Hard Boot riding styles

This post is a basic FYI. The best English language site for really learning more about hardboot snowboard carving is

https://forums.alpinesnowboarder.com/

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Hard booting is for those who don’t follow the crowd, who don’t ride to follow fashion, individualists who rip their own distinctive trench. And so of course, there are subtribes of hardbooters, and riders frequently ride more than one style. (Linked videos are examples selected from YouTube)

Free carvers: The carved turn is the focus with a minimum of skidding or jumped turns. Riders primarily use turn shape and turn arc length to control their forward speed. Transitions from edge to edge typically happen within one board length and the board is only momentarily running flat and off the edge. Typically the riders legs extend in transition and compress to lower the centre of mass in the turn. “Tracks don’t lie!”, the freecarver leaves pencil-line linked Cs down a trail. Many new hardbooters come to the sport by being awed by a competent hard boot carver ripping turns with grace, power, and control.

Extreme carvers: Also known as making Vitelli turns and Eurocarving. The rider makes contact with the snow with hand(s) and arm(s) early in the turn, often well before the board reaches the fall line, and drags their body across the snow before becoming upright again in transition before the next turn. Here the legs typically compress in transition and extend in the turn. Visually spectacular when done well, riding this way will damage riders clothing, and learners may easily injure their hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders. Experienced riders frequently have reinforced jackets and trousers at wear points, and wear gloves/gauntlets designed to limit snow movement into the sleeves of the jacket.

Pureboarders: Promoted by Joerg Engli and his distinctively dressed team. These self characterised all-mountain bad boys surf all the mountain, carve turns, and feature extended body drags. One of their videos is titled “Ride it like you stole it!” Engli’s website sells the recommended bindings, boards, and clothing and details upcoming instruction courses. Engli promotes a distinctive binding and boot setup involving bail bindings, with a wide splay between front and rear feet, inward canting on the rear binding, and very soft forward flex on the rear boot.

All mountain: For hard boot riders who like to go everywhere manufacturers make boards like Prior’s 4WD which is carveable, wider in the waist than many dedicated carving boards, and has sufficient nose up turn that burying the nose in soft stuff is more difficult.

Racers: Giant slalom and slalom
Serious racing (FIS World Cup & Olympics) on hard boot setups is generally confined to parallel raced giant slalom and slalom courses. Look on YouTube to see the formats and current stars. FIS race regulations have details of current course requirements. Back in the 90’s there were some SuperG races on boards, and Canadian Olympic Gold medallist in GS Jasey-Jay Anderson raced boardercross early in his long racing career in hardboots. Czech snowboarder (& skier) Ester Ledecka shocked the skiing world at the Pyongchang Olympics by winning both the Womens snowboard GS and the Womens skiing SuperG events!
Snowboard race programs below the World Cup and Olympics vary widely in availability from country to country.
Racers are looking to find the fastest line through a course. They are drilled to end their turns early, to stivot/jump/tail slide their boards to the line of the next gate. The boards are both longitudinally and torsionally stiff to grip the surface of prepared courses, and run relatively straight lines. Typically ridden in 2024 with heavy isolation/damping plates they require speed, strength and high edge angles to even begin to turn. Top level race boards are not suitable for beginners.

Skwal: Skwals are either an extremely narrow snowboard or a fat single ski depending on your point of view. Ridden with both feet pointing towards the nose of the board, one behind the other, they are an extreme of the hard boot snowboarding niche.  Originally ridden with the feet relatively close together, stances are expanding as skwal riders experiment with lift and canting in their binding setups. Extremely high angle carves and body dragged turns are relatively easily made, and the stance lends itself to superb bump absorption by the riders knees. The equipment and instruction are available from only a very few places.

Powder: Yes, you can ride powder (& trees) in hard boots, you just need a suitable board under your feet. Just like you wouldn’t take an F1 car to a WRC rally event, hard boot riders use different horses (boards) for different courses.

Park/pipe: At the beginning of pipe riding riders wore hard boots. Fast forward to 2024 and current USA Olympic racer Cody Winters was recently filmed carving and popping a full size half pipe in hard boots with a slalom race board underneath. You are limited only by your imagination and courage!

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And "old school" according to James C