method9455

I have two boards going. Right now I have a freeride board, a GNU Altered Genetics 159, which for my weight (180) most would consider way too big, but I love super stiff boards. I ride that in pipe, jumps, and free riding. I go with a stone grind, edge polish, flouro wax (not quite full blown race wax, but damn close). If I do get a scratch on it I will ptex is correctly, though that has only happened a few times. It has never been on a rail. The downside is that the board is slightly warped, the base is bowed out about 1/32" of an inch. It doesn't sound like much but when you run it over a stone grind you only get texture from the edge to about 2" towards the middle, with a 6" stripe down the middle that isn't getting cleaned. That makes it basically worthless for racing since you can't get it waxed well primarily because you can't get the old wax off. I'm not sure what to do about this, but regardless for now that is my freeride/jump/pipe board and I might have to replace it. I have a softer/smaller board that I ride for the park. This is a 156 Burton Jeremy Jones (and I HATE it, no pop, heavier than the 159 GNU, but I got it for $50 new so whatever, I will replace it soon). I took a grinder to the middle 12" so the edge is round, and then a file for the rest. The file is probably all you need. I do not fill any scratches with ptex unless its a core shot, but I do get a belt grind on it at the start of the year (no edge sharpen on the sides) and wax it with just cheap all temperature wax as regularly as I would any other board. I don't want to leave any speed behind in the park so I don't get why people don't wax, but I do get why people don't worry about ptex. The upside - the freeride board has lasted a lot longer than if I were using it for everything. And since it was about twice as expensive as a park board, that is important. I can burn through jib boards and not care since I buy cheap boards off year end sales and beat the hell out of them and move on. The downside - switching boards. First off you need two sets of bindings, and in my case I broke one set of bindings last year so now not only do I have a crappy park board, a bending freeride board, but I need bindings too. The more gear you get used to, the more expensive this sport gets. Second, switching boards sucks. You never have the board you want at the right moment a lot of times. If I'm going to a big mountain I'll just pull out my freeride board, and I'm going to Boulder I'll just bring my park board. But a good example is your hunter trip coming up. Which board do you ride? You will be free riding most of the day so obviously you will be on that board, but when you hit the park 3 or 4 times what do you do? Skip the jibs? Or do you go down to the lodge and switch boards? Is it really worth the time of doing that just to hit a few boxes? Worse is a mountain where it gets spread out and you have different parts of the mountain in different places. If you are at Mount Snow and decide to ride park, it is at a different lodge than the one you probably started at so you have to go to one parking lot or rack and get the park board, lock the free ride board up, ride the lift up and get over to the park. The same is true at Mountain Creek but with even worse distance. Your friends won't be happy. What I'm doing now is basically free riding for a whole day or riding park for a whole day and sticking with it so I waste less time switching back and forth, and if I dabble with what I didn't set out to do for the day I just do it with the inferior board rather than keep switching back and forth.

My spring break is from March 27th to April 5th, and I plan to be up there for some of that week.

Glad he's ok, he will learn from it. I did it around age 6 or 7 at Craigmeur in NJ from about 10 feet and my Dad paniced and jumped out after me to see if I was ok since it was actually just after we had got on. I was fine but we still laugh about it sometimes. Yea, I'm not sure what is up with that except that with snowboarders it takes longer to untangle everyone from the foot rest. I generally drop my board or skis off the foot rest about 2 or 3 towers out, but I dont lift the bar until we are at a height I would be ok to fall from, especially if I'm wearing a backpack. A kid from the race team at my HS fell from the quad at South Peak of mountain creek and died in the early 90s because they didn't have the bar down and he was horsing around with his friend. That lift gets pretty high, I would bet he fell about 40-50 feet. Its dumb to be macho on a lift over hardpack or rock, this isn't out west with powder to cushion your fall.

