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A question for SZK / CEM

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Any feedback re these? The interchangeable canted soles seem a great alternative to sole planing?
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Ah, Good evening sir, you are rather special, aren't you? I have just the thing...
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Lange had those in '04.
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spyderjon, the daleboot is a really interesting boot, it has been around for 20something years and in unchanged, it is available in the UK via Lockwoods, it is effectively a retro looking boot with some very good features, a custom liner and the cantable sole pads, pricey at £440 ish a pair, + your footbed but all those wh ski in them rave about the comfort and performance (mind you if i had spent £440 + on a boot it WOULD be the BEST BOOT EVER Laughing

back in the 70's Mel Dalebout (i think that is how you spell his name) developed the cantable sole pads on his boot, they have been used by salomon in the past (back in the day of the sx92) as comprex said lange had a similar type sole pad on their comp series, they never made it to the UK SZK will confirm if they were in France, so i am not sure if it was just something for the US market but the Lange distributor of the day over here tryed to deny the existance of such an item!
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CEM, I tried canting my SX92s like that but decided empirically that I was well enough (or well enough adapted to my) aligned already. I find reasonable technique overcomes most of my structural deficiencies.
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Lange indeed do cantable soles for their Comp series, I buy the 1.5 degree soles in Canada.




Quote:
I find reasonable technique overcomes most of my structural deficiencies.


Debatable, that also does not apply to everyone, and it depends how much you are "out" by.
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veeeight, True. I guess I'm not out by much...I found that applying the cants (I tried both directions, just for fun) didn't help anything. My bootfitting friend in the shop thought I was insane. In fairness and probably more accurately, stupid.

I guess part of my comment is based on the large amount of stuff talked about kit, when I have seen one guest walking in to the shop at the end of the day to complain about the comfort of his boots only to be told to try them the next day but put them on the correct feet.

These rear entry models are so tricky to tell apart aren't they?
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David Murdoch wrote:
I find reasonable technique overcomes most of my structural deficiencies.


That's easy if your legs naturally align with your boots.

I had the fitting of my Profeet fitted Tecnica's checked by Bud Heishman whilst at the Epickski Academy. Everything was find, including perfect cuff alignment etc. However, Bud identifed two problems, the first being too much forward lean which was easily rectified but also the fact that I appeared to be standing on the inside edges of my boots, rather than the soles being flat. It was hardly noticable on my left foot but I could definately feel it on my right. This was confirmed by the alignment measurements that Bud took & by him having me skiing on one leg straight down the fall line on a gentle slope. When on my left leg there was a very slight steering to the right but I could, with almost no effort, remain in a straight line. My right foot was a different story. I immediately started a nice turn to the left & had to put in noticeable effort to steer straight. I had to repeat this many times on both sides to confirm the findings.

Bud then planed .5 deg off the outside of the left boot & 1.5 off the outside of the right boot. When walking firmly on the spot on a flat surface the soles of my boots then landed flat & when I repeated the skiing exercise the next day I was straight running on both sides with no effort.

When I hit the slopes proper I immediately noticed how much easier to was to initiate a right turn, especially at slow to medium speeds. I also felt waay more stable when schussing & could carry a lot more speed on the flats etc.
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spyderjon, Interesting. I guess I have reasonably well aligned legs. They are apparently very fetching in black stockings I have been told.

Maybe I've just got used to them.
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David Murdoch, Please, should you need new stuff this winter, don't come dressed in stockings. wink
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David Murdoch, I thought you wouldn't wear black.
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spyderjon, only when I have to. Or with black heels.

But seriously, while I easily understand you noticing such fine tuning, I wonder just how many ordinary holiday skiers really would?
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David Murdoch, I glad you said that! I thought we were going to have to spend hours talking about the objectivity if canting when we finally meet. i have one thing to say on the subject, SNOW RESISTANCE. Razz
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David Murdoch wrote:
spyderjon, But seriously, while I easily understand you noticing such fine tuning, I wonder just how many ordinary holiday skiers really would?

That's just it, I didn't know I had a problem & in hindsight it was certainly hindering my skiing, or at least my ability to improve.

At my ability level I would never have known (especially the forward lean adjustment) which is why the Epicski Academy had Bud & Steve Bagley available on hand especially so students could get checked & corrected if necessary. They also had video analysis on the first day & if one of the instructors thought there was an issue they'd have Bud watch the tape. Bud would then check measure the person & could even ski with them the following day & maybe use temporary shims to confirm a diagnosis. In my case he told me to do the one legged straight line tracking exercise.

There must be thousands of skiers out there struggling to improve who are using mis-matched or poorly adjusted gear without knowing it. Weems Westfield, the head coach at ESA reckons that this is a major contributing factor to the 'intermediate plateau'. Whilst there are a few specialist fitters in the UK who can decent alignment work the big retails like EB's/S&R certainly don't offer anything like it & they probably sell the biggest percentage of the boots.

And it was after all the boot balancing work was done/checked at ESA that you could get Campbell Balanced. But that's another story wink
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I wonder how much difference this makes off piste, when the snow moves so much more than pisted surfaces? I'm not dismissing it, in fact it's really interesting and something I'd like to have investigated myself. I just wonder how much a 5 degree plane makes in 2ft of powder?
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flicksta, For a start it's 0.5 degrees i hope!

