Learn to snowboard

First: Read the section on safety. As with most high-risk activities, the GREATEST DANGER is in the beginning, during the steep part of the learning curve. You MUST protect your tail bone, your wrists, and your head. Breaking your tail bone or wrist will just ruin your vacation. Busting your head could ruin, or end, your life. If you're new to winter sports (like I was), just know this: IT AIN'T ALL FLUFFY WHITE STUFF OUT THERE! In fact, at the eight different resorts I visited in my first 2 years, I found precious little powder to ride in. Unless you happen to catch a storm, you will be riding on hard packed snow that hurts to fall on. And you will fall a lot.

Second: You MUST take a lesson - at least one. Ideally, if you can afford it, take a one hour refresher lesson on the second day. Buy books if you want but I found them nearly useless until AFTER my first trip. Only then did some of the things they were saying in the book make sense to me. It's like trying to learn to ride a bike by reading!

Lessons: Group or private? I highly recommend private lessons. A small group, say 2 to 4 beginners, can share the cost. In 2 hours of private instruction you will learn far more than a half day of group lessons. Ask about the credentials of the instructors when you're booking. There is a certification for snowboard instructors. Ask how many years the instructor has been teaching. And, at any point during the lesson, you think you are not getting you're money's worth, stop and tell the instructor that you're not getting it. The snowboard school will probably let you re-book for free with another teacher. It's your hard earned money and your valuable vacation time.

As you a greeted at the rental counter you will be asked if you are "regular" or "goofy". This has nothing to do with politics or social behavior! These terms come from the surfing world and simply refer to which foot will be forward on the board. It's a God-given trait like right or left handedness. If you surf or slalom water ski then you already know which way you are. If not, then there are two techniques for determining which way you should ride. One way is to get a running start and slide across a slippery floor in your socks. The other way is to have someone come up behind you and give you a surprise shove. Whichever foot you naturally put out front to catch or balance yourself is the foot that belongs at the front of the board. If it's the left foot you're "regular". If you used the right foot you're "goofy". As you might have guessed, most people are regular.

Good instructors will go over the board before the lesson starts. This is because there must be a common glossary of terms established between the student and instructor before any instruction can commence.

Tip - The front point of the board. Like the bow of a boat.
Tail - The rear point of the board. Like the stern of a boat.
Waist - The middle section of the board. The area between your feet.
Toe Edge - The sharp metal edge running the length of the board under your toes.
Heel Edge - The sharp metal edge running the length of the board under your heels.
Lead Foot - The foot nearest the tip. Usually always strapped in.
Rear Foot - The foot nearest the tail. Sometimes you unclip this foot.
Stomp Pad - A place to rest your rear foot when it's not strapped in.

First and foremost, learning to ride a snowboard is all about understanding and controlling the board's "edges". Riding involves weighting and un-weighting one edge or the other, one end of the board or the other, and transitioning from one edge to the other.

As a kid did you ever climb up on a playground teeter-totter, straddle the pivot point, and "ride" it by yourself? If so, you may recall that you could balance the teeter-totter perfectly by equalizing the weighting over each foot. Or you could cause one end or the other to go up or down just by shifting your weight.

Visualize a plain wooden board about 5 feet long and about a foot wide - like something you would make a bookshelf from. You're standing on top the board right in the middle with your feet about shoulder-width apart. The sole of your shoes are somehow firmly attached to the board and your feet are laced in nice and tight. Now image yourself and your contraption on a gentle slope covered with firm snow and your board is oriented cross-ways to the slope (not pointed down the slope). You are standing normally and relaxed facing down-slope and because your ankles are in their "normal" position only the "heel edge" of your board is contacting the snow. Based on your experience with the teeter-totter can you imagine how, with a little practice, you could perfectly balance the board and keep it from slipping down the slope to the right or the left? The heel edge of your board would be biting firmly into the snow and there would be no tendency to slip one way or the other. Now, if you carefully shifted some weight to one foot you would cause that end of the board to want to dip in that direction, just like the teeter-totter. If you slip to one side then the other and repeat this pattern all the way down you would be performing the falling leaf drill.

Let's take our teeter-totter analogy to the next level. Imagine if the teeter-totter could pivot in the "other" direction as well! Like the middle is pivoting on a big ball instead of a pipe. So now, to balance, you have to be concerned with applying pressure to your heels vs. your toes! Back to your makeshift snow plank: Imagine yourself again perfectly balanced and relaxed and not slipping toward one side of the slope or the other. You're facing down the slope such that the heel edge of your board is dug in and holding you. Now think about the effect of relaxing or extending your ankles a little, so that your toes begin to point more toward the base of the slope (like your pressing the gas pedal in a car). At a point, your "heel edge" would begin to lose its bite and start to slip. If you concentrate, you can "ride" your snow plank straight down the slope simply by carefully adjusting the right-left foot and heel-toe weighting. This is known as a heel-edge side slip. The muscles in play here are your quads and the tibia (shin muscle).

