Kildonan
01-14-2008, 01:31 AM
Saturday, January 12 - My experience at Mt. High
During the drive to Mt. High, I was becoming more and more eager to try my new BWP/Bomber combo. Having only skied for three years, and once skiblading, I was curious to see how different, and more fun these things are. I have never owned my own equipment before this, and since I only bought the skiboard and binding, I had to rent some boots. I brought my skiboards to the rental place, and got some size 10 ski boots. Since I had no prior experience to skiboards and moreover nonrelease bindings, it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get the boots binded on the skiboards! I guess Greco set the bindings a couple sizes larger than my boot size. After making sure my binding setting was properly sized, I went to hit the slopes. I brought a friend along that just started to snowboard so we both could learn starting techniques together. After putting these on, the hotwax that it came with made them very slippery, so I had to vigourously skate my way towards the lift. While on the lift, I actually saw another skiboarder. He seemed to have some what of a sub 90 cm skiboard, it looked white, so i don't think it's a revel. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch up to him. Anyways, immediately going off the lift, I was STUNNED at to how fast these turned. After that, I knew I was going to have a lot of fun ahead of me. While my friend was booting up with his snowboard, being impatient, I went down 20 ahead twenty meters to get a wist.
That day, I was just planning to get a basic carve and perhaps learn how to ride fakie. After my friend met up with me, without thinking, I just started to do spins, and it felt so natural. I remember when I was on skiblades, I could do a 360 on a hill, but only going half way around into a 180 didn't seem natural. It turned out that about half of my first run was backwards trying to get used to looking over my shoulder! The other half of the run, I was getting used to using the edges - something I've never used before.
The conditions that day was mostly packed powder. So, coming from skies, I usually let my downhill ski do the turning and keep the uphill ski unweighted. I initially started using this technique. This technique worked very well while leaning towards the mountain and using my hands to graze for balancing. After this run, of course, while waiting for my snowboard friend at the lift line :) I started to think about what I'ver read at the forums here, and how jjue explained that some ski techniques promote bad habits for skiboarding. I began to think about my edge control, and how he said that evening the weights between the two feet, while carving may give me more control, and better carves. I tried this technique my second run and unfortunately, I ate it hard a couple of times. It wasn't natural for me to smoothly transfer my weight onto an uphill foot when carving, but it seemed like that technique fit the boards' design well as they would cut right through the patches of snow on the trail. When I got down that run, I could already tell my quads were working super hard.
The next run, I bombed down a great deal of the mountain, just to see their stability. In the packed powder conditions, not the best, the boards were fast, but seemed to chatter a lot on patches of snow. Because of that, I decided to just save it for powder days. The rest of the day, I was trying to learn how to use the edges and cut through those patches of snow. And while my friend was learning how to carve on his toe side (or w/e that hard side is for new snowboarders to learn), I would try to learn how to carve down fakie, while watching him [fall]. At first, when learning the fakie technique it seemed like I only wanted to go down one direction (the shoulder i'm looking over), but after a couple of runs, I learned how to turn, and speed check using the carrot method. I still have yet to learn how to curve backwards, but plan to work on that, and to perfect carving down the hill normally.
For trail runs, the skiboards seem quite easy to pick up from skis, but it seems very rewarding once you know how to use the edges properly.
As for the park
Because my boards were brand new, I was a bit skeptical to do any rails or boxes, because I know how hard those are for the bases. I did a couple anyways. The first time I went on a box, I just did a 5050, just to get a feel how the boards feel. Then I attempted a sideways slide over the box...I fell on my side on the box. Since there was another box right a good 15 meters down, I skated my way over to it to try it again, I was successfull on the box, but when I landed, I was off balance for me to use my hands. Because I haven't bought wax yet, I didn't hit any of those park anymore. After that, I just stuck to the jumps and runs. For the jumps, I was just learning how to land correctly, but ate it hard a couple of times. I didn't try any spins or anything in the jumps, which I plan to work on later.
Oh yah, I when I was checking my skiboards in, a guy in twintip's commented, and seemed a bit interested in them, saying that he had always wanted to try them. He explained to me that he had just popped a binding from his skis, so I gave him the website and hopefully, his next pair will be skiboards.
There were many people puzzled to figure out what these things were. At Mt. High, it seemed like most of the people were interested in them, rather than automatically thinking negatively of them. In the lift line, there would be people just staring down at them, I even heard a couple of snowboarders behind us talking to eachother about how sick the graphics were on the BWP's. Also, when I was on the lift, a snowboard chick said how awesome and cute the skiboards were too :)
Overall, I had a blast, even though it was my first time, I had more fun on these than I ever did in my three years of skiing.
For people who never tried skiboarding, but have skied or snowboarded, you'll be in for a real treat when you go down your first run in skiboards.
That's that, I guess I'm here also to thank you guys into steering me into getting the right board for me. Thanks Greco for the speedy delivery also!