Friday - woke up after the powder day on thursday at the usual time for first chair, but our bodies were completely destroyed. Danielle's knees (previously had surgery on one and the other got tweaked on thursday) were hurt and I pulled something in my right leg that made it kinda difficult to stand. We went back to bed and woke up a few hours later which helped a lot and had a good day but it was a blur. We went into town in the afternoon and checked out some of that stuff. Saturday - They groomed a lot of stuff and this was the definition of both a bluebird day and packed powder. Smooth buttery snow everywhere, grippy but fast and so well groomed. Cold enough to be squeaky, clear enough to see for 50 miles. After catching up on sleep friday we went for a full day. I was on my skis all day for the first time, so blacks and double blacks were out but we worked lots of groomed blues and Toll Road top to bottom for the first time. They were finishing up the park and half pipe, but it was not open. Sunday - Woke up to 6" of new snow again, make it about 3'+ for the week. The clouds broke for another gorgeous clear day at around 9am, and we heading for home at 11am. Grabbed breakfast at Maxi's in Waterbury which is literally at the intersection for the highway, and then drove home. Not much traffic, dry roads. 5 and a half hours of driving, 6 hours total time since we stopped twice for gas. It really felt like a blur. We have more pictures but I'm too tired to post them tonight and I have to work tomorrow (work? what's that?) so I'll post tomorrow night. A couple notes - Stowe is awesome, for anything more than a weekend I'm driving the extra 2 hours past Mount Snow/Stratton. - We found the drive to be easy, though longer it is all highway and the local roads in Stowe are pretty flat/straight compared to Route 7/9 that you need to get to Mount Snow. - The Spruce Lodge is awesome, free lockers, free bag check, comfortable and clean. Bring your own lunch and avoid the food and it works out great. - The trail map is really deceiving, the mountain is larger than it looks. - The place seems a lot more mother nature dependant than Mount Snow/Stratton/Killington or anything around here. They were making snow but pretty much 1 trail at a time and not that great quality wise - The park was really well done, but if you are into park, go to Mount Snow. - We liked Gondolier, Perry Merryl under the Gondola, Liftline and Nosedive under the Four Runner Quad, Lord and North Slope off of the Triple, and Main Street off of the Sensation Quad. - I liked it better than Mount Snow, Stratton, Killington, Tremblant, or any other place I've been to. I haven't been to Sugarbush, Smugglers Notch, Sugarloaf, or Sunday River, but I think those are the only places that can give it a run for its money on the east coast. - We were there for 8 days straight, and I don't feel like we even scratched the surface. We hit a lot of runs a few times, even more runs just once, and a few we never did even though we tried to get to everything. And then there is a lot of stuff off the map that the locals are hitting, the place seems endless as far as east coast mountains go.

The best piece of advice on a powder day: Go early. In the morning when the powder is fresh and untracked it is easy. As the day goes on and it gets more bumping, it gets to be a bit more work. I mean like 1st chair early. We waited in line for the first chair this week for a powder day, and it was well worth it. That said, no matter how bad you are it is a blast. Crashing in powder is really fun and skiing through it is even better, as someone else said, it is the soul of the sport. Once you do it, you will never look back.

Says the guy with an avatar of a girl holding her tits. You can get fucked up with any goggles, I just recently put a tree branch through the lense in my Anon's and had to buy a new lense. Wouldn't want to be riding without goggles. This was probably her fault. When I was a kid I ended up in the hospital getting stiches almost every year for something stupid, but the worst one ever was caused by a helmet. I was biking down a hill with the helmet on but unbuckled. Dodged a car and went over the handle bars, when I hit the ground the buckle was upright and went right through my face before I hit the pavement. I got a hell of a lot of stiches after the surgeon removed the buckle that had gone all the way through my skin and into my mouth. Did I blame the helmet? Hell no. I'm the idiot who didn't buckle his helmet.

Yea thats a problem once you get more than one board you like. I was constantly hopping between boards that were ideal for this or that and it sucked. I am wondering if RC on a really floppy board would be ideal for trees and bumps. My super stiff carving board is a bear in moguls and trees but my park board is actually a blast because you can move around a lot easier, I imagine an RC board would be even better.

Definitely true on sizes, be careful with Ride bindings, their sizing is different and they have an XL, so boots that fit in a large binding from most companies need an XL from Ride. If possible bring your boot to be sure. As you move up in price generally you get stiffer high backs and frame, more comfortable straps, and better ratchets. I like Salomon for bang for the buck, Burton overall but they are expensive, Flow at the upper end but I avoid their lower end stuff, T9 for bullet proof stuff that is a bit heavy, I used to like Ride but I'm losing my love for them quickly. Rome makes some good stuff too. If unsure, get the Burton Custom, Rome 390, Ride EX or something on that level. You don't need to get some really high end binding any more unless you just want to blow money. If you can get into a medium, work end of the year sales. Large size bindings are generally not left over so just get what you can now. People always buy larger than they need "so they can grow into it" so plenty of people who could get a medium just buy a large and that leaves few for those who actually need them.

