20th anniversary of Extremecarving.com and this Forum!

[fivat]

TODAY is the 20th anniversary of www.extremecarving.com and this Forum!!

Wow! It's hard to realize how far we have come, because we are always looking forward and our passion is intact.

Jacques, Nils and I opened this Website on 21st March 2002.
Don't worry, a new appearance will come sooner or later, though the contents are the most important.

The first members of this Forum pushed us to make our custom boards available to them too. This has led to Swoard snowboards in January 2003. Because of the success, we quicky felt the need to organize a gathering to explain everything better than through a Website: our ride technique, original boards, boots modifications, setup, etc. Thus we revealed to the public our "secret spot" and organized the first ExtremeCarving Session in 2004.

Now, in 2022, we have organized so far 58 Swoard events, gathered thousands of riders on the snow and much more over Internet. We humbly hope that we have influenced alpine snowboarding and changed many lives. Even softboots world is coming to carving now. Remember that we are also softboots riders since day one (who has missed this page?).

In 20 years, many riders have joined the small initial team, which is very international now. Special thanks to them! The list is long, and you can find most of them in this link.

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. The events are still something important to meet for real. And next year we are looking forward to seeing you all at the 20th ExtremeCarving Session.

Depending on the interest generated by this thread, I will publish some historical things and stories.

Long life to carving! Long life to extremecarving!

Patrice Fivat

[nils]

Yes it seems like yesterday almost... we were in our early 30's wow!
Swoard was born first as a necessity for Jacques and Patrice but also for myself to have boards each seasons, and since Jacques could only build by hand 2-3 per seasons I had to beg many many times. Luckily he was changing jobs and took a year off that year in order to see if his prototypes could be replicated in an industrial way... It took a season of trials and errors but by the end of 2002 we were finally ready and launched the brand, the company, inject money in molds and secure a first batch of boards as well as telling the news online that orders were possible. The extremecarving website was launched in order to share the riding technique as well as the news about the coming boards, and when we took orders it was almost a year after.

Why some people at the opposite side of the planet, who only saw a 2002 webpage, were sending almost 1000 Euros to people they did not know in order to secure an order, was quite a sight! Finally the first series of the Gen1 arrived, and Jacques went almost everyweek to the former Duret Factory to do QC and pack the boards in the custom boxes we designed.

The following year i took a year off and managed the clients and factory deliveries, driving 2.5 hours every Monday at dawn, control a batch of 15-20 boards, pack them one by one, drive to the Swiss border and do custom papers before delivering the boards in Jacques's Lausanne basement (where he would later ship them one by one with Fedex or TNT..) before driving too fast to be right on time for kids school exit time... often over speed limits.

The story goes on and on, and what is fascinating to me still today is the motivated people that helped Swoard, helped the idea gain public, learning to ride, joining events, sharing their carving passion with others. Despite all the difficulties with many changes of factories due to various reasons, we learned, and I would like here again to thank everyone that was involved in this adventure.

Swoard is still alive today because it is a brand of passion that benefits from a large network of helpers and riders. It is here because Patrice had the energy to go on after I had to focus on my main Job and Jacques also wanted to work on his real time work (and he got knee problem preventing him from riding). Kudos to them to have allowed me to join them in this (ok I might have pushed myself in a bit, otherwise there would have been no board for me), and Kudos to Patrice for everything!

I'll be attending the 20th ECS at Zinal next year, and I hope many of the first believers will be there too as well as the new ones I haven't met yet! We need this to be big!

Cheers

Nils

[pokkis]

Thanks for several nice sessions in Zinal, and one in Grimentz due lack of snow.
Here some crappy film from first Zinal session in 2004, as seen lot of improvement has done
https://youtu.be/OKGawFnAuG8?t=1240

[nils]

Thanks for several nice sessions in Zinal, and one in Grimentz due lack of snow.
Here some crappy film from first Zinal session in 2004, as seen lot of improvement has done
https://youtu.be/OKGawFnAuG8?t=1240

You're right Pokkis, but your movie shows that Jacques and Patrice already had a level that is still hard to beat 20 years later .. So most people improved...some did not need it

Good memories!
Nils

[pokkis]

Nils, yep, i was referring to average level of us

[fivat]

We will discuss more about the first events when we will celebrate the 20th ExtremeCarving Session next year. Now we celebrate the Website and the Forum.

Here is the banner of the "coming soon" Web page published before the 21st March 2002.

The picture was taken in Verbier (Switzerland) during the winter of 2001-2002, when Jacques and I met Nils for the first time I think, although we already knew each other through the Internet (I will post some anecdotes about this).

