You see addict, like people skiing and snowboarding in the West you are spoiled and lose your edge feel and become lazy in the powder. In the East we get all conditions including powder right out our back doors. On a windy day I may have to ride a steep Icy wind swept trails(ice-blue groomers) to the hillside that has 4 ft of blown in snow, the spikes will make the Ice fun and I am sure my hawk will still float in the pow. I ski in the East and when I went out West for a winter in 93' I was a f**n God compared to the average hard core talker. Its the same with the Hawk we become well rounded "survivors" that can ride anything anywhere. I am sure if I brought you out riding around here you would say it sucks, while I am freaking out loving the conditions.
Talking of my own experience from east to west, that's totally true TCS. That is if you don't loose interest down the road like 95% of my snowboarding friends, myself included, around 19 years old, who couldn't find anymore fun to have on these icy groomed slopes & parks. I got back to it when I moved here and I'm just loving it so much more... Riding all that powder for me is just like being in a dream and riding a cloud ! Then somewhere through the day you get a bad stuck and it's not a dream anymore !!! Hahahahaha !
Back to the track thing, the problem with the '06 and older 121" & 136" track is they are not designed to get screwed ! '07 and '08 136" tracks do have these dedicated integrated "fingers" in each lug where you can properly screw studs in. Too bad it took ADB 5 years to come up with this simple update that's basically only a modification to the track mold... Did anyone had good luck with this new track design and studs ?
If you do it with ice racing studs, get the 1" and 3/4", they'll still allow your lugs to bend instead of tearing the lugs off as 1-3/4" studs will. That's what i did on my good'ol 503 and so far I did one complete eastern winter (mid-January to end of March) and I got them worn off right to the point where I needed to put new ones in on the opposite side of each lug. Didn't tore any lug off though. Good thing is you don't need much in order to hook up reaaaally good. I only had about 50 something on the 121" in and it was hooking up like crazy on icy spots.
BuffaloHawk, didn't you had a great setup with woody's track studs last year ? Longer life, good hook-up... Sure looked weird to me though !!!
As far as riding here out west, it never even came across my mind to stud my track as I can't remember going over one single icy spot in 2 full winters... Spoiled aren't we...
