Anti-Snowboarding Sentiment (of a sort) Lives

While snowboarding has been welcomed by nearly every ski area in the United States, not all forms of snowboarding are welcomed everywhere.

While reading some message boards on another forum, I found some people mocking Welch Village, Minnesota for its ban on “extreme carving,” which is, to be brief about it, what hard-boot snowboarders do when they’ve reached the highest level of their form of riding.

There may be no way to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong in this story, and in any case, there may be no easy answer. As a privately owned company on private land, WV can promote or exclude any form of equipment they want. Snow bikes, yes; goofy-footed bindings, no; I suppose those would be fine as a matter of law and ethics.

It’s entirely possible that a some frayed tempers and ill-chosen words from a handful of people resulted in a toxic relational environment. I talked with some representatives of WV a couple of months ago, and they were rather defensive about the situation, so obviously it’s still a sore point.

That’s too bad, as WV has one of the best slopes in the Twin Cities region for hard boot riding. At least that’s from the point of view of someone who doesn’t carve but watches in amazement.