Snowboarding for Geeks: An Ultimate Guide (2018)
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After a season of enjoying black and double black diamond runs on skis (including my favorite, 65cm short skis), I tried snowboarding. Never in my life of sports have I subjected myself to so many hard contacts as I did in my first few days of snowboarding. Day one I cracked my helmet.
Maybe it's a matter of environment. Fresh powder is like butter, and the board is a fat knife. But on packed or groomed runs, the slightest balance mistake, putting your back edge down inappropriately, result in a whiplash-like fall with nothing you can do but absorb with tailbone, wrists, and head.
Falling on skis is so different since you have control over your legs (even if the skis don't snap off). I've done accidental front flips on short skis and recovered. But on a board, once you lose control of it your feet are barely useful.
Part of me wants to try again, but part of me would rather take risks doing new interesting things (like hang gliding).
If you like skiing, try boarding. If you hate it, go back to skis and be happy. Just because you _could_ do it doesn't mean you have to :).
I've also noticed that for an intermediate snowboarder, it's quite easy to go through steep/bumpy slopes or powder where intermediate skiers struggle. But you're usually faster on skis.
That being said, if I could go back in time and learn skiing instead of snowboarding, I would. It's more versatile, and I think less demanding on the body overall (in particular, snowboarding is asymmetrical which I think puts extra burden on your neck.).
I've been trying to learn telemark and parallel turns on my off-track cross country skis as someone who has basically only boarded downhill, and uh, it's an interesting challenge (and a bad season for it...). The skis have basically no sidecut, but if the conditions are right, I can struggle out a gentle telemark turn.
It stinks to go back to being a beginner.
When I need a change of pace blade skis can be a ton of fun or spending the day in the terrain park.
Once I got my first actually wide board that I could really carve like a mad man it opened a totally new world of fun for me.
Ryan Knapton on youtube has had some really nice videos about this for a long time now. For example https://youtu.be/1a-oj70PFqc
With "actually wide" I mean not what most manufacturers call "wide" but proper 31cm wide or more from the narrowest point for my mondo 29 feet making sure I will never catch my toe or heel when carving really hard.
here to say +1 watch this! and thanks
DO NOT put your arms out to break your fall. It is a good way to instead break a wrist. If you catch a toe edge, belly flop/dive. If you catch your toe edge, roll on your shoulders/upper back (try to tuck your head in a little too). It is a good idea too to disengage the edge and then gently re-engage as you are sliding to slow and stop.
Falling isn't a polite request by gravity.
Telling someone to "fall properly" is empty advice. Falls happen too fast as a beginner for them to take actions to lessen a blow. Wear protective gear. Take it slow. Expect to fall, and expect it to hurt.
The advice is: you need to know whether you are in a: good state, acceptable failure state, unacceptable failure state. The rule: never ever ever ever get into an unacceptable failure state. Moreover, define an unacceptable failure state as such.
In my case, an unacceptable failure state had anything to do with potential chances to get irreversible damage. I am athletic in a few ways (e.g. running) but skiing hits all my bad points (balance, flexibility and reaction time). Learning how to ski was quite hellish for me, but my GF pushed me and I basically had little choice. On the one hand I'm grateful, on the other hand I still remember the pain too well.
So, how to get in an acceptable failure state all the time? I realized I needed to learn how to fall. The irony was that my ski-instructor never told me this, he simply taught me some very basic skiing skills but that's it.
Once you learn how to fail, you can get into an acceptable failure state :) You'll be bruised, but it's better than skiing of a cliff. For a long while (2 years), falling was the only way reliable way for me to break. Yes I could do a snowplough but it simply slowed my acceleration in the beginning and later it slowed my speed up to a point. I had to learn the hockey stop in order to find another way to reliably break. Your mileage may vary though ;-)
Good state, acceptable failure state, unacceptable failure state. Combine that with some basic ski lessons and a helpful skiing partner and you'll learn how to ski. I started at 27 against my will and can ski okay-ish on a red piste a few years later.
When I say fall, I mean: falling sideways.
The worst fall on skis was on my first day. As an experienced snowboarder, I was zooming down the beginner slopes in no time, so naturally I thought I’d punch in my lift ticket.