Yea thats the deli, Emery's I believe. Good call for the trees, we will check them out tomorrow. Today was simply epic. About a foot of snow last night, I woke up at 3am and there was nothing on the car so I was pissed it was a bust, but when the alarm went off I looked and there were 4" so we went for it after seeing the trail report had bumped up from 65 to 85 trails. The mountain is only 7 miles away, but a world of difference in the weather. They are saying 16" over 2 days which sounds about right. We got up there at 7:50, with 1st chair at 8. That put us about 10th chair up the quad. We ripped down Liftline untracked knee deep among the first 10 people down it, then did National which was easy to find untracked, then Nosedive which had a few more tracks. Then we headed over to catch one of the first gondola cars up since it opens at 8:30 or 9?, and got decent tracks on Chin Clip which just opened today. Then we lapped Gondolier, Perry Merrel, Chin Clip, and Switchback which had the most snow. After a quick break we went back to the quad and did Liftline and National which seemed impossible to track out. Soon after they dropped the rope on Goat, so I took my first run down that. It kicked my ass. I wrecked twice and got a few shots to my base, it was a bit too rocky for me and avoiding those rocks messed me up. We were on the hill from 8 until 2. It stopped snowing around 10am, and then at 1 it started again. Combined with some wind, it was actually getting less tracked in the afternoon as things were blowing back even. Seriously, it was the best day of snowboarding I've ever had. I have a little video but no wire to get it on here so I'll put it up when I get home next week. Tomorrow I'm hoping for some groomed runs because my legs can't take another day like today, and I'll probably be on the skis.

8 in a row, I'll tell you what my legs are burning like hell. We're doing 6+ hours a day for all but the first and last which is why we bagged it early today because we figure tomorrow will be a lot better. It stopped snowing for about 2 hours, but now it started up again, I believe this is the second storm. We stopped in Waterbury center at the cider mill and got some sweet donuts and cider, and found a locals deli that you can get 2 lunches for the price of 1 burger on the mountain. Those trees are the nose dive glades, we're really enjoying those.

Thanks, we are blown away by the views up here, that day it was impossible to capture the clouds with a still camera, one of those days I wish I had a time lapse camera on a tripod. Last night we got 4" of wet base building snow. We are getting more now, but the mountain was chewed up by 2 so we left a bit early and got some rest. Hopefully more snow tonight. We had a little sleet at the end of the day in the valley but probably not on the mountain. No pictures from today, but here are some from yesterday. Oh yea, and they have a great jump line, when I first saw it I kind of chuckled and thought TT C6 should be here. Its 4 tables in a row, with his/hers ramps, about 15-20 on the small side and 20-30 on the big side. Very well shaped. Next to that are 4 jibs. Its a pretty small park but well manicured. I've hit it two or three times but I don't really see doing it a bunch. They are building the big park now so maybe it will open before i leave. I'll get some better pictures of it but really, if you come to Stowe you aren't coming for the park.

Monday and Tuesday blurred together pretty much. We did open to close on Monday which is a bit too much for one day, so this morning we struggled pretty hard to get out the door and did 10-4. Overnight monday there was about 1-2" of snow which helped considerably, though monday was a lot better than Sunday. There are 0 lift lines now except for odd circumstances like when they decided to take half the gondola cars off for the day. We've now done every open trail and we know Spruce, the area around the Gondola, and everything north of the Fourrunner quad. But the area around the triple is pretty much giberish to us, a mass of blue squares that intertwine a lot. Today we found ourselves ripping down a great trail, only to find out when we wanted to know its name that it had been closed but we had ridden over the rope without realizing. I'm a big fan of Liftline and Nosedive, but our favorite trail has to be Rimrock (which is hard to find, we missed it twice) and cutting off there to the Nosedive glades. We did eat at Pie in the Sky and it was awesome. Other strange notes, we still haven't seen the top of Mt. Mansfield because there have been low clouds for 4 days straight. I think we're doing 4 runs an hour, sometimes 5. At around 2,000 a run for a minimum of 6 a day, we are racking up a lot of vert. I would guess somewhere between 40k and 60k a day, for 3 days now and will continue that for 8 total. It will certaintly be the most I've done in a week. So, a storms brewing? We've heard everything from 3 to 14" inches. We'll see but I'm hoping for 14" I have about 40 pictures from today but the camera battery is dead, I will post ASAP.