Now imagine yourself in position at the top of the hill again but this time face the hill. In this position you will be sliding down backwards by working with the "toe edge". This time, to get going, you need to relax your ankles slowly and let your heels drop. Again, at some point, the edge that was holding you will break free and allow the board to slip. You can slip backward all the way down. As you may be able to guess by now, this maneuver is called a toe-edge side slip. The major muscle involved is the calf muscle.

Snowboarders live by the edge and die by the edge! The edge is your best friend and worse enemy. How is this, you ask? Think back about the heel-edge side slipping maneuvers. Let's say everything was going pretty good and you were ready for some speed. So you got into position at the top of the hill heel edge and began stepping on the gas. The more you relax your ankles the faster the board gets going. Theoretically, maximum speed would be obtained just before the downhill edge comes in contact with the snow - right? But what if, as you're speedily side slipping down the slope you allow the down hill edge to bite? Instantaneous face slam is the result! Same for the toe-edge slipping except in this case it's called a butt slam.

Catching the wrong edge at any time almost always results in a spill. You will learn to avoid this or you will get hurt, possibly seriously. My son face slammed on the first run of the day of a one-day trip. We spent the rest of the day in the emergency room in Riudoso, New Mexico getting treatment for his concussion.

Once aspiring snowboarders have mastered side-slipping and doing the Falling Leaf (from both edges), they're ready for the next skill, the Garland.

The Garland is similar to the Falling Leaf but involves more speed and is performed in only one direction at a time. This drill requires a wide practice area. Start from the heel-side position and begin to apply weight to your lead foot. As you get under way keep applying weight until you have a pretty good head of steam going. Now, steadily reduce the weighting on your downhill foot until you slow to a complete stop. Repeat this a few times until you run out of room in the practice area. The swath you are cutting in the snow, if you look back at it, is in the shape of a Christmas garland decoration - hence the name of this drill. I clearly remember this being the first time I felt as if I was actually "riding a snowboard" during this drill. Even beginners can experience quite a bit of speed and thrill.

Once you reach one side of the practice area, flip over and perform the drill from the toe-edge. During each repetition you should concentrate on making a smooth start, gradually build speed, slow down and come to a balanced, controlled stop.

Hopefully, there will be another new sensation with this drill. You will realize that the board becomes easier to balance once you're under way and moving across the slope. Just like a bicycle, the hardest part of the balancing act is when you're starting and stopping. I think I know why this is so with a bicycle (something to do with the gyro effect spinning wheels.) I have no idea why this works on a snowboard, but I'm glad it does! In fact, the most strenuous time is when you are starting. Snowboarders sit a lot. Getting up becomes a chore, especially as you become tired. Just at that critical moment between hoisting your butt out of the snow and getting under way you are unstable and vulnerable to embarrassing spills. This is where most wrists are broken. People try to salvage the launch by using their hands. TIP: Go ahead a catch yourself but use your FISTS instead!

You have not mastered the essential skills of snowboarding until you can turn the board on demand in both directions. Snowboarding without turning is just like trying to ski without turning: traverse the slope, stop, point yourself in the other direction and traverse again. It's possible, but tiring (remember the part above about getting underway) and it will keep you from enjoying the whole mountain. Narrow trails are a real drag using a "no turns" approach.

Learning to turn is a two-stage process. You first learn to guide the board around with your body and knees. This is a slow speed turn and is done on gentle slopes. I'll refer to this type of turn as a knee turn. Later you will adopt a more aggressive turn generally referred to as the carve. On steep terrain or during faster riding you will want to know how to carve.

Previously, I mentioned the joy and accomplishment of mastering the Garland. With the Garland you experience the sensation of actually riding the board for the first time. When you execute your first carve it will be a moment you will never forget. At that moment all your hard work (and money) will have finally paid off. You will have crested the steep learning curve. You will have broken through to the other side! The entire mountain will be yours to explore and enjoy.

There is actually a third method for changing directions, but it's mostly for the youngsters: The Jump Turn. My son uses jump turns a lot. When he's ready to turn, he literally leaps into the air and spins the board into its new direction. If this was the only way to turn, most Boomers would last about an hour before trading their board in for a pair of skis. In comparing the knee-turn with the carve, I have to fall back on the bicycle analogy. Most people don't even think about it, because its so natural, but you use a different technique to turn a bicycle (or motorcycle) at low speed than at high speed. At very low speed, you don't lean the bike over to turn; you simple turn the front wheel in the direction you want to go. As speed increases, the turning procedure changes completely. You cause the bike to carve an ark to the right or left by leaning over and banking on the sides of the tires. This maneuver is initiated, completely instinctively and unnoticed by the rider, by pulling the WRONG WAY on the handle bars. To turn the bike right, you nudge the handlebars left. Don't believe me? Go get a bike and try it! All it takes is gentle pressure and the bike responds by banking to one side or the other.

