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Evolution of Carving


JohnE

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Do you think the sport of carving is evolving toward hardboots or soft? 

I tried for many years to carve well in hardboots but just never got comfortable with the high angles. I would head to the mountains with 2 sets of gear (soft & hard depending on conditions). A real pain to haul the gear and question what was the right tool for the job that day. 

I then gave softboot carving a try and found it much more natural for me. Now I head to the mountains with only one setup. 

However, in my opinion, the best carvers I see are hardbooters. 

But, as the years pass, do you think there will be more softboot carvers or hardboot? Have you personally evolved toward one or the other?

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There are probably more softboot carvers than hardbooters right now. 

There are more people that watch fishing videos on YouTube too, so maybe all of snowboarding is dying? 😉

The success of hardbooting is not threatened by the success of softboot carving. So I say cool, pick the equipment you want! 

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For me at nearly 60 and with limited time to ride these days, a great soft boot carver is my choice.  If the snow conditions aren't just right, I can no longer ride my hard boot set-ups very well.  25-30 years ago it wasn't a problem.  The lines I make on the groom now with a BXFR are the same as the old days, and if the trails get icy, sloppy or lumpy I can manage to ride without beating myself up.  There is a wow factor to seeing a great hard boot rider tear it up, but I'm happy with the sensations I get nowadays.  

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I think the number of people carving, or wanting to carve, is larger than it was. That's an unalloyed good. I look forward to a time when I can once again admit to being a snowboarder, and people won't assume I'm a side slipper numpty who will slow them down. Yay. Bring it on. 

Those additional numbers have to come from the general snowboarding population - people currently using soft boots.

People often tell me they're surprised that I can ride well in powder, what with my hard boots and all. I just laugh, because it's not about the boots. Turn that around the other way, and I'm not remotely surprised that soft booters are able to carve well in their chosen footwear. => It's not about the boots.

My understanding is that soft boot setups can be harder than my own boots. It's still not about the boots.
 

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I think it is more about the width of the board and the boot angles that requires.

Has anyone tried a board with a waist of 26 - 30 cm with hardboots at low angles? What would be the advantages / disadvantages of that? 

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tried it @JohnE and i'm sure others have as well. i think you know the answer. just standing in place told my body that the skeletal structure isn't going to like this. i wanted to like it and was fun for a few laps, but the reality of this test concluded that i will just pick one. the two sports/disciplines are not intended to be combined, aside from abnormal circumstances. i don't believe the equipment is designed or meant to take on the forces for such an idea and my body let me know this when i was in my late 30's. way too many adjustments, tweaks, etc. then again, some folks prefer to ride duck in hardboots.

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I may have found the answer to my question of boot type -vs- angles. 

My riding buddy has 2 Donek Fluxes - the main difference being the waist width. Wide board with softboots & bindings. Narrower board with Deeluxe hybrid (discontinued) boots and F2 Intech bindings. (I forget what these boots were called. )Lower boot section is rigid like a hardboot. Uppers are soft like a soft boot.

Angles on the boards are the same. 

I asked him if he can tell much of a difference between the 2 setups. He says no. Except that the Intechs are easier in & out. When I watch him ride, I can't tell the difference. 

So this tells me that the main difference is the steep angles required by a narrow board and not the boot type. 

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I think that's correct.


Which begs the question... why are many "alpine" boards quite so narrow?

 

When I started (1989) Alpine boards were Asymmetrical, looking weird compared with ordinary general purpose snowboards. I don't particularly recall thinking they were particularly narrow though. Stances were not, in the late 1980s. Over time, my powder boards got fatter, and my piste boards got narrower. Then mainstream powder board design changed with taper, shorter designs and better tail shapes. My piste board got shorter too, with Titanal.

I ended up with a Kessler with a 19cm waist and my Hometown Hero with a 24cm waist... The Kessler would win races, but for general use, I don't feel I'm giving anything at all up for that extra width... and it lets me use a lower angled stance. Kind of like the early stances, except there's no Craig "knee tuck" these days and no asymmetry, thankfully 😉

 

18 hours ago, JohnE said:

When I watch him ride, I can't tell the difference. 

So this tells me that the main difference is the steep angles required by a narrow board and not the boot type. 

When I watch my [soft boot] buddies ride, I can't tell the difference, from a distance.


I've ridden soft boot boards with my hard boots since I discovered that soft boot boards work better in deep snow than race boards. I don't think it's the boots, but I guess I do think it's the board 😉

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And as I was discussing this with someone else just now for other reasons... one aspect of evolution is happening remarkably quickly, which is the change back from duck to forward stances in the general population.

Most pre-Covid stuff I googled seems very ducky. It's almost like there was only one way to ride in 2017 : duck. Today though, both Koura and Jones snowboard websites are strongly pushing forward angles. It's a different world all of a sudden. Koura's Wolken's internet trail shows his stance getting narrower and steeper rapidly: in 2017 he was 52cm 21/6, in 2023 he's 49cm 27/15.

I'm not quite suggesting evolution in stiffness of boots, but something major is/ has happened in stance geometry in the last few years.

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