Snowkarver profile

Vintage 1990 SH-M100 shoes - they still look pretty stylish. I missed out on that generation, but probably have a pair of eye-burning M210s in purple, green, and yellow kicking around the house.

Ladies and Expresso both roped off today. In fact, Ladies has been closed every time I ride by for the last two weeks! Major work being done?

The new dirt on the berms at the top of 7th are very muddy and rutted out. Very wet overall but, for me anyways, preferable to the overly dry summer!

Expresso back open by late afternoon - I saw Digger [HTML_REMOVED] co. wrapping up at around 4 on my way up to 7th.

I posted earlier on mtbr. Just time for one quick ride down Bobsled but great so far!

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I was lucky enough to get my order in early, and live down the road from Whistler where Vorsprung is, so I suspect that I'm one of the first few production customers to receive and install their Corset.

Long story short, it works exactly as advertised on my Tracer 275 (VPP) with Factory Float CTD. I'm light and always had to run low pressure (135psi) to get decent sag or small bump compliance. This of course led to excessive wallowing midstroke and riding way too deep in the travel on rough terrain (which is everything here on the north shore.)

The Corset fixes this handily. Now running 160psi to get the same sag, and the travel feels way more linear and supportive. At the end it still gets super progressive, but I also didn't realize that I should have removed the large volume spacer that was in from the factory.

I put the Corset on this weekend as part of my overdue air can service and it's beautifully machined and looks great. It's the real deal, and even better priced in Canadian $. Thanks Steve for a great piece of work.

I placed an order with CRC a week ago. I've been tracking it. My package is currently enjoying its fifth day at some hub in Boston.

Looks like my order from last week is there keeping yours company. My last one via Parcelforce took less than a week door-to-door - 48 hrs from the UK hub to Canada customs in Vancouver.

I think a bigger concern is what happens to the remaining boutique brands? Santa Cruz was ahead of the curve with carbon. But the Knollys, Intenses, Turners… In the world of Demo's and V10's a $9k alloy bike feels a bit anachronistic. Right or wrong, now when I see an alloy bike I think budget or prototype.

Jeff Steber @ Intense mentioned this in a couple of interviews. He's in the middle of switching over to same model as SC, with carbon at the high end (like the T275) and alloy more for price-point bikes. Said that the long term survival of his company pretty much depended on it.