The thing with skiing is you feel like you have great control, but when you hit a slope that’s a little too steep, or a little too icy and you start to rocket down the hill with no way to turn out of it, that’s when it gets dicey. It’s terrifying losing control, going way to fast to stop, and you can’t just fall backwards out of it. Your strapped in for the ride.
I had to fall sideways at decent speed, which feels like having the wind knocked out of you, not fun. And my skis when rocketing down to the bottom of the hill to add insult to injury.
The thing with snowboarding is it’s nearly impossible to find yourself in that kind of situation as a beginner. If your out of your depth, you can always fallback to skidding down the hill sideways and leafing it down. You never go that fast starting out, because going fast requires edge control that you won’t have. If you do happen to flat board down a hill, you’ll quickly find yourself catching an edge and eating snow, a swift reminder to never try that again.
The first week of snowboarding where you are constantly falling over sets you up well for preparing to ball out safely. By the time you can carve a slope, you’ll have no trouble balling out of any sketchy situation.
In theory if the ski turns into a lever rotating your knee the bindings are supposed to release. That doesn't always happen.
I don't know if skiing is easier to learn, but the learning phase is certainly more enjoyable. Less time sitting on your butt, and poles take less effort than clicking out one foot and skating.
I'd always fall sideways, like you mentioned later in your comment. Like I said, I practiced it beforehand. Other than that, this quote rings really true to me.
Interesting comparison, I've never snowboarded, good to know it's not as crazy as skiing. From a beginner perspective that is.
Other than the first couple of days, the mechanics of snowboarding do make for a pretty good learning environment.
What people usually say is skiing is far easier to learn than snowboarding, but harder to master. I think what people generally mean by this is that on day 1, you'll pizza-ing your way down the bunny hill/green slope and maybe even easy blues if you're fairly athletic. But pizza/french fry technique only takes you so far. At a certain point, you'll need to learn how to carve, ski parallel, hockey stop etc. to truly feel in control on steeper slopes.
I know people who have been hitting the park for 15+ years 2 or 3 times per week but can't really carve properly as they never had any reason to learn to.
edit: Also as a snowboarder who sometimes rents skis when bored carving, keeping keeping skis parallel and hockey stops are way easier for me than trying to pizza/french fry.
Only truly "difficult" way of moving around on snow I have found is telemark skiing. That stuff is just terrifying on the steep slopes or soft snow.
You shouldn't try to fall backward on skis. You should fall to the uphill side.
As a beginner, if you get in to a situation where you start going too fast to confidently stop without falling, you should immediately force yourself to fall to the uphill side.
You only really get in trouble when you go past that point and let yourself get way too much speed to even fall safely. So don't do that.
Slow down often, force yourself to fall if you have to, and stay off slopes you're not ready for. They are color coded for this purpose. Stay on the greens until you're super confident on them, then go with an instructor on the blues.
All that being said, I’d learn to ski instead. Snowboarding is a ton of fun in the park if you have the time and money to invest into it, but you can’t be hucking 30 footers into your 40s in good conscience when people depend on you to be healthy. I concussed myself so many times when I was 17 on hard falls, just completely out of it sitting on the hill. It’s a very dangerous sport. Probably as dangerous as football in terms of TBI risk.
If you’re only going to be able to get out a few weekends a year, skiing has better returns.
It's true that I'm not hucking 20 footers any longer, but I still have a blast on the steeps and in the trees, and don't see any reason I'd need to return to skiing.
This is why, honestly, I will never suggest someone to bother learning it as an adult. Unless you are extremely athletic and completely set on it, it's just going to be an afternoon of pain and frustration. I've seen it happen over and over again. Learning to ski or snowboard requires falling thousands of times. Which isn't a big deal when you're 12, but at 32 it's a whole different story.
Then I tried snowboarding couple of years later. But even after 2 training painful sessions with different instructors I could not get it. The last instructor encouraged me to try one more lesson. He suspected as I was tall, it will just take more time for my body to learn to balance properly. But I realized that snowboard just did not click with me. And only few of people I know who tried snowboarding in the late twenties continued with it.
My kid graduated high school, so I moved to a small town in Colorado to learn how to ski and ice climb. I am somewhat athletic, but not competitively so.
I started skiing at 42, and I am now in my 3rd year of doing it.
I do wear a helmet.
But I don't fall, and certainly not thousands of times. I'm old enough that I'm very conservative... but I fall infrequently enough that I can remember the 3 times I've done it this season.
