Falling For Snowboarding
Why
is a sport that’s so painful, frustrating
and
humiliating, so damn popular?
By Terence
Loose
Day One, Snow
My butt hurts. So do my wrists, kneecaps, shoulders, chin,
elbows and, probably most of all, my ego.
All casualties of my decision to dis my skis, strap on a snowboard and
hit the local mountains. And I mean that
literally.
For two long days I fell
all over Snow Summit and
After my first day—make
that my first two hours—on the bunny slope under the tutelage of Snow Summit
instructor Debbie Tollison, I limped to the Bear Bottom Lodge feeling as if I
had gone ten rounds with Iron Mike Tyson.
As I sipped a therapeutic Sam Adams and contemplated the wisdom of
heading back out onto the slopes without medical coverage, I recalled the words
of Tollison, a surfer/skier who got into snowboarding five years ago and never
looked back. “Don’t give up,” she almost
pleaded. “The first day is going to be
pure hell, but if you make it to day two, you’ll love boarding.” This to a class full of 15-
to 19-year-old girls and boys—and me—all rolling around the bunny hill trying
desperately to stand up for more than three seconds at a time. There were no smiles; we all felt stupid,
helpless and really uncoordinated.
Even for the most talented, however, day one on a snowboard is going to
hurt. Because your boots are locked into
your bindings and you don’t use poles while snowboarding, as you do in skiing,
the natural instinct upon falling is to brace yourself with outstretched hands. Big mistake. And since skiers rarely fall hard on their
tailbones or kneecaps, when learning to snowboard they forget that tailbone
protectors and thickly padded pants were invented by seasoned snowboarders for
a reason. Big mistake number two. Indeed, the first—and most pertinent—lesson
in snowboarding is how to fall; hands fisted, elbows in, avoid
face-plants. Tollison gave us this
advice; unfortunately, everyone was too busy eating snow to listen.
So why is something so
torturous so popular? Traditionally, it
has attracted those who surfed or skateboarded and were looking for a snowy
equivalent. In fact, snowboarding is not
as most people think. According to Snowboard Business magazine’s December
1996 issue, something called a Surfer was invented in 1965. With only rubber matting and a nose rope to
keep the rider buckled in, it mainly appealed to the hard-core
surfer/skiers. It took until 1984 for
the introduction of secure bindings; from then on the sport has only grown.
And I mean grown. Tollison tells me that during December she
regularly taught classes of 47, with half of those being female and many being
vacationing families. The big reason for
today’s growing mainstream popularity of boarding, adds Snow Summit’s Genevieve
Paquet, who both skis and boards, is that “the progression rate is about three
times faster in snowboarding. In skiing,
there are so many steps to master before going to the top of the mountain. With snowboarding you can make it down
intermediate runs the second day.” All
these are reflected in the fact that of the total lift ticket sales during Snow
Summit’s 1995/96 season, 52% were to snowboarders. And so far this season, 80% of sales have
been to boarders (however, says Paquet, skiers are historically mid-season
visitors and undoubtedly will bring that number down).
With such forces driving
it, it’s no wonder that snowboarding has gained acceptance, if not total
respectability, at all but a few of the nation’s ski resorts. Once thought of as only for the tattooed and
purple-haired set, today it’s not uncommon to see a family of four sliding down
a slope together. And the animosity
between skiers and boarders is, by most accounts, under control. A 1996 survey conducted by Snowboarding Business and the National
Ski Areas Association reported that when resorts were asked about the
acceptance of snowboarders by skiers, 59% checked “mostly acceptance.”
Acceptance didn’t come
easily, however, and a quick scan from any chair lift will tell you that it’s
anything but a harmonious mix.
Snowboarders routinely cut off skiers and vice versa; rarely is there an
exchange of words, but if looks could kill. . . .
This cold war is mainly
due to the radically different ways which skis and snowboards are designed to
attack the mountain. While for the most
part, more proficient skiers pick a line and make a series of shallow-arced
turns, facing downhill the entire time, snowboarders slide more, and, in
general, cover more snow laterally in large swooping carves. Also, unless a boarder is very good, quick
evasive moves are now an option and blind spots are common. “The different styles were a safety concern
when snowboarding first started to get popular in the mid-eighties,” says
Paquet. “Many resort operators weren’t
sure if the two could mix, and banned boarders from riding.”
