Snowboard with straps

[Tighe]

A friend of mine sent this to me. Said it worked pretty well. He said he'll be adding some texture under his feet next time:

From Larry Gonyea:

I put footstraps on one of my snowboards about a year or so ago, but have
not tried it as my skiis worked so well. I finally broke down Saturday to
try it. It was well worth the effort as it worked much better than I
thought it would. I used my snowboard boots (which are fairly stiff), but I
might have been able to use a less rigid boot, such as a sorel. I will try
these next time I go out. I was able to go upwind without much effort and
could edge very easily even on hardpack snow. I found the board handling to
be similar to a twin tip board on the water.

One of the benefits to this (vs a snowboard with bindings) is getting
started, and the ability to step out of the bindings, particularly with
gusty winds. It also makes the board-off tricks doable (yeah right...)

Sometimes I would ride with only one foot in the front strap and the other
on the inside edge of the board. This felt very comfortable and the more I
thought about it, I decided that my next adventure will be to try the board
without any footstraps, just a surface with some friction.

If you want to try this, be sure to use a snowboard with a long hole pattern
(the board that I used has 6 pairs of holes), otherwise the opening of the
strap is too narrow to slide your boot into. I also used
windsurfing/kiteboarding footstraps with the velcro adjustment on the
outside. I simply made the velco strap about 6" longer than it was
originally.

You can view the snowboard with straps at:
http://www.chicagokitesurfing.com/kitin ... dmods.html

[Tony]

I recall seeing a setup at Montana Kite Sports with ratchet adjustable footstraps that could be adjusted to different boots and/or tension, which I thought was a great idea, but as I recallKeith and his co-workers seemed to be cooling off on the idea because of the potential of popping out of one strap only, and the resulting knee carnage. I could almost feel it as they described it.