Skiing really isn't that dangerous or even physically demanding.
Four years later, I have a ski crazy 7yr old who rips down blacks full tilt. I fall in very choppy or icy conditions somehow trying to keep him in sight. Didn’t fall at all today, fell once yesterday in chop. In decent conditions, I rarely fall, but as I’m the designated driver, I really don’t push things too hard.
Also firmly in the wear a helmet camp. A lot of US ski and snowboard films show athletes who forgo this, and I generally try to avoid letting the kid watch them.
Favourite ski films are Supervention and Supervention 2. Both are generally free online (try Redbull TV).
You're definitely the outlier that proves my point though. Skiing is not something you can just go "do" a few times and have fun at it like tennis or golf. You have to, as you did, live in close proximity to a hill and get out there day after day and put in the time and effort of falling on your face over and over again to do it. People can absolutely do it as adults, but you have to really really want it. It can't be a casual thing.
>Skiing really isn't that dangerous or even physically demanding.
It's what you make it. To a lot of people, "skiing" means hopping on the lift and cruising some blue/black groomers for a few hours. For others, it means hiking 3k vertical to ski 6 feet of powder on a 50 degree face, or blasting the drop line on a huge mogul field at full speed.
Again, this doesn't match my experience as somebody who actually did learn to ski in my 40s while living in Phoenix, AZ. It's fine to say that you yourself couldn't do something, but you shouldn't speak for others. I'm very far from an elite athlete, I wouldn't consider myself an athlete at all. I'm largely sedentary.
I'm saying this as someone who has skiied from the age of five, and spent a solid decade skiing over 180 days/season while working at various resorts, with a majority of those days being backcountry steeps above 10k feet. When people say you can "learn to ski" with little effort it just irks me a bit. Yes, anyone who can walk can become competent enough to cruise down some blue groomers at a resort. But actual skiing, actually getting to the expert level where you can truly enjoy the sport, is a completely different thing. And getting to that level from beginner as an adult is incredibly difficult.
At least to me.
you might consider that your context is getting in the way of a fundamental point:
you can't say what it means for other people to "truly enjoy something".
And that irks me.
Like, how do you know you're really enjoying your skiing i you're not hiking up 8000M peaks to do your skiing? If you're not hopping out of a helicopter and getting filmed by Warren Miller, is it really worth it? Are you truly enjoying the sport if you're not skiing couloirs?
I mean, I play music and I do some hard stuff. I don't think a lot of it is easy. But I am confident that someone can pick up a guitar and play it well enough to enjoy it (themselves) after not much practice. I personally wouldn't be satisfied doing the exact same thing... I have been doing it a long time and have high expectations. But those expectations are -for myself-, and that has nothing to do with what other people might enjoy.
I'm gonna go enjoy some powder, I ain't a great skiier, but I can get down anything on my local hill. And for what it's worth, I am literally the only person who gets to say if I "truely enjoy" playing in the snow.
I disagree. It's not dangerous, and anyone in good health can learn it. You just need to learn at your pace and take an instructor. Conditions and gear are also very important, it can make all the difference between a great time and an horrible experience.
I think not living near mountains makes it harder because you usually can't pick the days with the best conditions, and you try to cram as much practice as you can, which is often over-ambitious and lead to injuries.
I think this is right. I had friends drag me to Whistler for a weekend. I had never snowboarded. We went to the top of the mountain and they put me on a blue run and left me. I fell down the whole mountain that morning. We had lunch and then it clicked the afternoon. And then for the second day I was fine. My elbow and hip was destroyed but I stopped falling.
So I thought it was easily and I advised my novice friend to do the same next year. He fell down the mountain for the morning session and quit entirely.
I think I was just more coordinated than him (he later broke his arm after tripping during a run). I think if he had taken instruction and just cruised greens until he stopped falling he might have learned to love it.
I would never advise someone to learn like I did after watching my friends interest get snuffed out by my bad advice.
Only then you take a lift, bind two feet, and then you learn to skid facing the slope, then the other direction. After that, there are a several exercises of gradual difficulty that takes you to the full skidded turn. It usually takes one or two days for most people to be able to turn frontside and backside.
There will be a lot of falling, much more than with skis, but if the snow is soft, no risk of injury and it's pretty fun. I taught snowboarding for a few years and my experience was that beginners had the most fun.
