Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate

Since my heli time kept getting bumped due to weather, my hang with the ticket to Alaska crew had been limited to just some beers at night.  Fortunately I was able to catch up with them the other day and hop in for some cat rides.

After the bluebird day, an Alaskan size snowstorm set in the following day with upwards of 20″ falling depending on your elevation.  The snow quality was really good, but the visibility was difficult above tree-line during the storm.

The crew getting ready to drop in...

George, their fearless leader...

Kyle, one of the winners from Cali

Our trusty steed...

Some of the funnest riding we did was on the last run of the day when we got below treeline… it was similar to the woods riding we do at Stowe (and you had some trees to use for terrain definition)…

Tyler from the Westbeach shop in Vancouver

A bunch of us were putting Notch ST's to the test with all the new snow...

Hiking out a little after a long day...

I shot some video; so hopefully we should have a quick edit soon from that… (most of the riding stuff I had was video instead of pictures)

So we’re setup and camping in Thompson Pass… Here’s a time-lapse of us setting up…

Here’s some pics from our first day of shredding…

Here's our crew unloading from the cat...

The view as we're getting ready to drop

Forester and Brennan coming off a ridge...

We’re here now hanging at Alaska Rendezvous Lodge with Dan Jangigian and the Meiner family… They have a sweet set-up here and hopefully we’ll have some sweet riding pics once we get on the bird.

Until next time…

So anybody who knows me, knows that I work real hard.  One might even ask why I work so hard…

Well safe to say Friday was one of those days that helps to balances it all out.  This was the scene out my window Friday morning at the office, as I was working away catching up on email…

February isn’t the busiest month for Operations, so I made a managerial decision that once my last meeting for the day was over, Justin (who works with me) and I would punch the clock and head to the mountain.

Here’s a few pics of the fun we had…

The above picture was a little early; my feeble action sports photography skills tell me to take the picture just before the good moment.

Fortunately my finger was fast enough to take this picture a few seconds later of Justin…

Justin's in there somewhere, I swear...

Here’s a picture Justin took of the scribe/photographer right after I took his picture…

(Like my pose trying to get a cell signal to email the picture?)

If you can’t tell from my beard the weather was a little harsh up on the peak on our way over to this spot.  I joked we were 5 minutes away from being the story on the morning news and 10 minutes away from the awesomeness you see in these pics (obviously, make smart choices and in poor visibility conditions only choose terrain you know EXTREMELY well)

After the picture above I started up and made some turns, and Justin captured this one of me that you may have seen on the Rome Facebook page… (I’m a big deal on the internet ya’know)

So, as you can tell a good Friday afternoon for the Operations department at Rome SDS.

Oh wait, nobody did ask, anyways here’s some video I recorded after my other video fail …Basically I’m just holding the camera in my front hand…I slash a few times and whiteout the camera…Video is four parts of the run. Three coming down to the road and one riding the road back to Stowe. The lens is fogged up at the start of the second part as I was trying to clean the lense of snow. A little Jethro Tull as a soundtrack.

Shredding the Backside… from Waldert on Vimeo.

So we got some more natural snow on Friday…  If you live on the East Coast you really need to pack the car head up to ME, Northern VT, or Northern NH…  Down south may have had a heck of an ice storm, but fortunately we mostly got more snow.  We are in full on winter up here and you really should take care of yourself and come make some turns; you’ll feel a lot better about the world.

So Friday I hopped on a Notch 1985.  I had ridden one of the early protos, but hadn’t been on one in a couple seasons.

Holding an early Notch 1985 proto a couple of February's ago; six riders didn't cross a track...a good day...I still remember George doing a crazy blind drop into a river bed...I think Ron took this picture?

Friday was one of those storms everybody was jonesin’ for, so the parking lot was pretty full by 8 am, and  it got played out pretty fast.    Nonetheless, it was a good opportunity to make some turns on the 1985, to see if I would prefer it as my full-time powder deck.  I loved the ability to ride fakie.  Now, I can’t tell you I was doing huge airs in pow and needing to put down the landing gear switch, but it really was more about coming to a stop in a tight area and deciding that I feel more comfortable taking the option to my left (I’m goofy).   For example, I would never take on a water bar fakie on my tapered Notch, which I did Friday.  It really shows how this board evolved from the Design and much of why I rode the Design before we had the Notch in the line.

I had to give back the 1985 Notch that day, and so I rode my own tapered Notch (158cm) the rest of the weekend.  I was riding it with my Targa’s.  (The Green/Brown one’s look pretty tight on it, lame, I know…)

Ready to Drop - 12/14/08

I had to start the day riding groomers or use groomers to get to “where I was going”.  I will say that for my riding style the tapered Notch is very satisfying at railing on groomers.  I tend to have a lot of fore and aft movement on my board;  driving into the nose to start a turn and powering off the tail coming out.  I really felt more confident initiating turns at speed on my own Notch (on groomers).  Honestly, I really was blown away how well the board coped with groomers; if you ride a bunch of pow and can only afford one board, do not hesitate to buy this as your one board.  Obviously, the board rides pow awesome so I won’t spend too much time on that.

So for myself, riding in VT on lift serviced stuff, I think I prefer the tapered Notch.  I think the same would be true if I was doing frontside and backside stuff out west.

If I was out building kickers or in general riding in more of true backcountry experience (hiking, using snowmobiles, cats, heli, skinning, etc.)  I would choose the Notch 1985.

I hope this helps you understand some of the differences between the two boards and why different people might choose the different models and why both exist.

I would finish my "hot lap" coming down at the foot of this rocks. This line is just over a knoll from the main gully...sometimes a little extra work gets you to a slightly hidden untracked line.

PS-  I did a POV video of riding this gully but I had the camera on the “compact” setting, so it kind of looked crappy on YouTube.  I’m not really a fan of POV stuff so I guess it was karma.