2006 Summit Expression Session
Contributed by tom. February 2006.
Activity: Alpine snowboarding
It's that time of the year again -- Bomber Industries organized the Session Expression Session in Aspen. In addition to the usual 100+ carvers that show up for it, the PureBoarding group from Switzerland came too, about 60 of them. I heard that the number of carvers peaked at around 200! Usually Lisa and I ride on our own, and it was very cool to see so many riders around us.
Contents
Scott Firestone's pictures
Scott Firestone of The Carver's Almanac took a ton of great pictures, some of which I reproduced below. See his photo shoot at SES 2006 galleries -- he got great shots, from action, through gear, to the apres-ride gatherings.
Lisa
Lisa didn't want me to photograph or video her at all, but then she tried the Prior WCR 161. She loved that board, and we ended up buying it from Chris Prior himself at the end of the session :) The pictures below show her on the Prior 4WD 169, a bit long, but she's still able to get it on edge:
Lisa's toe-side
Entering heel-side
Lisa biffing, notice how decambered the board is
Smiling
Lisa 5
Lisa 6
Lisa 7
Scott Siegel
We rode with pharmacist Scott from Miami for a few days, and shot a few videos of him as well:
Miami Scott
Tom
I got a chance to demo a few boards as well:
- Virus Gladiator 175 zylon: Wow. It felt like a fast sportcar, not really stiff but it held edge and allowed for dynamic transitions. I really enjoyed riding it. Frank (the manufacturer) explained that it has an elliptical sidecut, and thus it can be pushed into smaller radius turns as well as rail across the slope. I'd like to learn more about that... A bit too narrow for my liking, didn't fit my style of riding too well. But, the board was very light and very fun to ride.
- Madd 180: stiff, with a 16-meter sidecut radius, it felt like an old-style cadillac -- flying through turns, solid. It was too big for the resorts I usually ride at, but fun stuff. Great edge-hold.
- Swoard 175 S: always wanted to try a Swoard, but unfortunately there wasn't a "H"ard one. The "S"oft was a bit too soft for my weight. The snow was a bit on the hard side, and I found that on some of the steeper runs I had a hard time maintaining the edge -- most likely I was pushing it too much for the soft flex. I had a great time riding it, doing fast cross-under turns and feeling like the board was getting vertical in no time. Didn't get a chance to spend an hour+ trying to EC, maybe next time..
- Prior 4WD 179: Initially I didn't want to demo this board, thinking that my custom Donek already occupies the slot of the all-mountain board. But as I couldn't find any other board that had a 21+ cm waist and was somewhat stiff, I gave it a try. And I loved it, so much that I ended up buying it from Chris Prior at the end of the session. It has a 10.5m sidecut radius, turns on a dime, was much stiffer than my Donek and sprung out of turns. The upturned tail let me ride switch with more confidence, and the edge hold was very good. I wanted a wider board because of my stance angles -- been riding 55F/40R.
Over two or three days we took a number of runs with Joerg Egli and Eric Ernst from PureBoarding. They have their own carving technique which I would describe as initiating turns with the upper body, by starting with arm rotation. Some people don't like it, but I thought it was outstanding -- these guys carve up a storm, and add lots of fun elements to their riding -- ollies, riding switch, catching air, and grabbing their boards.
I saw their movies last year, and wanted to learn how to ride their style ever since. Joerg and Eric were super-friendly and it was a ton of fun to ride with them. I spent the rest of the session trying to add elements of their style into my riding, esp. the jumps and toe-grabs. My board is a bit stiff for ollies, but I'm trying. See their photo galleries for more pictures of their style.
Tom trying the toe-grab
On our last day there Snowmass got 9" of fresh powder -- outstanding. The sun was trying to peek through the clouds, and Lisa and I spent the morning riding the Big Burn area. Even though I put plenty of sunscreen on my face, I think that some of my big falls must have scraped it off -- or I was smiling too much :) I ended up with a face burn that matched my big smile that day:
Tom's burned smile-lines
I guess the toe-grab on the heelside was one of the moves I had the most fun with. Here's a photo-montage of a turn sequence:
Toe-grab sequence
Video
Most of the shots above were frames from these movies -- that's why the quality isn't overly high. We preferred to ride than to video, other than a few shots for technique examination.