Knee-turning a snowboard is similar to low-speed turns on a bicycle. You stay upright and steer the board into the direction you want to go. Carving a snowboard is like banking a bike into a turn. In this case you are taking maximum advantage of resulting centrifugal forces and the engineering features of the device. What engineering features? On a bike it's the cross-section profile of the tires. On a snowboard it's the side cut built in to whichever edge you're turning on (heel or toe). I'll discuss side cut below.

Before I fully describe turning lets talk about posture. Think about the posture of a slalom water skier. One foot in front of the other, knees slightly bent to absorb bumps, torso is upright and facing the direction the ski is going. This is exactly the posture of a snowboarder. Just make the board wider and angle the feet more toward the side - other than that everything stays the same.

Your instructor will teach you to knee turn on a very gentle slope. Speed and slope will be added in as you progress. Most of your weight should be on your front foot - just like the water skier. Your instructor may say to always keep your torso pointed in the direction you want to go. To reinforce that feeling, some will teach you assume the "007 Stance". You know the one - bent knees and both hands clasped together out front like you're shooting at an enemy agent! Your instructor may have you head in his direction as you pretend your shooting at him. Then he may shuffle to one side or another and encourage you to keep your "handgun" trained on him. As you follow your instructor the twisting of your torso forces the lower body around. This exaggerated twisting motion will "urge" the board to assume a new heading. With time and practice you can forget the spy thing. Instead you can pretend you have an eyeball in the middle of your chest that needs to always see where it's going! Also, aggressively twist your front knee into the direction you want to go.

Beginning snowboarders have a lot of natural impulses they have to quickly learn to suppress. Your instructor will nag you about these - it's his job! One of these is the impulse to look down at the board. This is a really bad habit that has to go right away! Think of how hard it would have been to learn to ride a bike by staring intently at the pedals. How about learning to hit a golf ball while watching the club head as it swings around your body. In every endeavor the GOAL should be the focus of concentration. Ride the bike down the street, put the golf ball in the middle of the fairway, ride the board down to where the instructor is standing. If your desire to reach your goal is strong enough eventually the body will adapt its movements to help your brain achieve what you're focusing on.

When you first learned to ride a bike you didn't just jump on a blast off around the first corner. You had to learn to balance and steer the bike away from danger and be able to stop and start without falling over. This all holds true with snowboarding. Just like with the bike your skills and confidence will build rapidly and you'll crave a way to change directions without slowing down enough to execute a slow speed turn.

The technique you need is the carve turn. As explained above, this is the snowboard equivalent to a banking turn on a bike. With a knee turn the board remains pretty much flat on its base. When you're carving, the board is up on its edge - either the heel or toe edge depending on which way you're turning.

First let me attempt to explain why the board wants to turn when tipped over on its edge. The answer is in the design feature of the board called side cut. Look at the overall shape of a snowboard. You'll find that a snowboard kinda has an "Olive Oil" (Pop Eye's girlfriend) figure. It's long and skinny, but definitely narrower across the waist as compared to the tip and tail.

Now if you take a snowboard and tip it up on its side on a hard floor you'll notice the edge along the waist is not even touching the floor. But now think of your entire body weight strapped in right over that waist - and the powerful centrifugal force of a hard turn is at work. All this downward pressure on the middle of the board will force the waist edge into contact with the surface. The shape the board is now bent into is an arc. When the board is forced into an arc it will naturally try to track through the snow in the direction the arc is "pointing".

This is why a snowboard turns at high speeds. The more you tip the board the tighter the arc is formed by the board (the more the board bends due to the centrifugal force) and the sharper you can turn. Skillful riders can bank their boards at very high angles of incidence (angle between the surface and the board's base) confidently relying on the bite of those long steel edges to hold them. By the way, this is the same way skis turn too. Board geeks are quick to remind skiers that high incidence angles are possible on a board. This is due to the physical limits of banking TWO skis. The inner ski limits how far a skier can bank the outer ski.

You might ask why you can't just forget about this high-speed stuff and just do knee-turns. The answer is: you can, but you will be just as limited as a skier who won't give up the snowplow, possibly more limited. To understand why, there is a new term to add to your glossary of terms: the Fall Line.

The Fall Line, anywhere on the mountain, is the invisible path gravity wants to pull you if you let it. It's the imaginary line a ball will roll along if you drop it. Sometimes the fall line is conveniently oriented in the same direction you want to go. Sometimes the fall line runs straight into something dangerous like a rocky gulley, trees, or a man-made structure.

