My wife and I ski and snowboard at Falls Creek regularly. My wife has been alpine snowboarding for decades, but vary rarely sees anyone else at Falls on alpine snowboards. Does anyone else Alpine snowboard at Falls and be interested in meeting up? Before I get multiple replies saying the hill is lousy with snowboarders. Alpine snowboarding is on a long snowboard similar to a mono ski and uses hard shell boots.
Sounds like it uses more skill? What does using a Alpine Snowboard do that a snowboard can't? (Or vice-versa?) *I am a XC, tele and AT skiier only.
Very few at Falls Creek, I tried it myself years ago and there was one of the ski Patrollers who used to but he left the Dark Side and now skis again. As far as I know none of the snowboard instructors at Falls is competent to teach hardboard riding and that wouldn't help. My old board is screwed to the wall at Pretty Valley lodges ski hire, or at least it was a the last time I was in there, a very old K-2 Kicker about 6 foot long EDIT Just sent a PM with information about a possible contact
Alpine snowboarding is all about linking carved turns on groomed slopes, gs and slalom snowboarding at the olimpics are on alpine snowboards. My wife enjoys the sensation of pulling gee's on a series of well executed turns. She also looks a bit more graceful going down the slope on her alpine board compared to riding a freestyle board. I found this article which sums it up far better than I could, under the heading "craving the carve": http://alpinesnowboarder.com/ Their downside is they are not well suited for all mountain snowboarding.
Their downside is the hard boots!! I love watching a good Alpine Snowboarder, there’s a few in Niseko (bizarrely, despite the powder), but the hard boots are enough to turn me off.
I've looked at the hardboot snowboarders before - it feels to me like the worst of both worlds? For soft boot carving, you can't go past Ryan Knapton as an example of how this can be done without the hardboots:
in the early days of snowboards at FC there were a few hard boot exponents. There was one guy who used to ride with one hard and one soft.
My wife currently uses apex boots for snow boarding. They are a soft snowboard boot with a hard removable exoskeleton which can fit into ski or alpine snowboard bindings. So she does not have to put up with hardboots when riding her alpine boards.
Falls is relatively quiet on weekdays, so not too hard. My wife's boards are also very old school, they are asymmetric so turn initiation is equally easy toe and heal side. The biggest drawback is they are tiring to ride on flat narrow runs, the boards like to be riden on edge.