If you look closely in the middle, you can see the joint between two photos. This was a bit pioneering from Nils, because "panoramic" pictures didn't really exist yet!

Patrice Fivat

[FrançoisB]

Happy birthday to you extremecarving.com and still have a long life

[slayer]

@nils: what do you all do in "real" life?

[fivat]

@slayer: Nils is architect. That's why he made the graphics of the Extremecarver Gen1 and Gen2.
Since Extremecarver Gen3, Pro1, Dual1, Stoke and the next generations, Lionel and I made all graphics (Lionel as the artist bringing the ideas, and me for the finalization and technical part).

In the team we are all engineers, physicist, plastic specialist, CAD specialist, snowboard instructors, sport teacher, etc. A lot of competences added to a lot of experiences.
As we all have good jobs, we have total freedom to develop our boards, bindings, hardboots, etc. along to our concept and vision of the sport. No commercial or fashion pressure, no blabla, no marketing. The word of mouth is working well. Passion above all, and a nice community.

Patrice Fivat

[pietrob]

and so on for a lot of years more

[christian61]

I began snowboarding in 2003, in softboots. Soon, I discovered "carving". Then one day I stumbled upon the website www.extremecarving.com. When I watched the "opus" videos for the first time, I was mesmerized by these fascinating pictures. Opus 4 is my favourite video even today - an inspiration.

Patrice, Jacques and Nils: THANK YOU for changing my life!!!

[fivat]

Thank you Christian, and the other grateful people!
Personally, that's also what keeps me going.

The emoticon got us this picture and some big laughs:

From left to right: myself, Nils and Jacques.
The person kneeling is a rider from Poland!

Picture taken in February 2006, during the 3rd ExtremeCarving Session... in Grimentz, because there was not enough snow in Zinal that year. The snow guns were installed later.

Patrice Fivat

[manuchill]

First of all a big big big congratulation on this massive achievement

I'm so happy my brother, years ago, found one of the videos (I think one of the Opus ones, probably "extreme dreamer") and shared it with me to say that this looks sooooo awesome and we should try it out also.
At that time I was transitioning from skier to snowboarder because my brother started on a snowboard and helped me push to try it also.
During my investigation of constantly looking at the video's and finding more info on the internet, I found out about the event which was held on a yearly basis for some time already.
I said to my brother we should attend and that all became reality on the 5th ECS event.
At that time I was in contact with Patrice & Jacques if it would be possible to get lessons from one of both and lucky for me and my brother we were placed in a lesson: with Patrice to be exact.
That was a turning point for me: this is so absolutely awesome in many ways -> the smooth transitioning from 1 turn to another, the difficulty of the technique, you almost never see it anywhere else happening on the slopes, the welcoming community, all the free help & advise from many people during the event to help you out become better & better, all the video's and photos, all became an awesome friendship.

After this first attendance at the event, going on ski holiday would never be the same again for me. If I would talk to someone about ski holiday I would instantly think about extreme carving and that's exactly I would want to do on holiday.
I didn't touch ski's anymore and after buying the matte red Swoard (which I still think is a beauty to the eye) I was on a personal mission to master the technique. Things like "rotation" and "push - pull" were many times in the back of my head and I think many can relate.

Up until this point, visited as much ECS events as possible and I wouldn't change it for a thing. The weekend in January has been & is blocked for many years already so I will remain coming !!
I still feel there is room for improvement, especially when the snow conditions are quite challenging (like the past days in Zinal) I feel in the turns I need to adjust small parts in it, but I like a challenge so I will put effort in it to master that also, for sure someone on the next event will give me some pointers

Keep up the awesomeness and celebrate this massive achievement

[joemzl]

Happy Birthday Extremecarving.com

Good luck and much success for the next 20 years.

I´m proud to be a small part of the story.

What have I done before carving? My clothes were in perfect shape. My vocabulary was small.
Now I´m able to destroy new pants and gloves within a few turns.
Words come out of my mouth I haven´t used 15 years ago like
Sikaflex, Nautichem, Polyglut.
An Egyptian was a 3000 year old guy.
Picture of an EC-turn? A guy only lying in the snow.
Oh what a fool I have been ...

PS: since watching Opus 2 I have a new sleeping position in bed.

[fivat]

Were you there when the Website opened? If so, you may laugh, or shed a tear, at the melody linked below.

At the time, it was the fashion to place music on the homepages of Websites. But after a few months we took it out. And now it's something you hardly see anymore.

So here is the MP3 version of the old MIDI file from 2002: EC-opening-2002.mp3
Watch out, it's kitsch.

Patrice Fivat