Princess Diaries, Chapter 5 - Donek Plate

[two_ravens]

me:
5'7"
120 lbs
mondo 23.5 boot
bindings TD2's

board:
Donek Freecarve 163 metal

plate:
Donek plate with UPM mount

Tried this out on Day 6 of SES. Freely admit that my legs were toast by the time I got on a plate, so I really can't give a fair review, but will offer a couple of impressions.

Thought it would be really weird to ride a plate, what with the added height and all, but found it to be amazingly not weird at all. The ride down to the lift felt like I was cruising plush carpet with comfy slippers on. Sweet! May have experienced a slight loss of board feel, but not much really. Did notice the added weight very much. I'm a light weight, and was tired - so the extra weight did feel like an issue anywhere other than in a carve.

Carving, I loved how the plate felt. It was late afternoon and the groomers were pretty chopped up by then - felt the plate took out the majority of pounding I had been experiencing from the chop. And the plate made it easy to go fast - probably too easy, given the condition of my legs. Would love to try this again with fresher legs, and on a board that I'm more familiar with....

[Steve Prokopiw]

Tried the Donek plate at NICE last week on the Diablo 210. It was a snowy day during which I encountered lots of chopped/packed powder and ran the Nastar course with other NICE wackos(We had to be a little wacko to be running Nastar on a powder day)

I will be trying out the plate this week for several more days.I can say based on the four runs I took on the Donek Plate on chopped/packed powder that it helps my Diablo eat up what it encounters even more voraciously.It does feel pretty high up as far as rise goes,and makes for a combo that weighs 19.18 pounds! But it had remarkably good feel...right up until I got spanked for getting a little too far forward on the nose during the last toeside turn of the Nastar course.The bottom of the course had really fun evenly spaced banks formed in the powder and made for fun and fast finishes.The top was a bit steep for me to want to press an unfamiliar plate into tight turns on a 210.This board/plate combo did get the fast time of the day by 2 seconds however.It seems there is a limit to how much edge angle I should allow for awhile;because tillting the board/plate over just a little too aggressively resulted in the hardest crash I have had on the 210.I will live to fight another day, but it was a serious wakeup call.



Edit;OOPS!I put this in the princess diaries thread,haha.Maybe I should wear a tiara when I ride the Diablo/Donek combo