This is not the case for skiing at least. My young kids (who are are not exceptional) have been skiing for the last few years. They rarely fall. It might happen once during the day or not at all. And they didn't fall much on their first few days of ski either. (I also don't remember falling much when learning how to ski as a kid.)
In fact I'd say the same for biking. There is a myth that you have to fall to learn how to bike. Yes, you might fall once or twice and learn a lesson but that's it. Most of the learning process doesn't require actually falling to the ground.
Now it could be different for snowboarding but I don't have experience with that. It could also be a little different for adults learning how to ski but even there I'd think it can be done quite safely.
Of course I agree that for adults (and especially older adults) falls will have worse outcomes than for kids on average.
I am going to try skiing for the first time next month. I am excited to get off the ground.
I picked up kitesurfing in my 30s, and skateboarding in ramps in my 40s and it was no different from learning snowboarding in high school. Except that I'm in better shape now, and I also benefit from knowing other sports. It just gets easier. I think the turning point, physically speaking, is around 50.
Neal Unger is 65 and recently picked up skateboarding. Obviously he's past his prime, but there's absolutely no reason to avoid having fun just because you're not a teenager. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM4FQ_FqEhQ
Here's a kitesurfer that I think started in his 70s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouheMnmjx9U
And there was a kitesurfer here in Denmark that surfed into his 90s or something.
I learned to ski in my early 40sc over the last 5 years and I would count my falls in the tens. Certainly fewer than 50. That's counting every time I ended up on the ground, most of those could probably be classified as sitting more than falling. I'm far from extremely athletic, maybe even below average.
If you learn from an instructor and don't try to ski terrain you're not ready for then there's no reason somebody of even below-average athletic ability couldn't learn to ski without getting hurt.
The truth is that there is just no feeling like laying down a sick carve on a snowboard. Nothing compares.
Along with building up my switch skills I worked on frontside and backside 180s. Basically being able to flip from one to the other and back. Sometimes I forget which is my natural stance and which it switch.
I was progressing up to 360s from either stance but haven't been out enough the that couple of years.
I'm in my 50s. I do most of my riding in Vermont (mostly Killington) so my skills are almost legit ;)
This of course meant riding switch on both came easier to me than to most people.
My hips just don't have the same mobility they once did. Sitting down at the top every single run is tiring and I am beginning to dislike that one aspect the most. My wife skis and she just stands there peacefully while the kids and I strap in. I never paid much attention to this until this last trip... "I am a snowboarder and this is part of the deal." Well, I am not much into that part of the deal any longer.
Walking around the resort or restaurants in ski boots doesn't look like it feels as good as snowboard boots. However, I think I am willing to give that up for convenience on the runs... which is why I am there spending a fortune after all.
So, I decided that I am going to rent skis and just send it over spring break for a two day trip. My kids say they are going to disown me... that's ok, I can cruze with their mom (lol)! Watching them strap in without grunting and twisting due to their far superior flexibility is awesome... I remember that, its just time to move on and just enjoy the time on the mountain; COMFORTABLY.
I also thoroughly recommend it.
Luckily for me I ended up living in Switzerland several years later and get to go weekends on a regular basis. I don't reckon I'll ever be as good as some of the people who grew up here doing it, but I'm competent enough to get down most slopes with proper technique and getting into a nice flow is incredibly satisfying.
The most important thing you can do is get more time out on the mountain. When I was first learning I used some of my vacation time to take Friday's off from work to get to a relatively nearby slope (2+hours drive).
Remember as much as you want to go straight, do not ride completely flat - it is a good way to catch an unexpected edge and get tossed. Try to find a relatively wide blue run that is not a zoo and practice making and linking your giant "S" turns. As you get nearer the bottom you'll find that you naturally elongate them to maintain speed.
Also be aware there are two types of riding/turning - cross over and cross under, you can find examples on youtube. Cross under is used a lot by park rats and by those who never really learned or like making big turns. It can also be situational, ie if it is crowded. You should learn both methods.
It is all about learning edge control - how much pressure to apply and when. Beginners tend to put too much pressure on the edge and worse, lean back when they are scared. They also tend to look down too much - look where you want to go (it won't seem as fast that way either).
