Mark Carraro Interview

Mark Carraro rides for Revel8 and is going to be representing the USA in Romania in just a few days. An up and comer on the skiboarding scene, Mark is one of the most dedicated individuals in skiboarding. I had time to talk to Mark about what’s going on with him and the sport at the moment, and Revel8 provided us with the still shots.

SBM: So, we just got back from the Enurshia Jay Jam at Jay Peak not too long ago. This is the second time you make the trip up, what keeps you going back there?
MC: The whole thing about Jay Peak is it’s not anywhere else. I like Jay Peak for what it doesn’t have; long lift lines, icy trails. Jay Peak is the place to go to find yourself. We were knee deep in powder in the middle of the woods, and we just stopped, and didn’t hear a sound, no snow guns, snowmobiles, charlifts, nothing. I haven’t experienced that anywhere else.

Definatly, Jay Peak is the East Coast place to be. I saw you where riding Spruce Risers, I think you’re the only sponsored rider using them, what made you make the switch to releasables?
I had a bit of a knee tweak coming off a rail into a rut a couple weeks back, and it really made me think about what could have happened if i really hurt myself. I’ve had my share of injuries in rolling and skiboarding. Not interested in any more. Also, I was drawn to the hands-free entry and exit, and the peace of mind to ride any size board without worrying if it was beyond my reccomended length for my height. I was really impressed with Jeff’s craftsmanship and attention to detail, I had no unintended releases after adjusting the DIN to the proper settings. I’ve hit rails with them, wall rides, tree bonks, everything. I’ve found they’ve only released when I was going to fall anyway. also the weight really isn’t an issue once you’re on them riding. But most of all, hands free entry and exit, and using a (heavily modified by myself) brake system, I said goodbye to leashes once and for all.

You leaving for Romania soon, going to the Euro Cup / Romanian Open, of all the different contests from racing to rail, big air, slopestyle, what are you most excited for are you going to focus on just one or are you really going to try to get it all?
I’m mainly going to Romania to represent the United States and team Revel8. Rails and big air are probably where I have the most experience, but I’m going to put 115% into every event. I’ve been talking with the Revel8 riders, and I feel as though collectively, we are doing to throw down some serious hammers.

So tell us abit about how you got started with the whole sport and how you came to be on the Revel8 team.
I actually started on something awful known as, “sled dogs”, which essentially were ski boots with skis on the bottom of them. Really wretched things. So somehow I got onto some older Line skiboards. I was looking online for some new ones and came across SkiboardsOnline.com; I joined the forum, and my first event was the Wachusett Triple Challenge. I had never tried rail sliding before this event. All the pros made it look easy, so I had to try it. One of the other SBOL events i went to was the Bellayre Rail Jam. After that event, Greco asked me to join the Revel8 team. I was ecstatic about it. I met up with Branden Harding and we rode Ski Butternut almost every week together. He got me to try alot of things I wouldn’t have ordinarily tried, and I’m 10x better now then I was then. All I can say to new riders is, find a friend to ride with, even if you have to drive farther to ride with them.

You really represent for Revel8 and even Enurshia, what do you think companies and skiboarders need to do to keep our industry moving along and growing?
Riders really need to commit to buying and wearing the products. As most of us realize, skiboarding is not a sport about money. Everyone that makes a skiboarding product is making it out of their love for the sport. A lot of riders ask for shirts, hats, and gear. And these companies pull money out of their own pockets to try to meet these needs, and then the riders don’t purchase the products. This makes the core companies less anxious to design further products, if they still have last years products to sell. buy some hats and shirts guys.

So have a good trip, have fun, don’t break a leg, anything else you want to mention, shoutouts ect now is the time!
I think theres far too many shoutouts to mention here, stay safe and have fun out there guys!

How To Make A Section Part - V

BentFilms’ new project Cop Me And My Newb Joey is just a few months away. A video compilation of the best submitted amature skiboarding videos. Each month we’ll be giving out some pointers on how to shoot/edit/make a legit skiboard seciton. Take these tips in, and you’re skiboard section could be put in the next BentFilms flick!

This month FOCUS & DIRECTION. Without it, videos are a visual diarhea of randomly assorted clips.

The most successful videos have FOCUS & DIRECTION in every aspect of shots and edited clips together. This is helped exponentially by foresight. For those of you who watch skating videos, you know that they sometimes use a hip hop or a rock theme to hyper-symbolize the riders overall section.

Although we encourage you to look beyond this typical hip hop or rock theme into a broader, less stereotypical and oversaturated sense, they are good examples of SPOON FED focus and direction in a video. When thinking of your shot, its important to think of all the shots you previously got on tape, and the spots that you are going to get next. Keep it uniform or make it clusterfudged. Regardless, have some direction!

A good trick to this is correlation of filming techniques and styles like the ones we’ve talked about over the season.

Focus and direction will keep everything coming out of the screen clean, comprehensive and appealing. When making a section, from filming to editing to location, having an idea or purpose beyond what is simply in front of the camera lens makes it much more interesting. Talking to your riders about what you want to accomplish is KEY! Hindsight is 20/20 but foresight is essential.

SBU Feb. 9th

Skiboards Spotted on Russian TV!

Catch Dmitry Makrushin doing a 450 on 270 off and some other Russian skiboarders at a Newschool skiing and Snowboarding Contest. Congrats to all the guys from the skiboard scene in Russia!