We got up to the mountain this morning around 10am. We wanted to get there for 7:30 lift opening, but to be honest we ignored the alarm. It worked out though, they had wind holds on the lifts until around 9 anyway so we didn't miss much. Conditions overall were lousy today. Coverage is good but the wind over the last two days has scoured it down to hardpack, ice, and a few pockets of granular where the wind is shaded. Some snow is coming overnight and that will be welcome, plus the wind finally stopped around lunch time and they should have the oppurtunity to groom well tonight. The day started off less busy than yesterday afternoon, and by 1 the parking lot was getting really empty. We parked by the Spruce Lodge so that we could put my backpack in the free bag check since it had our lunch in it. We went up the Sunny Spruce Quad and wandered down some blues, then took the Over Easy lift to Mansfield. We started on the Gondola and hit Gondolier and Perry Merrill. Both were great trails. Gondolier is wider and pretty much a straight shot, Perry Merrill wanders a lot more. Those were probably the best two trails today, with Perry Merrill being my favorite run of the day. We took Cliff Trail over to the Four Runner quad and took nosedive, which was icy as hell but great to fly down. Today I was on my Altered Genetics which is my fastest board, and I hit the fastest I've gone in a long time on that run. We wandered more and more to skiers right as the day went on, we ended up taking all the main face lifts. We enjoyed Lord and a few others Doug recommended. We rounded out the day on Toll Road, which I expected to be super wide much like Paradise at Blue or Horizon at Mountain Creek, but it actually is about a cat width and wanders through the tress, it was super fun. We could only take it half way becuase the Toll Road double was closed, but even that was a long ride. I hope to ride it top to bottom this week. We got back over to Spruce at about 3:30, and had time for one run down the Sensation Quad. I was pushing it a bit just to get on that lift to say that I did all the lifts today, but I should have stopped because my fingers and face were going numb from the cold (it was 5 or 6 degrees at the base most of the day and we were out for 6 hours straight). Overall, great terrain, great views, poor conditions. We have a feel for the place and tomorrow we'll hit a lot more trails.

We left this morning at 6:30am, a much more reasonable hour than the 2am of our last drive up. We took 95->91->89 rather than the thruway to route 9, and got up here with about 6 hours of driving, though about 7 hours of total time because of two stops for food and a bit of an emergency stop. We were going up 89 on the last stretch and there was a bit of snow, and a car a bit in front of us went over the guardrail so we stopped along with two other cars to see if they were all right. Air bags deployed all around but everyone was all right just a bit dazed and I left when the firemen showed up to take care of everybody. We also saw a rolled over SUV a bit before that. The roads were deceiving, very wet from blowing snow that had melted but a blue bird day so people were going way too fast. We had no hassles getting season passes, but by the time we had them in hand it was 2pm. We had all of our gear but the mountain closes at 3 or 4, so we would have still had to boot up leaving time for 2-4 runs. We probably would have done it, but at that point they started pulling all the gondolas off the line for a wind closure (it was really gusty up here) and the line for the quads were out of control. So we ended up walking around the base for about 20 minutes, then heading to our place. It was a bit too early to check in so we headed into town and scoped it out, then went to the Ben & Jerry's factory tour to kill some time and got groceries. Now we're back and pretty much done for the day so that we can get up for 1st chair. Overall, not that disappointed we didn't ski because the mountains around here are amazing, some great views and plenty of snow. I can't wait to get up to the top of Mansfield tomorrow morning. I'll be snowboarding so we can cover the maximum amount of trails before the crowds roll in. So far our impression of the mountain itself is great. People are a lot more friendly, and the base lodge is the nicest I've ever seen. I was a bit surprised they don't nickel and dime you as much as expected, free lockers (keypad over keys, nice), and free bag check. So basically, its exactly like Mountain Creek's bubble in my mind. Anyway, hopefully a much better TR tomorrow.

