20th anniversary of Extremecarving.com and this Forum!

[fivat]

After 20 years, the Website banner is still the same! Quite an achievement!

Original-banner-Extremecarving-2002.jpg (23.33 KiB) Viewed 23435 times

The photo was taken on Sunday 14 January 2001, on the "Le Col" piste (the famous piste we reserve for the ExtremeCarving Sessions).
I remember that when you pressed the shutter button of the still camera (one of the first digital cameras), there was a delay of half a second before the image was taken. It was not easy... But almost all our pictures were successful and we never missed our turns.

The EC photos available at the opening of the Website are still visible today:
- Winter 2001
- Winter 2002
About freeriding, it's here:
- Photos 2001

We only needed two days each time to take these batches of photos. Looking back, it seems pretty crazy because it's so easy now with modern still cameras. We couldn't just shoot in burst mode and then keep only the best image. We had to make clean, well-controlled turns from start to end. Just like in the videos.

Patrice Fivat

[olive]

A brief history of snowboarding

1985 was the first time I put my feet on a snowboard. Some friends had manufactured in their garage a copy of the Snowfish snowboard.

Next winter i bought my first snowboard, a Hooger Booger that had no edges. Powder snow was mandatory. I sawed an old pair of skis and put Kandahar bindings on them for the ski lift, they were in the backpack for downhill snowboarding.

HB.jpeg (10.93 KiB) Viewed 23411 times

Following season: Hot Snowboards, model One Sixty. It was one of the first "carving" shaped snowboard. At that time the word meant nothing. From that time on I never put skis on my feet anymore.

Hot.jpg (39.42 KiB) Viewed 23411 times

Then I owned different alpine boards that were available at that time.
2003 I discovered the extreme carving website. I was in awe!
Without Patrice and Jacques I would probably have come back to skiing.

2004 first ECS, and then my first Swoard board.
I was highly motivated to "relearn" snowboarding, with EC as the ultimate goal.

Besides the aesthetic and fluid style, I think it is extraordinary how this technique gives us control over the steepest slopes, always on the edge. How exhilarating!

A huge thanks to Patrice who held on over the years despite the difficulties, sharing his passion with us.

[nils]

An Egyptian was a 3000 year old guy.

Nils

[fivat]

Powder snow was mandatory.

Yes! And in the 80's there was much more powder than now in the Alps. This has contributed enormously to the development of the sport, initially off-piste.

Climate change is a reality. I remember we had walls of snow on the side of the roads during the winters in the Swiss Alps! We could ride in deep powder almost every weekend. Now it is more and more rare, and the big walls of snow on the side of the roads are gone.

Glaciers are also shrinking. Only two last ski resorts open in Switzerland during the summer: Zermatt and Saas Fee. Here are the resorts that have stopped: Verbier, Les Diablerets, Crans Montana (2001), Diavolezza (1998), Corvatsch (1993), ...

Fortunately, there is alpine snowboarding! With artificial snow, and groomers equipped with sonar (to measure the snow depth and better distribute it), it will still be possible to ride for many years!

Over a season, we have more beautiful days of carving than freeriding! Especially since the off-piste is now too quickly ruined, because of the democratization of freeride skiing...

Patrice Fivat

[fivat]

1985 was the first time I put my feet on a snowboard.

It was the golden age. Jacques started in 1984, I in 1987 and Nils in 1988.
As Jacques was among the first instructors in Switzerland (in 1988), I could benefit directly from his proper advises. Then I also become instructor in 1993.

In 1987 already, I was water skiing (with a monoski) and I was fascinated by the very inclined turns of the champion Patrice Martin:

Patrice-Martin-waterski.jpg (35.2 KiB) Viewed 23239 times

Source here. The Frenchman Patrice Martin was 12 times world champion in water skiing from 1979 to 1999.

So, naturally, when snowboard carving appeared in the late 80's and early 90's, I wanted to reproduce that on snow and go even further.

I got some inspiration from a few pictures in the French magazines showing Jean Nerva and Serge Vitelli, two legends in the nineties. But my goal was to really link the turns, like in water skiing, and not to make single tricks in front of the camera.