Gradually elongating your turns as you go down the slope builds your confidence/comfort level in going straighter at faster speeds - your mind/muscles learn to apply consistent gentle edge pressure. When it really flattens out, you'll ride mostly toe or heel with very, very slight edge, changing more because of tiredness than anything else.
I started snowboarding and switched to skiing. I had the realization in my 20's that snowboarding was for pow pow and the park. I never really had fun on groomers, and cat walks, etc etc. Now that im on Skis, the entire mountain is open to me and I can shred.
I still always have a board with me, and love snowboarding, but ultimately I think Skiing is bees knees and i think mountain culture is beginning to go back to skiing, less snowboarding :).
I switched to backcountry, bought a splitboard set and pretty happy with it. But I'd have chosen skis if I was starting now
My best works always come out after a hardcore day of snowboarding (approaching 3000 kcals) then working on my computer sipping some espresso. I firmly believe there is something neurologically triggering between snowboarding and creative/engineer-mindset thinking. I know this is anectodal and definitely not scientific, but worth giving a shot.
This is coming from someone who is definitely an evening person rather than a morning person
Both in physical and mental activity, I feel MUCH better in winter and evening, so I'm naturally more inclined towards winter activities and night shifts.
I grew up kinda near the Alps and my parents and basically every single one of their friends was skiing as long as their age and physical fitness allowed. I learned to ski as a kid and most of my peers also did (went for a week of skiing at school in 6th grade as well) - so of course when it was "kinda new" in the late 90s I also tried snowboarding - and I liked it even more, so I've been doing that sparingly since then. All the people I know who do that kind of stuff prefer snowboarding, except a few die hard ski fans. Maybe it's different if going to a mountain is a huge expensive weekend or week-long vacation for you, then I can see the relation. People in tech = money to go snowboarding.
You grew up in the Alps and "had always access to right away" in a rough sense.
I grew up away and it was a planned event to schedule a vacation/trip to the Alps abroad, making it relatively more valuable (regardless of the financial aspects).
Then again lawyers have this stuffy aura to them, maybe they prefer skiing? ;)
About the demographics I'd love to see some statistics about different professions and their skiing vs snowboarding preference. Might have nice sociological/psychological points of interest there.
I've been snowboarding for 21 years.. before that I skied for about 8 or 9 as a kid. I also did a lot of XC skiing, for which I mostly shed a tear. There used to be so much more snow for that. I still have snowshoes, but that also takes a perfect convergence of a big storm + some free time to get to use them.
Snowboarding has a super different learning curve than skiing. Snowboarding is much much harder the first few days. Very steep learning curve, very very easy to get hurt at the beginning. But then the learning curve gets easier in the intermediate stage. Skiing takes a long time to get to those perfect parallel turns. Snowboards offer some other stuff like riding switch that skiis don't really do. Going backwards on skis is way more niche. Snowboards suck on flat traverses compared to skis, but a good snowboard has amazing edge hold on ice compared to skis.
The biggest thing that has changed that blows my mind is resorts are so anything goes. Want to do a back flip? No one cares. Jump off everything? Yah that's OK. Want stuff to do tricks off? We'll build that for you! Back in the 1990s on the east coast you could get kicked off for a little bunny hop off a mogul. Sometime in the end of the 90s the game changed dramatically. Last year I almost got hit very hard by a kid who had jumped off a jump and landed backwards and out of control. And I was in the lift line! The resort had built a jump close enough to a lift line that an uncontrolled landing could cause someone to collide with the line. Luckily I was a lot bigger than the kid and my snowboard was oriented such that I could dig my toe edge in and squat down like a football player and take the hit... neither of us got hurt.
- My hips simply can not handle being twisted asymmetrically while waiting in line and sitting on the lift. Lifting and waiting to lift is probably 2/3 of your time spent on the mountain if you go fast, and my body is starting to hate it.
- A lot of my friends are picking up snow sports, and I've probably spent around half of my days in the past two years watching and helping a beginner learn. This is incredibly taxing to do on a snowboard - making your way around the bunny slopes is exhausting and requires constant booting in/out, which is a huge pain compared to skiing.
- I'm falling more. As the mountains have grown understaffed, I'm starting to succumb to the classic "fell because I was riding heelside and hit a surprise jump because of an un-groomed patch of snow." I know from experience that I'd carve right through these on skis.
