thomas_m
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Posts posted by thomas_m
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Wow, Now I see why many of the posts here reference Niseko as being flat. Looks really fun though, it'd be nice to ride pow without being half-scared.
Here, low angle pow like that would be totally tracked in about 5 minutes. Gotta go wide and steep to get clean and deep.
T.
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I just got the tracking info from Fedex for my new D1+...
I'll post a review comparing it to the D1 as soon as I get some time on it. The D1 rocked hard in multiple pow dumps in December, I think I rode it 8 of my 12 days riding so far. Hopefully, the D1+ will be even better.
T.
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Wow, bummer for you guys...
Right now my low local hill 1000M elev at the bottom has a 200cm base and my second choice, Mt Baker is pushing a 360+cm base right now. However...
...in 2004/2005 which we call The Season of Deth, here's what my hill looked like on February 1st:
So I can relate... You should do a snow dance or maybe burn a toque, couldn't hurt
Good Luck!
T.
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We started our son snowboarding when he was 5 on a 105cm board, smallest we could find. Leg strength requirements are higher for boarding so most resorts around here don't start organized lessons until 8yrs. He did a crazy high-speed falling leaf thing for the first couple seasons.
If I'd been a skier (never tried it), I'd have started him on skis first. It's really hard for small children to leverage a snowboard to change edges and turn properly.
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It snows every now and then in Alabama but rarely sticks. My first winter trip to Yatsugatake was pretty crazy. Eye-opener for sure. Same thing on my first trip to one of our big volcanos here in Washington/Oregon. I found my love for the mountains in Japan, it just took me a while to get around to sliding down. I really regret missing those years.Quote:Originally posted by Tohoku bum:
I've always wondered what it would be like to see your first snowstorm after growing up in a place where it never snowed. I'm guessing from your 40+ day seasons that it must have been amazing.
If you're a hummer-driving bigger-is-always-better type, you might be a little disappointed by the scale here (like some malcontents on the forum), but if you just truly love riding great snow on interesting and beautiful terrain it'll be well worth the trip.
LOL, I'm actually a Honda Element driving type. I always wanted one of those 4WD Mitsubishi Delica's but they don't sell them here in the states...
I like it all from steep trees to carving groomers in hardboots. It's those pow runs through the deciduous forests that draw me to Hokkaido. And it'd keep me away from all the damn mosquitos in Nagasaki's summer. However, the shoronagashi in Nagasaki's Obon is something to see. Unfortunately, we had to participate last year(both grandmother-in-laws). My son before pushing his great grandmother's spirit boat:
http://www.crowmountain.net/Urban/Obon_2005/obon15.html
Time to pack for tomorrow's splitboard mini-tour...
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The answer is it simply never occurred to me... I grew up in the US deep south (Alabama, Georgia) and had no exposure to snow sports. I took up surfing when we moved to Washington from Nagasaki. Several years later and after one too many skunkings decided to try snowboarding. After the first run, I was hooked and it's dominated my free time for the past 5 years.Quote:Originally posted by Toque:
Why didn't you snowboard while in Japan?
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A pair of Revo polarized sunglasses for skinning or spring days cruising groomers with the kids. Goggles for anything remotely serious, usually with a spare in the pack.
T.
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Not a pro, strictly a consumer when it comes to my snow time. I'm slightly east of Seattle so most of my time is spent at Alpental at Snoqualmie Pass. When there's good snow I make the trip to Mt Baker or Crystal Mtn, usually 5-10 times each season of my normal 40ish days. Although I just picked up a splitboard so a large portion of my days will now be off in the slackcountry.
I was in Kyushu. Out on Kamigoto-shima for a year and then inside Nagasaki City for another 2. Normal JET gig. Met my wife there so we go back every summer around Obon (wrong time to visit Nagasaki). I'm trying to wrangle a schedule shift as I've always wanted to visit Tohoku/Hokkaido, probably next winter.
When I was there I didn't board, was a pure climber; Yakushima, Hiezan in Miyazaki, Horai, Tsurugidake, Yatsugatake(winter ice too), and a bunch of other mtns and small crags that I can't remember.
I look back on all those winter climbing pics now and think "if I only had a board..."
T.
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Right - it's the triangular shaped fir and spruce trees that cause the big problems. The younger ones can be especially bad due to the low branches.