As Jean said to Nils, the backside was really a problem at that time. In rare videos like this one, we can see only frontside turns: 10 frontside turns exactly... and 0 backside. Note that 1) we don't see series of turns 2) the frontside turns are not fully laid and they are made in counter-rotation 3) the knees are touching each other 4) the arms are far apart.

Thus, there was a new world to explore. While Jacques was more freestyle oriented (he was making big cliff jumps in softboots), he followed me in my quest. Then began a real emulation between us. We pushed each other to improve our movements and discuss a lot about technical points. It quickly became clear that the snowboards were limiting our progression (especially on the backside). By becoming a snowboard shaper at Wild Duck Snowboards (from 1990 to 1994, then still having access to a workshop), Jacques was able to develop adapted models in parallel. Improving our ride technique has improved the prototypes, and vice versa.

It's only in 2001 that we created the word "extremecarving (EC)" to describe the fact that our laid technique pushes the body to the maximum possible contact with the snow. In addition to this, the turns must be linked, frontside and backside, what was really new, especially armpit to armpit.

EC must be a consequence of more and more inclined turns, till the extreme. This is not falling on the snow, this is not body sliding, the rider must keep a nice control of his board on the edge.

To be followed! In future posts, I will give other anecdotes.

Patrice Fivat

[b.free]

Hello everyone.
Any updates on future dates for Main event in Zinal?
And congratulations!

[christian61]

In future posts, I will give other anecdotes.
Patrice Fivat

Yes, please!!!

[pokkis]

First Zinal session with some familiar faces:
https://youtu.be/OKGawFnAuG8?t=1241

[Swoard team]

Here we go, all the dates are confirmed with the resorts and the Swoard team!

They are published in this topic: Swoard Demo Tour 2023 > events > info, videos, ...

We hope you had a great summer! Have a great return!
We are happy to see you again!

News will be published during the next weeks in the dedicated topics.

The Swoard team

[fivat]

I'm translating here some recent exchanges in the French version of this topic. There are some cool info and anecdotes.

I remember that in 2003, Jacques and I hesitated to reveal our "spot", like all the surfers who care about their beaches. We published a few photos of the Barthelemy with the mention "secret spot" and the Opus 2. But then we decided to open up, because people wanted to meet us, learn our technique and test our first boards. So in mid 2003 we decided, with Nils, to organise in Zinal (Switzerland) the 1st ExtremeCarving Session.

A recent discussion between the team members showed that one of the great strengths of the Swoard boards and our original EC technique is to be able to carve steep or very steep slopes. And this by really closing the fully laid turns. We are seeing more and more videos of softboots carving on the internet, which we are very happy about after so many years, but it is mostly on blue pistes, mostly frontside, and sometimes with soft or wet snow. So we should be able to feed this Website and this Forum for another 20 or 40 years.

Although... As I wrote in the first post of this topic:

The emergence of social networks has spread many people a bit everywhere, and we miss the great threads we had during the first 10 years in the Forum. We had deep discussions about technical things, for example.

I notice that many platforms do not really allow for in-depth written exchanges anymore. This is why I completely agree with Guillaume (translated from French):

The Forum is a good way to channel, orient and help newcomers, but to improve one's EC technique nothing replaces the transfer of experience in person!
[...]
On other aspects, the Forum is an indispensable tool: the preparation of our boards, the reinforcement of our clothes... it covers subjects applicable to other winter disciplines... For my part, I was able to be oriented towards the right sharpening tools, techniques, waxing, and as a result, snowboard or not, I became the official equipment preparer for my little family

The combination of the Forum, which reaches a wide range of people, with the ECS is a winning combination

Writing messages in this Forum takes time, whereas posting photos on Facebook is quick. As for me, I keep making the effort to write, here or in my numerous e-mails. As for the events, the 20th ExtremeCarving Session will be the 60th event organised by Swoard.

Note that The Blitz still holds the absolute record for the largest topic, with 34 pages and 509 posts:
[Tuning] Head Stratos Pro (in French).

Patrice Fivat