple days ago.  Now I'm thinking even more about carving, even though it'll be about 10 weeks before the hills are open.  

[philw]

8 hours ago, daveo said:

... I only ride 30 days per year. Probably spend the equivalent amount of time researching what my next new thingy is going to be for the following season. ...

I come from a flat place with no snow, so any snow sport has the advantage of having a "high bullshit to action ratio". Not only can you talk about it all year, you can talk about it with people who can never check you're not making it up. Kind of like here, perhaps :-) 

I'm not really a tweaker, and although I'm a physicist that's not hugely relevant when learning to dance or snowboard, although it helps to understand why some things works and others don't post-hoc. I'm more inclined to adjust my approach to different gear than to try to adjust the gear to me, if you see what I mean.

[bumpyride]

Because I wasn't having that much fun skiing.   I was always crossing my tips in the bumps. (I'm a bit pigeon toed).

Then started doing bumps once again, and was hyper flexing my ankles when hitting the troughs too hard (3 strap Burton Bindings).  At a ski swap in Seattle 1997, I saw an Asym Burton Alp and a pair of Raichle 123s with bindings for $125 and thought, "What have I got to lose?  Never had seen a pair of hard boots before, but looked like the answer to my problems, and it was.

Found Bomber years later, after a snowboard rep told me to look there, because nobody was making Alpine anymore.

 

[lowrider]

After 40 plus years of  350 foot vertical  which caused severe addiction problems. I finally rehabbed and took the twelve steps necessary to become a skwaler.

[SnowFerret]

During my first year of snowboarding I would see a few people riding in hardboots as I was taking my first ride up the lift, and I was super impressed with their riding.  The speed and smoothness really appealed to my racing side and that's what got me into alpine.

I think I mentioned it in a past forum post, but another influence was a video game (Cool Boarders 3) where alpine boards were featured.

[RobertAlexander]

Yes , for the Thrill !!!

[Aracan]

Quote

I only ride 30 days per year.

What do you mean, "only"??? 30 days is an excellent season in my book!

[daveo]

3 hours ago, Aracan said:

What do you mean, "only"??? 30 days is an excellent season in my book!

Oh. I was under the impression that most people here ride more than that. I don't live close to mountains or anything, I essentially need to take 100% of my annual leave each year to relocate and go snowboarding. I think I'm lucky to have an understanding and supportive crew who let me do that, though.

[Aracan]

There may be some who get more slopetime. I speak as someone who enjoys the benefit of a weekend home near a resort (albeit not a great one). So I get quite a number of weekends, plus about a week or two of vacation. My family enjoys snowboarding, but with a kid in school, using up my annual leave during the winter would be impractical. Since I get to choose if the day is worth it, 30 days is, as I said, a very good season for me.

[daveo]

1 hour ago, Aracan said:

There may be some who get more slopetime. I speak as someone who enjoys the benefit of a weekend home near a resort (albeit not a great one). So I get quite a number of weekends, plus about a week or two of vacation. My family enjoys snowboarding, but with a kid in school, using up my annual leave during the winter would be impractical. Since I get to choose if the day is worth it, 30 days is, as I said, a very good season for me.

Nice words and very well written. Perhaps 30 days is a good amount of time, after all. I guess having no family commitments helps. My family only consists of myself, my partner, our cat and my GPUs.

[Neil Gendzwill]

I live an 8 hour drive from the nearest mountain. I have a very demanding job plus family commitments. 30 days would be a dream season for me. 

[softbootsurfer]

130 days a year here, currently working on a total in excess of 50,000 miles on a Snowboard since 1984/5 season.., I can't stop...very seldom stop on a run, nor would I ever stop on a wave, or stop on a sidewalk...The G's one gets from turning is my greatest addiction, along with the Focus you must have to get it down...