Bolton Valley Feb. 4th, 08

Sore, bruised, battered and tired from a weekend at Jay Peak, Mark Cararro of Revel8, Cheeto and myself made the trip over to Bolton Valley after the Enurshia Jay Jam in hopes of riding their legendary terrain park.

Bad luck for us; the park was closed. We managed to poach a few box slides in before the park crew showed up to work on and groom the run, and we where left to go in the mini-park.

Bored of the mini-park we headed for the summit where we found some surprisingly nice steep glades, some powder and a few 4 to 5 foot drops. With lift lines non-exsitant, we scavenged the glades and documented some of what happened.

Bolton Valley is a quick drive away from Burlington Vermont which is also a really nice place to visit if you’re in the area. Bolton also has a really nice terrain park, when its open.

Hack Projekt Gothic 2008

Hack is a skiboard brand from the Czech Republic. Up above is the Projekt Gothic, a 99 cm skiboard 13.5 cm wide at the tips, and 10.2 cm at the waist with a 6 meter turning radius.

These come with the standard 4×4 inserts, as well as multiple other binding options; 8-Hole plastic bindings for lower cost, releasable bindings, snowboard soft boot bindings, and 8-hole Alpine Tourning non-releasable bindings.

Hack also has a more narrow directional shape for other models that measures 99 cm long, 11.8 cm wide at the front, 8.7 cm wide under the feet, and 10.6 cm wide at the tails with with a 6.5 meter turning radius. These also have multiple binding options, as well as the skiboard standard 4×4 binding inserts.

Skiboard.cz is where you can get these.

Enurshia Jay Jam & SBOL Meet

Thanks to Mark Cararro for a great event and great edit!

February 2nd and 3rd, seven skiboarders met up in northern vermont just mintues from the Canadian border. Jay Peak was the location, the most snow in the east and always an epic location. Ian C of Enurshia and a local was our guide through the endless amounts of glades and at times knee deep powder. New riders who struggled at first, progressed and by the end of the day were ripping along side the veterans.

A true winter wonderland, Jay Peak is a trip that everyone should make at least once, and you can bet that SBMag and Enurshia will be back next year.

See you then!

Dmitry Makrushin Photos & Interview

The guys over at Skiboarder.ru did an interview with Dmitry Makrushin, the 16 year old from Moscow who will be riding for Skiboarder.ru and Russia at the Romanian Open.

Although the interview is in Russian, the pictures a pretty sweet!

Click to Link

Revel8 KTP Tested

Probably one of the most innovative products for the 0809 season the Revel8 KTP skiboards are the first Kirk Thompson signature skiboards, feature extra wide tips and waist and have six inserts to give the possibility of setting back bindings by 4 cm.

At first I thought these where really too wide for groomed runs before I even tried them (15.5cm at the tips and 12.5 at the waist.) Although they do take more effort than mid-wide or narrow skiboards to get up on edge and turn, they do pretty well on flat groomed snow. The extra width makes them a little stiffer from tip to tip, but it doesn’t catch ice as well as narrower skiboards.

These mid-length skiboards are stable as hell when going big. For drops and big air they lock like bolts. High speed carving, if you don’t mind the extra effort is pretty stable as well. The tight 5.2 meter turning radius feels just about right for these boards, giving you a little extra push for those tight turns and compliments the extra width.

For butters and presses the width and Revel8 blunt tips makes them super stable as well as for rail slides, but again the width has a bit of a downside were you gotta put more effort to throw these skiboards around.

Now where these boards really shine and give a whole new riding experience is in the powder and soft snow. The width gives you the float of longer 110+ cm skiboards in a smaller mid-size 101 cm ride.

The set back feature. In my opinion, the most innovative feature on any skiboard made up until now. They have the industry standard 4×4 insert pattern, with an extra 2 more inserts behind them. This means that you can set back any binding by 4 cm with ease! This provides just a perfect amount of tail pressure to pop your front tips out of the soft snow, without much effort. I’d love to see this feature on more skiboards. Set back of course give performance boost in soft snow, but on the rest of the mountain, from groomed to park, center mount is much better.

I would definatly recommend these skiboards to rider who are going to be going big in the terrain park, and riding a lot of soft snow, maybe 40% of the time or more. Or if you’re looking for soft snow shredders to add to your collection these are definatly a good choice.

5top5: Martins Miculis

Favorite Moments from Romania 2007
- Meeting Jason, Ben, Adam, Marius, Matt and all others.. awesome!
- Skiboard OFFICE ;)) - party time
- Building own jump in offpiste
- Filming such a great tricks in bigair and slopestyle
- Trip from Latvia to Romania and back

Best skiboarding trips
- Italian Alps (2005) - met Greco and Ben there for first time
- Austrian Alps (2007) - rode AllZ skiboards for first time
- Romania - World Cup 07
- French Alps - Les 3 Vallees
- Romania - 2004

Why rain sucks
- It sucks because it is not snow
- If it rains it ruins all snow …mfckr
- Hard to ski in raining day
- When its raining, that means; cloudy weather, that means; no sun = sucks again
- It sucks because then you need umbrella ela ela eee eeeh…. :)))

Best skiboarders at the moment
- Roberts Pundurs
- Tenis Dimants
- Ben Wannamaker
- Serge Maheu
- …he is a skiboarder too : GRECO!

Favorite skiboards of all time
- AllZ 94
- Revel8 BWP
- Revel8 Tansho
- Canon M7
- Revel8 Trees