The place that this incident happened got over 100 inches of snow over the past week. For a couple days earlier this week, they were actually requiring partners and full avy gear, beacon/shovel/probe just to ride one of the INBOUNDS lifts that serve a bunch of steep blacks...
T.
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Well, it's only November and we've already had our first death here... Wish we had some of those nice beech trees.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003455146_webskier30.html
Be careful.
T.
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There is _no_ skiing comparison to bliss of surfing a big pow turn on a snowboard, especially a dedicated powderboard with lots of float.
However... getting to the spots where you can make those turns can be a complete PITA on a snowboard. AT gear with a pair of pow-friendly sticks rules when it comes to mountain access. So there's a trade off. My solution was buying a splitboard to provide skinning ability and still retain my mountain surfing experience. But... a splitboard doesn't really help much on mid-descent traverses and flat spots. I just weighed my pow riding bliss against the convenience of AT gear and stuck with the board. I just have to be careful about routes.
For inbounds riding, it's 50/50 in my opinion, whatever excites you to get on the hill.
T.
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LOL, I was going very fast when I hit that little natural miniramp and landed on my feet. I waited until later in the same run to pull an aerial starfish.
That run is actually steeper than it looks in the photo as you can tell from the tilted trees. I think my friend who took it tried to pull the tilt the camera to make it look steeper pic and got it backwards...
Our snow is usually very heavy maritime climate snow. I'm thinking the stiffer nose of the D1+ will be better at blasting through the 'mashed potato' days. I didn't know it would be wider. That might change my purchase plans as the D1 is already pretty wide. I really wish it weren't quite so heavy.
I think the 165 will be too small for me given the very short effective edge and my 175lb weight. I thought about buying one for my wife so I could pass her Fish150 to my daughter but ended up just buying a second Fish.
I will admit that even though I really like the Dupraz, I'm having second thoughts on the quiver-killer one board solution. It's just that hauling a full quiver of boards to the hill, etc is such a pain in the rear. The Dupraz make that choice easy. When I go on a cat boarding trip later this season, I probably won't take the Dupraz. I'll take my Tanker 200 and borrow a friends Fish 160. For my lift-accessed BC riding, I'll keep on the the Dupraz.
T.
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Yeah, I saw the review. My take was they probably didn't spend enough time with the board to get used to the riding style. For me, it doesn't ride anything like my other snowboards and it always takes me a few turns to get used to it.
They probably saw 178cm and thought 'powder gun' but it's really not that at all. It has a very short effective edge, something you'd find on a medium sized freestyle board. I'd agree 100% on your final characterization.
For my favorite surfing the mountain type of riding, the Dupraz works great! I'm already in line for a D1+ later this season. This shot is from this morning at Crystal Mtn, WA on a sweet, steep tree run known as Upper Exterminator. It's of me catching a little air off a powder pillow slasher. It was a great day for the Dupraz!
http://www.crowmountain.net/Snowboard/11.24.06/thomas1.jpg
On the flat run in to the lift I was carving and practicing riding switch (I suck), try that on a powdergun, especially one with a nose like the Dupraz...
Best,
Thomas
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On Oakley Wisdom's, the 'asian fit' designation means it has a raised section of foam around the nose slot. I have both 'asian' and normal fit Wisdoms sitting here in front of me... I can't wear the 'asian' model because it prevents me from breathing through my nose properly. However, they fit my wife (Japanese) perfectly.
Try before you buy, everyone's face is different.
T.
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Small peanuts in the grand scheme of things but there's a Colorado, US snowboard company attempting to be as green as possible. They run on 100% windpower...
http://www.venturesnowboards.com/index.php?inc=conservation.html
T.
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LOL.
What happens here is that you you slide in headfirst and the heavy maritime climate 'powder' collapses on top of you. If you are lucky and you are able to create a breathing space and it's not too heavy, you can hand walk up the tree trunk and maybe work your way out. A local resort tried a controlled experiment and 10 out of 10 people couldn't get out on their own.
Mt Baker actually set up a website about them:
http://www.treewelldeepsnowsafety.com/tree_wells.html
Those small birch trees and light powder look very cool. I need to do something other than imagine it..!
T.