None, is the answer to your question Zero.zero.zero. Little Angel
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flicksta, I would have thought it has the potential to make an even bigger difference - because instead of just focussing on the edge of the ski and your position relative to that, you are now using the full width of the base as the "edge".
Not sure. One for Epic!
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SMALLZOOKEEPER, if it's 5 deg, it WILL make a difference, Shirley.
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SMALLZOOKEEPER wrote:
flicksta, For a start it's 0.5 degrees i hope!

None, is the answer to your question Zero.zero.zero. Little Angel


Indeed, typo.

I can't see how it makes a difference, with such a moveable surface.
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Wear The Fox Hat, Depends on leg length, ski width, snow density m3, but on a short ass with a 130cm ski in thawing powder, yes 5 degrees would be a big difference.

0.5 degrees in most cases in light powder would be lost. There is not enough resistance to generate a fixed mental pattern. Which is why good skiers can unexplainably fall in powder. Little Angel
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It will make a huge difference, as WTFH said, you now have the entire surface of the ski to contend with. And it's only moveable to an extent, until the platform is generated. If were infinitely moveable we wouldn't be able to turn/ski.

I speak from experience as a colleague and I went heli-skiing in bottomless powder, he didn't have his regular canted boots with him, and thus he was 1 degree each leg out.

Despite his very very good and excellent skiing (he knows what he's doing put it that way) - occasionally he would get tripped up by his tips converging, as the 1 deg cant kept pushing his skis together.

Groomers let you get away with most things.
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veeeight wrote:
It will make a huge difference, as WTFH said, you now have the entire surface of the ski to contend with. And it's only moveable to an extent, until the platform is generated. If were infinitely moveable we wouldn't be able to turn/ski.

I speak from experience as a colleague and I went heli-skiing in bottomless powder, he didn't have his regular canted boots with him, and thus he was 1 degree each leg bow-legged.

Despite his very very good and excellent skiing (he knows what he's doing put it that way) - occasionally he would get tripped up by his tips converging, as the 1 deg cant kept pushing his skis together.

Groomers let you get away with most things.


Just can't get this I'm afraid. On a flat resistant surface, this will make a difference. In a moveable, malleable medium with constant, homogenous density and distribution of mass I can see this. Snow doesn't settle consistently, hence isn't the aforementioned things. Perhaps he just had a bad day. Human beings are made of skin, bone, muscle, ligament etc. In a malleable medium such as fresh snow these things will far outweigh a 0.5deg skim off your boot.
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veeeight wrote:

Despite his very very good and excellent skiing (he knows what he's doing put it that way) - occasionally he would get tripped up by his tips converging, as the 1 deg cant kept pushing his skis together.


I'm no scientist, but I'm calling BS on that excuse. That amount of steering that one degree of canting can cause must be infitessimally small. It also suggests that all his movements in making a turn are accurate to less than one degree Confused
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veeeight,
Despite his very very good and excellent skiing (he knows what he's doing put it that way) - occasionally he would get tripped up by his tips converging, as the 1 deg cant kept pushing his skis together

This is AbDUCTON a completly different subject to canting and is work that is more commonly done with orthotics. Canting can address this if used as a complementary exercise.

Groomers let you get away with most things.

Oh yeah, we cant much more often for freeriders than Slalom/GS racers! wink
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I've tried and I've tried and I've tried and I just CAN'T.
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David Murdoch, People have insisted i'm a CANT Toofy Grin
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SMALLZOOKEEPER, Brian, is that you?
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Wear The Fox Hat, P.L.A.Y.L.A.Y.L.A.Y. PLAYAWAY! Toofy Grin
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SMALLZOOKEEPER, I don't play away. Sorry to break your heart... Laughing
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Well I'm not here to convince unbelievers, but there is enough published material out there (excluding HH) that say 0.5 degrees makes a difference rolling eyes
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veeeight, The SUN gets published everyday. Laughing Laughing Laughing

Besides, would you consider me as a DIS-beliver, i have never UN-belived anything, nor do i intend to.

Come on, chase the WORM little FISHY. Toofy Grin
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Well, most of the online articles refer to good bootfitters who are able to set you up.......... Toofy Grin (Are you bored today? Laughing )
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I hope PM doesn't mind my resurrection of his contributions to the Carving in deep powder thread:

Definition:
Quote:
You raise an interesting question. It’s a complicated issue and I don't believe there is a generally accepted definition for carving in soft snow.
In previous posts in this thread, people have suggested:

1) “…is the use of the snow's resistance to get the skis to reverse camber not a form of carving…”,

2) “Carving technique is, indeed, applied to deep snow because the skis cannot skid…”,

3) “…it is not carving using your edges, instead it is using your bases”

IMHO, these are relevant comments, but don’t get to the heart of the matter.

My personal definition of carving is that at all positions along the base of the ski, the snow is moving by underneath the ski in a front-to-back direction, not at a sideways angle.

