board boot help

[spg993tt]

Evening...again....
thought i'd ask my questions in this forum since it seems pretty relevant...
i love carving turns on my freeride and alpine boards. yet, my alpine setup i find very stressful on my knees, hips, etc. I have some ITBand issues, and do a lot of road racing, competing most of the year, and sometitmes i feel the pressure with the very forward positioning, combined with the stiffness of the board, boots, bindings...well, i think its a bit more than i love.

my freeride snowboard is a burton T6 which i love a lot but when its a groomer kind of day, i would love to be on someting far more aggressive that cuts even nastier carves.

so my thought was to get something like a :
1. donek razor?
2. maybe a 164 palmer honeycomb
3. Arbor A-frame, supposedly another super-nice carving snowboard.

and then for boots and bindings, i have no real ideas there. i read a bunch about solly malamutes. they seem logical. i've had good luck with Burton Ions in the past, and as well Drivers, which i currently run.

bindings, i have had good luck, no pain and good stiffness from the burton p1 HD bindigns with the toe cap which i love as it sucks your foot into the back of the binding.

i'm sure the serious hard cores might scoff or Poo poo my wanting to get a little 'soft', but bottom line is, i'd love to be as rigid, hard, nasty as possible on a board...but i just can not seem to shake the knee, hip tightness as noted. so softer is the only way i can go since i just cant get around that discomfort...my alpine stuff sits far too much...infact i'm selling it up here as well.

anyway, anyone have any great ideas or thoughts..? if so, i'd love to hear them.

[newcarver]

Don't forget about the Nidecker Proto. It is designed to be an all mountain carver in soft or hard boots. From what I read it is a nice board with a softer flex. I just purchased an older one and hope to try it out soon. Another good board is the Dynastar/O-sin 3800. It is designed for powder but works well on the groom and is carvable with softboots. I just got one off of E-bay and love it after 1 day on it. My previous boards have been Arbor A-frame/S-series (I love this board too). Bindings, I would go with anything that is designed to be a stiff freeride binding. Same deal with the boots. I have been looking at the thirty two forcast boot as it has a intuition liner. Hope this helps.

[paragonUE]

nidecker and catek make awesome softboot bindings,


and deeluxe makes a softboot thats supposed to be uber premium:biggthump

[spg993tt]

whats your take on the A-Frame from Arbor? i've been dying to get a 2007 board. first, they look cool and have a real grass roots feel. and 2ndly, supposedly its newly built to just crank up big turns. looks very slick.




Don't forget about the Nidecker Proto. It is designed to be an all mountain carver in soft or hard boots. From what I read it is a nice board with a softer flex. I just purchased an older one and hope to try it out soon. Another good board is the Dynastar/O-sin 3800. It is designed for powder but works well on the groom and is carvable with softboots. I just got one off of E-bay and love it after 1 day on it. My previous boards have been Arbor A-frame/S-series (I love this board too). Bindings, I would go with anything that is designed to be a stiff freeride binding. Same deal with the boots. I have been looking at the thirty two forcast boot as it has a intuition liner. Hope this helps.

[paragonUE]

the A-frames top notch, really pretty too. alot of carvers prefer them over other softboot boards.


maybe look into a rad-air tanker as well, theyre huge, great in pow, and supposedly good for carving on groomers, if you can throw it around

[newcarver]

A-frame is a sweet board and looks awesome. They are pretty stiff and will handle a lot of speed. I found that it didn't work quite as well in the trees and powder as the 3800 but is great on steeps and doing anything at high speed. It is still very good in pow if you set your bindings back. I have even riden in the park on hand rails and stuff with it, so it is pretty versitile.