Dmitry wrote:

What do you mean by "getting burned"? Frankly, I rarely see snowboarders
in places where I suck and could learn a lot (moguls and steeps), other than
the kids scraping it down on their asses sometimes.

You'd see me there, if we were riding the same hill, and I ride hard
boots. My hard boots are relatively soft ones (Raichle 224, not sure
what the current equivalent is, used to know). I also use an
all-mountain deck, which is wider at 21.5 cm than the race set-ups a lot
of guys use. It's also quite a bit softer. I used to use an Asym Air
with plates, which is an older stiff Burton free-ride board with a 25 cm
waist. I haven't tried a soft setup in 10 years, so they may have
improved - but people keep telling me they get foot pain and they're
unresponsive, so maybe they haven't improved enough. One bonus with
hard boots - step-ins that work really well.

My personal belief is that for the sort of riding you like to do, hard
boots would work very well so long as you have a fairly wide deck and
keep the angles lower (under 50). I think trying to wrangle moguls or
steeps with 60 degree angles is probably not that good an idea, but I'm
sure there's somebody out there killing it in those conditions.

Neil