This definition works for hard snow situations (i.e., carving on your edges), as well as in soft snow situations (i.e., carving on your bases). It effectively defines skidding (i.e., the ski is moving over or through the snow sideways), and is compatible with the sometimes heard, “zero angle of attack” definition of carving (i.e., your skis are pointed in the same direction that your center of mass is moving).

By concentrating on the presence or absence of sideways motion, the above definition correctly ignores the compression of the snow under the skis bases when defining “carving” in soft snow. Other definitions don’t do this. For example, one hard snow definition that is sometimes carried over to soft snow is that corresponding parts of the ski all pass over the same patch of snow (or over the same point in space). This comes from the fact that on hard snow, all points along the edge of a ski in a perfect carve will pass over the same point on the surface of the snow.

For me, probably the most useful way to think about carving in soft snow is to imagine the behavior of a thin rod dropped into water. If the rod is straight, and is dropped into the water at any angle other than end-on, there will be sideways movement of the water by points on the rod. Clearly, this is not carving.

If the rod is curved (ie, like a decambered ski), you have a complicated situation. If it is heavy enough relative to its surface area, it may continue straight down through the water without any rotation at all. So, if it was dropped into the water with its lower end at exactly 90 deg to the surface, the flow of the water by the tip of the rod will be parallel to the long axis of the rod, but the flow of the water passing by the tail of the curved rod will be going the tail at some angle to the rod.

On the other hand, if the weight, surface area, cross-sectional shape, speed, viscosity of the liquid, and everything else is adjusted perfectly, such a curved rod will start to slowly rotate as it drops through the water, following a curved path through the water that is exactly the same shape as the curve of the rod itself. It will push the minimum amount of water out of its way and provide the most streamlined flow. While it is indeed difficult to adjust everything perfectly to make this happen, it can be done, and this is analogous to my definition of carving in powder – effectively, it’s getting your ski to leave the minimum width track through the three dimensional world of powder.


How To:
Quote:
I agree totally with you that edges have nothing to do with ski performance in powder. However, I'm not sure if the “pressuring” part of your analogy focuses the reader on the part of the problem most relevant to making skis turn in powder.

Yes, pressing down on a ski does indeed make the ski part soft snow, but simply parting the snow doesn’t make a ski turn. For example, consider what would happen if the cross section of the ski was a tall, pointy isosceles triangle with its tip pointed down, directly under the centerline of the ski. Such a bizarre shape would still buoy you up (if it had the same projected area), and you would feel like you were pressuring it (and it was pressing back), but such a cross-sectional shape wouldn’t let the ski turn in powder.

What makes a ski turn in powder (without specific user input) is a slight differential between the force of the snow pushing upward on the front of an edged ski compared to the force pushing upwards on the rear of the ski. If the ski isn’t edged, this force differential simply makes the tip rise vertically upwards. If the ski is edged, the force differential pushes the tip in the direction of edging. When the ski is moving forward through the snow, snow is coming directly at the upwardly curved front section of the ski, so the fore-aft force differential is larger for a ski that flexes, compared to one that doesn’t.

When you think about it, a fore-aft force differential is what causes skis to turn both in powder and on hardpack. The difference is simply whether the force that the snow exerts on the ski is all concentrated at the ski’s edge, or is spread out over the entire width of the base. So, “pressuring” certainly happens on both types of snow), but a force differential is the key to any turn.

Now, once past this observation, the next interesting issue is what type of turns are available to be made. If the snow is going sideways under an edge (on hardpack) or sideways under the base (in soft snow), more drag will be generated than if the snow is passing by the ski without any L-R angle. Because this concept is identical whether the snow is hard or soft, I think it’s fair to call this type of minimum drag turn “carved” whether on a hard surface or in powder. This is the background that leads to the definition I put forth in my previous post. I’m writing fast, so I hope this explanation is adequate.

Tom / PM


Last edited by Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see? on Thu 31-08-06 17:32; edited 1 time in total
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veeeight, You familiar with sports phsycology and the power of the mental state. I've told clients, Europa Cup skiers, that i have 'canted',when there has been nothing done. In some instances, i have been given Champagne for all that work. Symetrical testing is 100% impossble, therefore which run of my customers day to i take the information?


VOOODOOO MAGIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Skullie
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SMALLZOOKEEPER, you're messing with my proprioception. Will Cant for Krug.
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ooooo. You've taken the worm.
NehNeh
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comprex, Now were speaking the same language, i'll open a bottle! Toofy Grin
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veeeight, I am the WORM, FISHBOY. Toofy Grin
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SMALLZOOKEEPER wrote:
veeeight, You familiar with sports phsycology and the power of the mental state. I've told clients, Europa Cup skiers, that i have 'canted',when there has been nothing done. In some instances, i have been given Champagne for all that work. Symetrical testing is 100% impossble, therefore which run of my customers day to i take the information?


VOOODOOO MAGIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Skullie


'The power of suggestion'
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I would like to point out that huge amounts of benifit can be had from correctly CANTed boots. Finding someone whom can translate the information and quickly resolve the problem is difficult, despite every bootfitter and his stockboy claiming that they can! Toofy Grin

This seems a less popular claim in europe, surprisingly! Toofy Grin
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