(phil) wrote in message . com...
At the places I ride, the park and pipe are practically empty, and
all the good riders are carving up the groomers. That seems to be all
they do, and they're all doing it in soft boots, which seems so
suboptimal.
[...]
It's a strange world.

Indeed. With a couple of exceptions (Brighton Utah, Serena Finland)
I've never seen a popular half pipe/ terrain park. Yet the equipment
and magazines on sale seem to be 100% rail-oriented. Out in the real
world about 98% of snowbaorders would seem to be sideslipping even
moderately steep runs, often on their arses. And the skiiers are
blowing them away in the pipe. Perhaps it's simply easier to make a
sideslipper look good if they're in the air.

I guess I don't understand the gap between the marketing and the
actuality. If only I could figure out how to make some money out of
it.

Darn I had been trying to resist getting into this debate, but I just
wanted to correct a few misconceptions and exaggerations of the
negatives of softboots and also play devil's advocate to hardbooter
proponents. But first lemme reply to Dmitri's original post.

I too felt that my softboot carving was hitting a plateau, so to shake
things up I got a hardboot setup this season and it's a lot of fun.
You definitely will be able to progress into a new area that is a bit
different than regular snowboarding. The variety between carving tight
turns and hitting the park/pipe has kept this season from getting
boring. I say if you are thinking about it, are getting at least ten
days a season, and have a little bit of extra cash definitely go for
it. Personally I would recommend getting a separate alpine board so
you get the real experience, especially since they are so cheap
(relatively).

As for step-ins. I rode Clickers and Clicker HB for 4 years and I
liked them a lot. They did occasionally get slightly clogged with
powder, but it was never THAT bad. The speed of entry was nice, but I
found that I would be held up by my friend a lot anyway... beside it
takes me less than 30 seconds to get into my strap bindings now
anyways (although I had to relearn to use them after all those years
in step-ins).

Many people are put off by the cost (they tend to cost more), are
afraid of the system failing on them, or believe there is a
performance issue. I think most of the major systems (Burton SI,
Clicker, Switch, Flow) are fairly good now a days and there might be a
little performance hit, but more people wouldn't notice it... the KEY
thing for me was the limited selection of boots. With straps, you have
hundreds of options, with step-ins you maybe have 4-5 at a particular
price range. If you find a step-in boot that fits your perfectly
that's great... but straps offer you better chances. Performance is
also greatly dictated by the quality of the boot.

Okay... onto the playing Devil's Advocate
=================================
I would like to dispute the fact that "all" or even "most"
halfpipes/terrain parks are empty... from my experience in the past 8
years or so they are often super crowded will silly once-a-year
vacationers who want to try to "catch some air" and brag about it to
their friends back home. So much so that many of the bigger resorts
such as Whistler have expanded their park/pipe operations so that they
have have separate areas for novice and expert riders (often with 2-3
parks and 1-2 halfpipes) with the advanced areas being restricted to
people who have acquired a separate pass by signing another injury
waiver and paying a nominal fee.

That's not to say that there is a significant difference between what
marketing and actuality as you mentioned... snowboarding magazines
show a lot of aerials and rail tricks to be sure... but is that any
different from commericals showing big brawny pickups and SUV bouncing
along rocky hills and through shallow streams or sports car/motocycles
blasting down windy mountain roads doing high-G turns? Most people
(99%) won't be doing either of those things. Marketing always tries to
show people a "fantasy" lifestyle in order to get them to buy their
product, snowboarding is no different.

I agree with Phil when he said that most people tend to skid around
down intermediate level slopes in softboot gear. Most people don't go
in the park and do jumps and hence should not be getting boards like
the Burton Dominant Slick (one of the only rail-orient board in
existence despite what Phil just implied). However, I feel that
hardbooters are sometimes over eager to convert people to their
diminishing community (on my generous estimate, hardbooters are still
much less than 1% of the snowboarding population and decreasing
percentage-wise) by exageratting the supposed faults of softboots.

There are many advantages to alpine boards and hardboots - they make
it a lot easier to carve fast and deep... however that doesn't mean
softboots don't have their place *outside* of the freestyle world. I
don't think anyone will be coming to an agreement on which way "the
scale falls" on which setup is better for most situations, I
personally think its a matter of preference (I bet people on both
sides will be saying "Only if you are an idiot" under their breathe).
There are availabilty, cost and comfort issues as well - these can be
all overcome with time and effort... but most people don't want to
spend hours roaming ebay and online forums to research and buy
equipment. I'm not saying this is a good thing, just pointing out a
reality of the world.

Most importantly, many people don't *want* to do carves deep trenches,
much in the same way that they don't want to do jumps - putting them
on hardboots would just make them miserable as alpine board are
terrible skid. Sure they "should" be carving, but that's like smashing
the training wheels off a kids bike and then sending him down a steep
windy hill to teach him - maybe not for everyone (this is how I
learned to rollerblade though).