Hows this board gonna treat me?

[kmartshopper]

I'm awaiting the arrival of my first set of boots, and plan to learn using the "biggest stiffest" board that I already own.

It's a Salomon Precept 167. 9.3m sidecut, 1320mm edge, 312mm tip/tail 265mm waist (fatty!). It feels very stiff, holds a great edge, and is very fast and stable - at least when compared to normal boards you'd find in a typical shop :) . I have read that this is comparable to an earlier W5 or 550(FYI, but I don't know what they are.).

I can carve it heel/toe pretty well with malimute softies - but I can't bust the real hardpack, and have trouble tightening the turn radius (it doesn't blow out... just keeps tracking the same arc - gimme room!)

I'm 6'4" skinny-ass 175#. Love bumps, carving, and trees... well, except one tree in particular :(

My ideal board will be all-mountain, so I'm wondering what limitations to expect from this board - as compared to a top notch AM board. Think that fatness would be problematic?
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Vapir no2 vaporizer (http://vapirno2.net)

[CarvCanada]

265 mm to be used with hard boots? I've seen hard boots used in duck stance on a freeride board and the guy was ripping (in the bumps, didn't see him carve).
I'd bet they'd work decently at 30/25 which is around what you'll be running to get 0 overhang and 0 underhang according to your foot size (6'4" i'm guesing large :) ) but better than malamutes?
It sounds like the board is pretty solid (I used to carve on a Salomon as well) so hardboots will probably help the board to edge hard into the hardpack

The only thing to do is to try it out; it's much better to have stiff boots and super stiff bindings on a soft board, than to have soft boots and soft bindings on a super stiff board :)

[kmartshopper]

Yeah, I meant that I was waiting for some hardboots to get here, and I'll be using those. I was trying to be cheap and use this board with the hardboots - then get a more specific board after I get a feel for things.

I do ride just that... 30/24 with the malamutes - although I do still get a little overhang with sz29. I was actually planning to go higher with the hardboots (425s w/just old snopro race bindings) - start maybe 45/40 to see how it feels. I'm wondering how the wider board would affect - versus maybe a donek axis - which seems to be similar radius and edge, but like 21.5cm (probably a handful stiffer too).
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Vapir no2 (http://no2vaporizers.com)

[Mike Tokar]

I wouldn't arbitrarily set your angles steeper just because you're on hardboots. When you set it up, make it so you get the toe/heel just to the edge (for max leverage) but not over.

Sounds like you're going about things just right.

Enjoy.

MT