- More mountain accessibility. As time goes on, I'm realizing how much of the mountain I simply stay away from because the conditions for snowboarding are rough. I stay away from moguls now, and un-groomed or icy runs provide a lot bigger of a challenge and risk when boarding. Further, commuting across catwalks is a lot less taxing on skis than a snowboard.
My hips are mostly OK in the lift line but otherwise I get what you're saying. Adjusting your stance might help with that. Other fitness routines can help too. I want to say I had more trouble last year than this year.
Totally agree with how taxing it is to wait for people. My 9 year old is learning snowboarding and it's exhausting to sit/stand/sit/stand waiting for someone. Also being in a mixed group of riders & skiers sucks for everyone. The skiers don't want to wait for anyone to buckle up off the lift. Riders don't want to stop and stand around, they want to sit if they stop. Riders can't keep up great if you have to ski/ride uphill.
I don't fall any more than I used to. Frankly there is a different situation.. I expect I would fall on ice far more if I want back to skiing. Conditions where I go have never been icier.. the snowboard just has incredible edge hold across ice.
Perhaps you're on the wrong board for the conditions you're riding? I rode the wrong board for a long time being stubborn not wanting to buy a new one. When I finally got a new one and had experience to guide buying the new one I ended up choosing one that was just such a huge improvement. But not for ice, my old one was exceptional over ice as well.
Now that I'm old enough and have enough money to afford it, I'm too scared to really do any extreme sports anymore. One wrong bonk to the head and there goes everything I've worked for. I know it is probably irrational, but it feels very real to me anytime I get close to buying a lessons package.
https://www.ruroc.com/en_gb/ski-and-snowboard-helmets/full-f...
Snowboarding on the other hand has a very steep initial curve and once you get over the hump you can get down the hill just as easy. Once you enter that zone it becomes much easier to start learning tricks and basically feeling and looking "cool". But that initial learning curve...ooof! It feels like you're literally wrestling all of the rocks on the mountain for a few days.
The nature of how you get hurt is also entirely different in both sports. Skiers tend to get more leg and hip joint injuries while boarders tend to get more wrist and elbow. I've read somewhere that head, collar bone, and other injuries are at about the same rate. However, the first few times boarding you will definitely take hits on the butt and back.
Anecdotally, I've wrecked my knees a few times skiing, but never hurt them boarding. While I've come away far more bruised from falls learning boarding than I ever did skiing. But they were just bruises and not joint damage and nothing worse than what I received doing martial arts.
* increase focus (otherwise you fall) * learn to be aware of body and mind * do not stay too long down when u happen to fall (because u freeze, but the message is the same on abstract level) * falling/being down is part of the get-going (in snowboard more than other winter sports, in engineering this is to try again and to accept failures as part of the process) * be in the moment, be in the flow * never look back when you move forward (do not regret, do not ruminate)
I can tell this, because I've been doing snowboarding - both free-ride and some freestyle (park) since 2004 and it never ceased to amaze how beautiful this sport and everything about it is.
my degree is in computer science, but I also took some three years in the sports academy, for the love of it. one thing that sports teach you in general, that most engineering academic institutions do not, is team-play (even though ski/snowboard is solo sport). for the record - I also do skis, and appreciate them a lot, but snowboarding have always been much more fun tbh.
1. Remember gravity. If your weight is towards your back (uphill) foot, gravity will try to make that the front foot and bad things will happen. The natural inclination (no pun intended) is to shift back when you get nervous, which is exactly what you don't want to do. Keep weight forward for control.
2. Keep the angle between where your board is pointing and where you are heading small. There's a temptation, especially if the slope is a little steeper than you're comfortable with, to really dig in with your edge as you go mostly downhill. This is exhausting, and makes it much more likely that you'll catch that edge and bite it. Instead, go more side to side on steeper slopes, if needed, but keep your board and your direction closer together. It will be much easier and less likely to cause wipeouts. So I'm told. (If you're really somewhere you're not comfortable, you can always leaf down.)
The merits of splitboarding can be debated endlessly, but skis are IMO the best human-powered way to travel in many snowy environments. If you're interested in winter hiking—rambling, not necessarily skiing steep amazing powder—then consider starting your snow sports journey on skis instead.
Stay Low, Be Powerful.
[0] Googling this, maybe it wasn't Gnu itself, advice still stands.
In my experience most people learn the snowboard after 3-4 days, but it takes a bit more to feel confident.