Thanks for the info, but we're actually getting season passes. $450 for college students, we'll probably go again over spring break and get 15 days for about 30 dollars a day. We ended up renting a house because it was cheaper, but the Stowe Motel was a good deal and had good reviews on tripadvisor. Check out VRBO.com, a lot of people are negotiating right now. We are paying $400 less than the list price for the week for the place we are staying. Just check people's availability calendar and email them saying, hey I can't afford your regular rate but I see that you aren't booked next week, I can afford X, are you interested?

You really do have a reading comprehension problem. I didn't say I didn't like the discussion, its funny as hell watching people argue that Walmart jackets and 5 layers of wool are the way to go. I said it is pointless because what works for one person doesn't work for another. There are some things that are true in here, but on a given day two people might be wearing the exact same gear and one is cold and one is not. Its like people who ask online what kind of boots they should get.

I'm not saying you don't feel the difference between gear or tunes. I made my living off that fact for a long time. I'm saying the difference between 0 or 1 edge angle is so slight its not even worth worrying about. I feel a difference between gear, and I feel a major difference in stance angles or stance setback, high back angle, and wax. But after all 5 years tuning, I can only remember a dozen people actually specifying their edge angle when they came in for a tune. I know a lot of guys who rip, and no one would ever point to their edge angle as the secret sauce. When you have unlimited access to all the tuning gear you want and the wax you want, you start dicking around with lots of little details. We'd be matching the temperature range of the wax to the weather for the next time out and recutting the stone to get the right base texture depending on snow conditions, but no one was ever doing adjustments on edge angle. You can feel a big difference with both of those, so if your not already doing that I'd start with that because it is easy. At most you would do one angle per board and stick with it. My park board has a bigger angle than my freeride board so it doesn't catch on rails, thats about it for edge angle.

But how can you feel it? Are you saying you have ever gone out with the same board, on the same day, wearing the same boots, with the same bindings, one with one edge angle and one with the other. For me when I do a tune I pull the bindings off to get a good stone grind and I'm going to be waxing with some flouro wax and have really sharp edges. So even if I were to change edge angles I'm going to go in with one angle, and come out with wax, a stone grind, really sharp edges, and the new angle, and probably some small tweak in binding angles. In my mind I'm going to be thinking, this new angle is sweet, but in reality it is just the tune. Are you saying you could take the pepsi challenge with two boards and feel the difference between edge angles? I really don't think anyone could just carving.

I don't even wear shorts, generally underarmor boxers under snowboard pants is all I need. The only time I put on anything more than that was when it was -15 and I was out for 6 hours, then I put on long underwear. My legs never get cold. Wearing more layers on my legs would just make me open my vents so I'm carrying weight for nothing. This is the most pointless discussion on here. People have entirely different bodies and riding style and comfort level. If you are cold, buy warmer stuff. If you aren't cold, good for you. I wear basically the exact same stuff as my girlfriend ratings wise, we ride basically the same way, she is always colder than I am. It certainly isn't the gear when we have the same base, mid layer, and our shells are similiar.

Likely, I only get out 35 days a year for the last 7 years on a super stiff carving board and worked in a shop tuning boards for 5 years. I'm still doing the falling leaf though.

Yea the thing I was focusing on was keeping the knees in the right position on the turn, I spent some time watching youtube instructional videos and it helped a lot. It is so weird being a noob.

I'm leaving for 8 days at Stowe with my girlfriend tonight. Any recommendations for trails to hit or restaurants to eat at? I'll probably snowboard 5 days and ski 3, or something like that. I've never been to Stowe so I don't really have a clue about much. I should have internet up there so I'll post some pictures.

Glad it went well for you. I went out for my first day on skis today and had a blast. I remembered it pretty quick and was blasting around, but skiing backwards is a lot harder than riding switch. I used to be able to do it but when I was trying it today I could only turn in one direction. I hit a few jumps but man, toe bang is a killer. I have 0 interest is hitting jibs on my skis because I want to keep them tuned for free riding, but I had thought jumps would be fun as hell, but I really beat up my feet when I hit them.