While this outlaw image
continues to be lucrative for the snowboard industry, the numbers scream
mainstream acceptance. Not only are more
age groups strapping in, but, especially in the last few years, snowboarders
have been increasingly welcomed by ski resorts nationwide, with many providing
snowboarder-only areas (94% of resorts currently allow snowboarding, up from 7%
in 1985). In the 1998/96 season, an
estimated 300,000 snowboards were sold, a full third of the amount of pairs of
skis sold. And, with women now making up
an estimated 25% of the market and growing, snowboarding has become a $600
million-a-year apparel and equipment industry, with many predicting it will
overtake skiing in popularity within a decade.
Top pro boarders pull in six-figures a year and the sport has
accomplished a feat even surfing, its inspiring sport, couldn’t; it qualified
for the next Olympic Games.
Of course, most boarders
don’t run the numbers; they just tell you that boarding blows skiing away on
the fun meter. That carving a hard turn
on your toe edge, then jamming off a five-foot snow ramp to catch hideous air
is a feeling nothing can better. At
least that’s what 18-year old Nicole Salas’ boyfriend told her just after she unwrapped her Christmas gift: A new snowboard. But sitting at the bottom of the beginner’s
run, more than a little frustrated—even if she was one of the better in our
class—she remained unconvinced. “I’ll
definitely give it a couple of days,” she said, “but if it doesn’t get better,
I’m going back to my skis.” This echoed
my thoughts that night as I sat in a hotel room with bags of ice balanced on
various swollen body parts.
Day two, Bear Mountain
If pain was the active
word on day one, fear was the buzz word for day two: Horrible, gut-wrenching, paralyzing fear.
Because of the
bone-shattering falls I took my first day out, each four-minute run the second
day consisted of approximately three minutes and 56 seconds of sheer terror,
four seconds being reserved for a fleeting glimpse of control. To borrow an image from a well-known
comedian: You know that feeling when you
lean your chair waaay back on two
legs, and just as you’re about to go over and smash your head on the floor
there’s an instant when you can catch yourself?. . .That’s snowboarding.
At least it is the second
day, when you’ve found the confidence to go fast enough to seriously hurt yourself, but haven’t yet attained adequate control skills.
The key to learning to
turn (lesson two), as all will tell you, is to get a good instructor, which I
did. His name is Craig Allsberry, a tan
red-haired 46-year old teenager who either skis, surfs, snowboards or hikes
every day of his life. One of
Allsberry’s favorite things to do is hike up San Gregornio peak—the San
Bernardino –Mountains’ highest at 11,499 feet—and snowboard down. “It’s a 13-hour hike up for a nine-minute
ride down,” he tells me, flashing an excited grin that says, “Am I crazy or
what?!” (The answer is probably, but
he’s also just about the happiest guy I’ve ever met.)
He immediately took me to
the top of Chair Nine, elevation 8,400 feet, to assess my progress thus
far. I was pumped, feeling no pain and
sucking in the crisp mountain air. Yes,
I was ready to throw some serious snow, take some hard hits (boarded term for
jumps) and do some intense methods (in-flight rail grabs). Never mind that embarrassing little incident
getting off the chair, a minor fluke, some sticky snow
is all.
I buckled in, exhaled, and
edged toward the face of “Expressway” run, ready to show my stuff. What followed was a painful montage of
high-impact crashes. Snow flew alright
and hits were definitely taken, none of them graceful. My $95 pair of Black Flys sunglasses (an essential
boarder fashion statement) broke into three pieces during one somersaulting
fall that would bring a 9.8 in any diving competition. The pain and humiliation was back, but more
importantly, my fear was peaking. When I
finally got to the bottom, Craig was waiting for me. “That was great!” he said, looking
down at me with that same enthusiastic grin.
“I’m going to have you carving turns in no time!” This time I thought, you are crazy, or just
really mean.
But he turned out to be
neither, as the next hour would show. By
noon, I was consistently doing big sweeping turns on either my heel or toe
rail, keeping the weight forward, using my upper body for direction and, all
and all, feeling pretty damn smooth and cool (even without my Black Flys). Of course, photographs would later prove me
wrong, but no matter, I was having more fun that I ever did skiing. What I considered impossible an hour ago was
now fact. I was a boarder, man, and
always will be. Rid hard, ride free.
. .just don’t
forget the Advil.ˆ