For me, I was just an average skier but I felt much more confident on the board than on the skis after the first week or maybe second week. So in my experience the learning curve for the board was slower at first but after a week I increased in skill much faster than I had on the skis previously.
I dislike snowboarding the less steep "transportation" routes though, they are usually narrow, heavily bumpy and you have skiers to the right and left of you who don't understand that on a snowboard you can't speed check or fix your balance without turning the board..
Eventually I did and I didn't fall but it was really scary. I think I need to try again for a day on a green or blue slope...
Unless you really devote active learning effort towards it, you could easily remain mediocre at toe-edge and real carving for months. I do both, and I still feel like my skiing is miles ahead of my snowboarding because I've just never gelled with facing up the mountain half the time. YMMV though.
Where are you?
For instance there is a line called "Broken Arrow". I have never had so little hand holding on a piste. You get dumped on the top of a peak. Good luck, only one way down.
- that does snowboard rentals so that you can try before you buy (definitely buy after you're certain that you'll keep doing it)
- that has nice easy pistes for beginners
- has good, certified instructors (don't try to learn it yourself)
- nice weather and powder snow with nice resorts: you should enjoy the whole thing after all!
Prices in US and Canada are fucking insane
I rather enjoy going slow through deep powder off-piste, especially on a day with good views.
It's like driving cars. You can race cars through suburban roads, or take a scenic drive and have a picnic.
While practicing my toe edge, my board got stuck in the snow. I fell on my back and hit the back of my head on the packed snow. I had a mild concussion.
Never doing that again.
I wonder if skyiing is safer with respect to head injures.
The benefit of snowboarding is that you are much less likely to have a horrific injury like a major leg bone shattering. Most injuries tend to be cracked tail bones or broken wrists. With the latter, you can learn to fall correctly and that minimises the risk. Essentially you want to fall on your arm, and then roll onto your shoulders and back instead of taking your entire weight on your hands.
How does this happen? I fell down on the button lift and was forced to ski down from the button lift in order to enter the lower part of the piste. I thought I had enough skills to do it, but instead I lost all control and went straight down and eventually was going out of bounds, flying in the air hitting the rock with my head mid-salto and flying into the far edge of the lower (blue) piste area.
That helmet saved my head that day, I had zero injuries, not even a mild pain. In hindsight, this was a really fun experience! (in hindsight)
I was a loose projectile as a beginner, and it took quite a while to learn how to become a guided projectile.
The answer is: it depends. Friend of mine got pretty badly concussed skiing a blue run (easy) without a helmet.
I've done both skiing and snowboarding, always wearing a helmet for both after similarly hitting my head on day 3 of snowboarding (though without the concussion). Plenty of falls on both but I've hit my head a lot less frequently skiing than snowboarding. Still, it can happen and, realistically, it only needs to happen once for you to experience life changing injuries.
Wear a helmet, always, regardless of whether you're skiing or snowboarding. And don't screw anything to it or be tempted to wear a camera attached to it (GoPro, Garmin, etc.).
But the next most important protection for snowboarding is a wrist rail protecting your os scaphoideus, it's the larger bone in your wrist (just at the base of the thumb) and it's the most common snowboarding injury as you fall backwards and instinctively reach out with the hands behind you and the impact most often fractures the wrist bones. This happens even with you standing still!
The thing is, it takes a single event to ruin your life. You get a single bad concussion and your life will always be much worse afterwards. You won't be able to concentrate, you'll have issues remembering things, your moods may change, etc. The list is very long, and very gnarly.
You have one head, and for the foreseeable future, serious injuries have lasting consequences.
To me that seems like an awfully bone-headed (no pun intended) mindset to have about such a precious item. Your head is what makes you you. It's one thing to engage in dangerous activities that are nevertheless fun. Life would be boring otherwise. But it's entirely a different thing to willfully and deliberately avoid such an obvious and low-effort risk mitigation as wearing a helmet.
I'm an avid motorbike rider with more than a hundred thousand miles under my belt. I can count the number of times a helmet saved me on one finger. But that one single case would've completely ruined my life if the helmet wasn't there.
Wear a helmet. You’re protecting yourself from other things than just your own lack of skill. (not to mention it’s mandatory in many parts of the world now)
Your perspective just sounds like someone refusing to wear a seat belt in a car because when you were a kid they weren't mandatory or common in cars. I would hope we can agree that would be foolish.