Quote:Originally posted by SerreChe:Taken from this site:
http://www.isi.edu/~lerman/personal/teleski.html
"I nearly gave up hope of making it out alive, much less before sunset, after falling into a few badly placed tree wells. Follow this procedure to extract yourself from the tree well: 1) take your pack off; 2) get up out of the tree well; 3) put your pack back on; 4) repeat as necessary, and ski if you have any energy left"
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I've seen the pics and vids of tree runs in the northern Japan BC and it looks killer. Are all the forests deciduous such that tree wells are a non-issue? That would be brilliant.
At my local areas, almost all the steep pow is in heavy conifer (spruce & fir) forests. Tree wells are a constant danger so it's hard to really let it go hard in the trees as you really need to leapfrog with a partner to make sure someone sees you if you do a header in a tree well and keep you from croaking...
I think we had 3 tree well deaths last year just at the local resorts in western Washington. Avy is everywhere but are there other 'local dangers' in Japanese riding like our tree wells?
T.
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Come on...Quote:Originally posted by db le pu:
That's not normal behaviour anywhere except America and Iraq.
It's not 'normal' in America (USA) either. If it was normal, it wouldn't be in that stupid movie because it wouldn't interest the target audience.
I'm a US citizen. I meet and interact with quite a few other US citizens every day. As far as I can tell, they are as likely to do something like this as they are to be hit on the head by a meteorite.
How many US citizens do you know? How many of them do you think would do something like that? I'm guessing none or a very small minority? Then are the ones who wouldn't do that sort of thing 'abnormal'...
No offense intended but thinking that the riders in TGR films is a sampling of 'normal' Americans is silly. Those sorts of generalizations speak to typing before thinking.
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LOL, my wife thinks I'm insane...
Here's a recent 'family quiver' shot. We've actually added a second Fish 150cm since this was taken for my 12yr old daughter (who charges and scares the crap out of me). And then there's the Steepwater 170 that's loaned to a friend...
http://www.crowmountain.net/Snowboard/quiver.jpg
Happy Monkey is a local one-man shop custom builder. The one he built me is a wide all-mtn alpine board. For this season, he's building me a slightly shorter/fatter freeride board modeled on the Pogo Longboard template. It's a sickness...
http://www.happymonkeysnowboards.com/
I'll post my thoughts on the Snow Mullet as the Tanker 200 as I have owned both a 2002 model and currently the 06/07.
We have passes to Summit at Snowqualmie, spending most of our daylight riding at Alpental and Hyak. We also hit West/Central a couple nights a week. When the snow's good, we usually hit either Crystal Mountain or Mt Baker, occasionally Stevens Pass. Planning on doing a lot more splitboarding and lift accessed slackcountry this season.
Currently working on a trip back to visit the inlaws in the Winter rather than our normal Summer sweatfest in Nagasaki. I need to swing north for some pow in trees without death-trap treewells to worry about!
T.
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Hi All.
I'm actually in Washington State, USA not Japan but I did live in Nagasaki for 3 years in the 1990's...
Like Dumbstick above, I stumbled on this thread via google when looking for info on the new Dupraz models. You might want to know about the new D1+ which will be stiffer, especially in the nose.
I rode a bright red D1 all season last year here in Washington. The D1 got about 20 of my 38 days of riding and was used on everything from our maritime 'heavy pow' to refrozen 'Cascade concrete'. It's definitely a winner! The only time I wished for something else was in tight, steep trees. However that is probably more an indication of my skills (lack of) than the board. Other boards used were a RadAir Tanker 200, LibTech SnowMullet 160 and a custom alpine board made by Happy Monkey Snowboards with hardboots.
If my wallet can stand it, I'm planning on a new D1+ and maybe the D15'5" for 06/07.
Y'all should check out the extensive D1 review and video over on the Handbooter.com site:
http://www.hardbooter.com/video/dupraz.php
Best,
T.
(SNOWBOARD) Dupraz: D1 (by db)
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
Posted
I've just been waiting to get some decent pics...
The board is pure money. Does everything the original D1 does but better. I've got 6 days on it and now I'm thinking of sawing my original D1 in half to make a splitboard...
I'll try to get some pics and post a full review soon. I'm actually going to ride it with hardboots and plates tomorrow for shits & giggles (no new pow).
T.