Heli-boarding - soft or hard?

[Jon Dahl]

anyone have any experience with the Pogo Longboard? Seems like the best of all worlds to me, with the trad surf style nose and rounded tail. Any comments on this? Oh, yeah, I did watch the Kiwi experience on the Dupraz website, this kinda comfirms my suspicions.

[sheffy]

that's at the top... go down 200ft and you get brushed by needles constantly :) you can sort of see it in the picture. imagine 95% of terrain being as tight as the mountain in the background (Jay Peak) It's tight enough that every once and a while you pick a wrong line and get stuck between trees and have to swim. It's fun! When you only see max 20 ft in front of you, you often end up picking lines where you end up in a hole with trees all around you laughing and your friends go by and some of them fall in the same trap. I'd bet the Fish would be so awesome in there, I'd like to pick one up and split it one day. For now a 165 Prior works good. Couldn't imagine going 168+cm

RUFF in the jungle!

what kind of prior are you riding???? im on a kyber 165 and it rips the pow.....floats better than some of the boards that ive ridden that are over 170cms

[mackDan]

Well the first question I would ask is height and weight. Powder riding is all about float. But if your 5'3" and 140#s you don't need a 185. I'm 160#s and I ride a 162-164 board in the powder, but could go a bit bigger.

Heli skiing for the most part is open bowls, and if you get good powder, you can run a longer board. If you luck out and get wind blown, or sun melt plate, you'll hate that big board.

You can probably haul a couple boards in with you (you should ask), and then pick the right board for the day. Big board for fresh light powder, smaller board for less than perfect conditions. If you have a wide alpine board, a bit shorter than your weight (165 #, 162 board, 21cm wide), take that too.

Directional boardercross boards work good with plates. The boards aren't too wide, and have good flex stiffness patterns, that work good all around the off trail snow.

Go check out your buddy's board collections, see what you can borrow! Then duct tape the edges, and put towels between them for transport.

[Guest pcogan]

more advice: get on some serious powder before you go

i found there was a learning curve from riding

east coast "hardpack" to colorado powder -- ie

i flailed in powder when i moved here.

it would be a shame to spend big money to

learn to ride powder with a helicopter as your

lift

[philw]

hard heli boarding

I know you *can* ride powder in hard boots but is it superior in any way to soft boots in the ungroomed fluffy stuff?[...] Oh ya and as for boards, I will bring a Burton Fish 164 but should I bother with the Prior 4WD? How about my Coiler Race Carve or any other narrow boards? Just leave that stuff at home, I'm thinking.

I ride heli-powder in hard boots, and it works just as well for me there as it does on other terrain. I also have the advantage of more rapid entry/ exit into the system which is good for any flats or hiking you may have to do. I would say that you should stick with what you're used to, boot/binding wise, but either system will work. Board-wise, the Fish is the standard tool of choice in that part of the world. Although that looks very long for a Fish. Heli-powder is different from resort stuff - it is mostly without a base, so what works in resort fluff isn't so good in the real deal.

Here's a Fish 156 from last season:

You can see the red boots in the RH shot. Terrible arm position - I was showing off for the photog and almost lost it.

swallow tails

[Nils ...] its the idea of riding deep snow on a short board that is strange to us here...This is why few people ride the fish in the alps. I'm just trying to understand why there is a tool difference.. we have all kinds of snow here and it shouldn't explain all. [...] My personnal experience is riding with undergunned people you keep waiting all the time.. kinda frustrating powder/ heliski experience. [...] Also its not just a US vs euro stuff, since there are riders in north america are riding the undertaker 198, or big nitro's swallows...but what makes it so seldom.?

As discussed before, every rider I've seen in a Wiegele helicopter (including some professional riders) with a Swallow-tail dumped it on the first fuel run. I don't know why. My guess is that the terrain in the Monashes is different from that in the Alps, plus the format of the heli operators is different. So in January for example you probably won't get out of the trees, but you'll bag 12 or more drops a day if you're fast. You don't want to mess about on pipe gear, but it's no place for big cruisy long boards either, apparently.

I wouldn't get in a helicopter with anyone who couldn't keep up.

I absolutely agree that the idea of riding something so short is strange to regular powder riders: I took a while to try one myself as I didn't believe anything so tiny would work. My standard powder board was a 168 at 60kgs, so the Fish at 156 is way smaller than anything I'd ever ridden before.

I think how you get on with the Fish may depend a bit on your style; I'm a short-board windsurfer/ surfer and I'm active in the saddle, and the Fish works well for me. It's responsive, so you have to keep an eye on it and watch how you weight it. It's not as fast on glaciers as a big trad board (Supermodel etc), although I still tend to start at the back of a group and finish at the front.

The one place in North America where you do see a fair number of STs is Snowbird, on the first tram after a dump (but not at other times). Go figure.

Here's a little review of the Fish.

But it's all good, and I'd love to ride with someone on an ST who actually likes riding them in Monashee powder.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Nothing else like riding a good pow stick in the deep. Not a good "All around" board, but they rule in the medium they were designed for. All said, you can cut out a sheet of plywood to a good shape and steam bend it to have a low nose and it will rip the deep. Come to think of it, that is basically what our pioneers basically did. You could still take out an old "Powder Gun" from 83 on a deep day and it will work great. You might have a tricky time getting back to the chair on the groomed. But it will work good in the fresh.

POWDER to the PEOPLE!!!

[skategoat]

I passed on the heli trip since spending $5k without any experience in powder didn't seem wise. Instead, I'm going to do a cat-boarding trip near Rossland combined with a day of resort riding at Red Mountain. If I do well there, I'll jump on the heli in 2007.

Thanks for all the advice guys.