Remember the Side Slip? By positioning your board exactly perpendicular to the fall line and holding with the toe or heel edge, the board stays still. Does this mean you need to carry a protractor with you measure the angles? Of course not - you will know your board is perpendicular because it will not want to slip to one side or the other.

Stay with me! I'm leading up to the reason why a knee turn is not the right tool for anything but the gentlest of slopes.

When you learn the Falling Leaf and the Garland, you will be amazed how eager the board is to get moving. Depending on the pitch of the slope, it won't take much weighting on one end or the other to get under way. Even on the very first day, beginner snowboarders can be seen zipping with amazing speed as they traverse a slope. What you will realize right away is that the board is really slippery and will take off like a jet when its tip or tail is moved in the direction of the fall line.

Now, knowing (or believing) all that I've told you henceforth, consider this: To turn a snowboard, its tip must approach, and pass through, the fall line. Put in simpler terms, you have to point the thing straight down the hill momentarily. At first, and even for a good while, this will be a truly frightful concept. As I stated above, you will be awestruck by the force of gravity and near total absence of friction! Most normal people have a very healthy sense of danger when experiencing these sensations for the first time. As such, it's nearly incomprehensible (at first) to think of pointing your board straight down the hill, if even for a moment.

This brings us to the reason why knee-turns won't be your primary means of changing direction. Knee turns take too much time to execute. During a knee turn you're "urging" the board around by twisting your body. The board does not respond quickly. The board's tip slowly moves through the fall line. Depending on the slope, this can result in dangerous acceleration and you can easily loose control.

There is another problem as well: As the board passes through the fall line it becomes "flat". You're transitioning from one edge to the other so at some point (when you're aligned with the fall line) the board is on neither edge. This is a dangerous moment. When a board is flat it does not have the benefit of an edge to keep it tracking straight. A board's edges are like the keel of a sailboat or the fin of a surfboard. Without these devices the craft cannot maintain a heading and can spin aimlessly. So you must learn to minimize the time the board spends running flat, because it can spin you out of control.

Once you graduate to steeper terrain you need the carve turn. The carve turn overcomes all the problems inherent in knee turns. Remember our discussion about side-cut? Because of side-cut, a snowboard wants to turn if tipped up on its edge and weighted in the middle (with a rider). In some respects, a carve turn is less physically demanding of the rider than a knee turn. When I first learned to knee turn, I always felt as if I was fighting the board whereas with carving you're letting the board do what it was designed to do!

So how does a beginner learn to carve? I was taught the knee turn by a snowboard instructor (Gunther, in Riudoso, New Mexico - a wonderful guy). After that, I had to wait a month before my next trip. I read a book and studied the material carefully on carving. It seemed to make sense and indeed I was able to apply the theory once I got back to the mountains. All told I had spent five total days of snowboarding (over a three month period) before my first carve. You can do it sooner with more instruction.

To understand the basics of the carve turn first imagine the "ideal run" down the "ideal trail". The trail is plenty wide, not so steep that it scares you, is perfectly groomed, and there is no one to get in your way (this really is a dream!) The ideal run would involve starting in the middle at the top, traversing to one side, cutting a graceful arc of a turn, traversing to the other side, slicing another broad arc in the "corduroy", and repeating this pattern all the way down. TRAVERSE - TURN - TRAVERSE - TURN. If you are a "never-ever" like I was, and have never thought about it, there is a reason for riding like this: You cannot go straight down! You would quickly accelerate to speeds no human is meant to endure because WHEN (not IF) you loose control, you will become yet another statistic in the accident records for the resort you're visiting.

We can understand when, and how, carve turns are initiated by thinking about our ideal run. We broke our ideal run into parts: traverse, turn, traverse, turn, and repeat. You already know what a traverse is: it's a side-slip in one direction. As you traverse (side-slip) toward the side boundary of the trail, you prepare for the turn. This might involve skidding a little to slow down. You initiate your carve turn at the end of your traverse by aggressively rolling the board completely from the edge you were just riding to the other edge. It's a very quick edge-to-edge transition. Be brave! Have faith! The board will respond instantly and begin "its job" of carving a semi-circle arc to point you to the other side of your trail.

At first - this maneuver defies all logic. In fact, it seems to violate the cardinal rule of snowboarding, the one about never "engaging" the downhill edge! The thought of "throwing" your torso down hill as you roll the board from uphill edge to downhill edge seems very, very wrong. But it's not wrong. Once you learn this it will be just as natural as banking a bike around a corner. The instant you transition the board its side cut kicks in immediately and centrifugal force allows you to momentarily defy gravity - just like on a carnival ride.