During the drive to Mt. High, I was becoming more and more eager to try my new BWP/Bomber combo. Having only skied for three years, and once skiblading, I was curious to see how different, and more fun these things are. I have never owned my own equipment before this, and since I only bought the skiboard and binding, I had to rent some boots. I brought my skiboards to the rental place, and got some size 10 ski boots. Since I had no prior experience to skiboards and moreover nonrelease bindings, it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get the boots binded on the skiboards! I guess Greco set the bindings a couple sizes larger than my boot size. After making sure my binding setting was properly sized, I went to hit the slopes. I brought a friend along that just started to snowboard so we both could learn starting techniques together. After putting these on, the hotwax that it came with made them very slippery, so I had to vigourously skate my way towards the lift. While on the lift, I actually saw another skiboarder. He seemed to have some what of a sub 90 cm skiboard, it looked white, so i don't think it's a revel. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch up to him. Anyways, immediately going off the lift, I was STUNNED at to how fast these turned. After that, I knew I was going to have a lot of fun ahead of me. While my friend was booting up with his snowboard, being impatient, I went down 20 ahead twenty meters to get a wist.
That day, I was just planning to get a basic carve and perhaps learn how to ride fakie. After my friend met up with me, without thinking, I just started to do spins, and it felt so natural. I remember when I was on skiblades, I could do a 360 on a hill, but only going half way around into a 180 didn't seem natural. It turned out that about half of my first run was backwards trying to get used to looking over my shoulder! The other half of the run, I was getting used to using the edges - something I've never used before.
The conditions that day was mostly packed powder. So, coming from skies, I usually let my downhill ski do the turning and keep the uphill ski unweighted. I initially started using this technique. This technique worked very well while leaning towards the mountain and using my hands to graze for balancing. After this run, of course, while waiting for my snowboard friend at the lift line :) I started to think about what I'ver read at the forums here, and how jjue explained that some ski techniques promote bad habits for skiboarding. I began to think about my edge control, and how he said that evening the weights between the two feet, while carving may give me more control, and better carves. I tried this technique my second run and unfortunately, I ate it hard a couple of times. It wasn't natural for me to smoothly transfer my weight onto an uphill foot when carving, but it seemed like that technique fit the boards' design well as they would cut right through the patches of snow on the trail. When I got down that run, I could already tell my quads were working super hard.
The next run, I bombed down a great deal of the mountain, just to see their stability. In the packed powder conditions, not the best, the boards were fast, but seemed to chatter a lot on patches of snow. Because of that, I decided to just save it for powder days. The rest of the day, I was trying to learn how to use the edges and cut through those patches of snow. And while my friend was learning how to carve on his toe side (or w/e that hard side is for new snowboarders to learn), I would try to learn how to carve down fakie, while watching him [fall]. At first, when learning the fakie technique it seemed like I only wanted to go down one direction (the shoulder i'm looking over), but after a couple of runs, I learned how to turn, and speed check using the carrot method. I still have yet to learn how to curve backwards, but plan to work on that, and to perfect carving down the hill normally.
For trail runs, the skiboards seem quite easy to pick up from skis, but it seems very rewarding once you know how to use the edges properly.
As for the park
Because my boards were brand new, I was a bit skeptical to do any rails or boxes, because I know how hard those are for the bases. I did a couple anyways. The first time I went on a box, I just did a 5050, just to get a feel how the boards feel. Then I attempted a sideways slide over the box...I fell on my side on the box. Since there was another box right a good 15 meters down, I skated my way over to it to try it again, I was successfull on the box, but when I landed, I was off balance for me to use my hands. Because I haven't bought wax yet, I didn't hit any of those park anymore. After that, I just stuck to the jumps and runs. For the jumps, I was just learning how to land correctly, but ate it hard a couple of times. I didn't try any spins or anything in the jumps, which I plan to work on later.
Oh yah, I when I was checking my skiboards in, a guy in twintip's commented, and seemed a bit interested in them, saying that he had always wanted to try them. He explained to me that he had just popped a binding from his skis, so I gave him the website and hopefully, his next pair will be skiboards.
There were many people puzzled to figure out what these things were. At Mt. High, it seemed like most of the people were interested in them, rather than automatically thinking negatively of them. In the lift line, there would be people just staring down at them, I even heard a couple of snowboarders behind us talking to eachother about how sick the graphics were on the BWP's. Also, when I was on the lift, a snowboard chick said how awesome and cute the skiboards were too :)
Overall, I had a blast, even though it was my first time, I had more fun on these than I ever did in my three years of skiing.
For people who never tried skiboarding, but have skied or snowboarded, you'll be in for a real treat when you go down your first run in skiboards.
That's that, I guess I'm here also to thank you guys into steering me into getting the right board for me. Thanks Greco for the speedy delivery also!