> If you're an advanced practitioner and not doing anything crazy, the risk seems low.
It seems pretty arrogant to assume that you'll never have a bad fall just because you have a lot of experience. On top of that, you can't control other people; maybe someone less experienced than you, who is stretching their skills a little farther than they should be, collides with you and you slam your head into an icy patch. Your advanced experience might not be able to help you there.
> I learned (and taught) at a time where people didn't wear helmets.
I really hope, for the safety of your potential students, that you don't teach anymore.
No, it's a matter of how bad it can be without it, but also, how likely you are to fall on your head. For instance, concussions are still common in car accidents despite the safety belt. Do you wear a helmet in your car? following your reasoning, you should.
> I really hope, for the safety of your potential students, that you don't teach anymore.
Everyone is free to decide what level of risk they're willing to take. This is true of wearing a helmet while skiing, but many activities are potentially dangerous (driving, cycling, sunbathing...) and we don't accuse people doing these activities of being foolish.
I'm not advising anyone not to wear a helmet, but as long as I don't have the obligation to do so, I won't, because I feel it's more enjoyable to not wear them.
You are like those government, forcing some BS like sopa/pipa/etc. Of course, helmet promoting always gets much of upvotes online - but isn't it so hard to open your eyes for looking some cons, not only pros?
> I'd rather not be one of those "he died doing what he loved" guys when it is entirely preventable.
I do know such a guy, it was my schoolmate who rode a motorcycle and somehow he has rammed a car with his head. Good helmet might have saved his scull from a crack. Not being drunk on that moment might have save him IMO more likely.
Here in Europe, I think Michael Schumacher's ski accident in 2013 changed peoples' attitudes.
When I started skiing in the mid-to-late 2000s, there was maybe a 50/50 split of helmet and non-helmet wearers on the pistes. Since the mid-2010s, it's become extremely rare to encounter anyone not wearing a helmet.
I've been skiing in three different countries in Europe this month and could count on two hands how many people I've seen not wearing a helmet among thousands with.
I had a helmet on, but I still felt pretty sick for a while after. I suspect it was a mild concussion...
The first few days of snowboarding, people fall a lot. I'd recommend learning on days when the snow is fresh and soft.
Knowing that they got 2" the day before you go up is nice but not indicative of what you'll find when you get there, especially on a busy mountain where fresh powder and courdory get skiied off very quickly. You don't want to learn on boiler plate!
Also I was wearing a helmet but I don't believe they will prevent concussions?
Helmets also give a degree of protection from tree branches when riding in woods or glades.
And remember - nobody is perfect - edges catch, visual/audio distractions - and snow conditions can change unexpectedly. Not to mention there is always the risk of being hit by someone else.
I've been more hurt skiing more than snowboarding. No head injuries, but ~15 years ago I sprained my knee pretty bad snow skiing. When that healed, I switched to snowboarding and haven't skied since.
The most hurt I've been was tearing an ACL wakeboarding. I pretty much retired from going hard on the wakeboard since it beat me up more than any other sport I've done including fights sports like BJJ.
This sounds like more general othering to me. I mean, as a snowboarder, you could swap "skiers" with "snowboarders" and vice versa in the above passage and it would still ring true.
Really nicely compiled page though!
I've seen plenty of skiers stop bang in the middle of slopes too, frequently older ones who should know better, to stop and chat and look at the view.
Boarding moguls requires keeping momentum - the time you are most likely to wipe is when going too slow or having to change lines abruptly because the person downhill decided to poop out four bumps ahead of you.
Falling down is one thing but intentionally stopping anywhere other than the sides or directly behind a slow ski net is a really bad thing to do, regardless of how many planks you use. Don't do it.
I'm also in favor of indicating by hand your intentions when there are multiple avenues available (such as turning into a mid-mountain lift instead of continuing downhill) to avoid potential collisions. Just because downhill has the right of way doesn't mean you will get it!
Skiing seems to be back to being cool again so things have levelled out a bit. The rivalry is still talked about though so it persists. There also probably a misunderstanding of what the "other" can see while moving.
I have seen snowboarders sit in stupid places and cause accidents.
I have seen skiers sit in stupid places and cause accidents.
Both happen.
(You don't want to sit down with skis. Sitting down provides more friction than standing up.)
The defendant.