David Peacock wrote:

For general purpose recreational riding, I thought the main reason the
soft boots were so popular is simply because they are comfortable. I can
be in them all day, walk around, hike up the hill, even drive my pickup
to and from the hill - all with comfort.

That's certainly part of the "sell" of them. There's also a great deal
of the attitude that snowboarding is not skiing, and so people reject
equipment that looks too much like ski equipment. Also the equipment is
so hard to find that 99% of people don't even know what it is, never
mind consider that it might be an option.

I agree that as a beginner, soft boots are probably the way to go.
People have learned on hard boots but most of the hardbooters I know
would suggest starting on softies - they are just more forgiving.

When you start pushing yourself past the intermediate plateau, that's
where I feel plates become a viable option. As Chris pointed out,
there's a lot of riders that carve hard on softies too. It might be
eventually that the soft equipment gets so good that hard boots are no
longer an advantage - some people feel that point is already here,
obviously I disagree.

Hard boots still give you much more leverage over the board and let you
pressure the edge more easily. If you like to ride a forward stance as
I do, hard boots work much better. As soon as you push softies much
past 40 degrees or so, the lack of lateral stiffness really affects how
functional they are. From a convenience point of view, step-in bindings
for hard boots work absolutely great, but they have yet to come up with
one for softies that beats a good strap system. I love my step-ins!

There are also issues of comfort and safety. A lot of high performance
riders don't find softies comfortable as the bindings create pressure
points when tightened for performance. I switched because of that pain
and because at the speeds I travel I felt my ankles just weren't
supported enough. I admit that I haven't been in softies for years and
years so I don't have personal experience to back up whether this would
still be the case for me. I have heard from quite a few people who have
switched recently for those reasons, so clearly there are still comfort
issues for performance riders.

Neil

Neil