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Ask your typical snowboarder what he thinks about leashes, and he may say “They’re stupid. I don’t see why I should wear one.”

A leash can be useful for several reasons. The most common one is that it lets you drag the board behind you as you walk towards the lift. “Walking the dog,” as this is called, is a useful alternative to carrying your board.

But there’s reason why a leash can be useful: it can keep the board attached to you during the ride on the lift.

The particulars of the story I’m going to tell depend in part on the type of bindings I use–Flows have a releasable highback, as seen on this page–but if you change a few details, the story could apply to other riders.

When I descended the exit ramp, I locked my back finding into place. But I also discovered that I had not snapped the highback on my front foot into place before I got on the lift. During the lift up, the board was hanging in space, secured only by the fact that there was a single (though large) piece of very stiff fabric (I believe Flow calls it the “I-strap”) on top of my foot. The whole concept of Flows depends on being able to recline the highback for an easy entry to the bindings, and then pushing the highback back into place. Instead, I had something different–something roughly akin to wearing a backless sandal while hanging in the air.

I was horrified at what might have happened on the lift. The binding did fit pretty well over my boot, so it was unlikely to go anywhere. To shed the bindings–and hence the board–I would have had to point my toes toward the ground and shake my foot a few, or many times. I don’t normally do that, and I’m not sure that I even could. But consider what would have happened if that highly unlikely event would have happened: My board would drop 30 feet to the ground. At the least it would land with some force and slide a ways. At worse, it could land on someone.

That’s where the leash comes in. Had the board fell off my foot, the leash would have arrested the fall.

Maybe this is all belt-and-suspender stuff, or maybe two pair of suspenders. No matter. The cost of using a leash is trivial, and the benefits (potentially) substantial.

One of the good things about being a snowboarder is that you can do simple maintenance on your gear. Most skiers don’t–and shouldn’t–adjust their own bindings. But snowboarders can adjust their bindings all the time.

A lot of these adjustments simply involve changing the alignment of the bindings on the board. Are they pointing straight across the width of the board in a “zero-zero” stance? Are they pointing towards the tip of the board? Or maybe they’re at a “duck” position (think of reversed pigeon-toed). How far apart are the bindings, and thus your feet, from each other? These are just some of the adjustments that a rider can make.

But there’s a more simple task that you should make as a rider: make sure that you don’t have a screw loose. I’m not talking about your mental state, but whether or not your bindings are actually snugly stuck to the board. That’s really important because the binding is what keeps you from flying off the board when you make a turn.

In a less severe situation, if your bindings have a couple of loose screws, your control of the board and where it goes will be sloppy. It’s like driving a car with wheels that wobble from side to side. Not good.

How often should you check the binding screws for tightness? In theory, before every time you go riding. In practice, some of us don’t follow through with that rule, and depending on how fast you ride, where you ride, and how long you ride in a day, that can work out just fine.

But if you’ve been riding long trails at high speeds and it’s been “a while” (you be the judge of what that means) since you’ve looked at those bindings, it’s probably time to check them again.

By the way, it’s very useful to have a pocket tool with you on the mountain. Think of them as the Swiss army knife of the slopes, equipped with screwdrivers and wrenches of various sizes.

You can usually find a bench somewhere at your favorite ski area, provided by the patrol. But sometimes the necessary screwdrivers aren’t there, or they’re on the lift on the other side of the mountain and you just realized that your bindings are wobbly. Time to bring out the pocket screwdriver!

If you’re traveling on an overnight trip, be sure to pack a long-handled screwdriver in your bags. That way you can give the bindings a good once-over in the lodge before heading out to the slopes.

Here in Minnesota and in neighboring states we have lots of new snow on April Fool’s day. If you’re a Midwestern resident and you have the opportunity to get out to a ski area today, do it. This may be your last chance for some local snowboarding until November or later.

You’ve probably heard that Taos opened up its terrain to snowboarders during the last few weeks of the 2007-08 season. The reaction was remarkable, with an unfortunate display of immaturity, animosity and ignorance among both skiers and riders. Within a day or two of the management of Taos making its announcement, the site was flooded with comments–100 pages in Microsoft Word, 12 point Times-Roman.

I’ve been meaning to say more about this topic, and was recently reminded of it when I spent some time with ski and snowboard journalists and industry professionals, including Eric Friedman, the marketing director of Mad River Glen, New Hampshire.

One afternoon, I was part of a group of five, three skiers and two riders, roaming around Cannon Mountain, Vermont. A few times the riders would get into challenging terrain–by which I mean almost entirely flat. Depending on how much speed I carried into the flat–itself a function of the terrain preceding it and how I handled it, whether I’m with a group of people or solo and other factors–I can slide through it with no problem or a few problems. (Sometimes I have to give up and walk.)

As the five of us were traversing one of the flats, Eric extended his ski pole to each of the riders, offering to pull one or both of us along until we had gained enough speed.

It turns out that neither of us riders required the use of the pole, but I loved the comment Eric made in a light-hearted moment: “Don’t say that I’ve never helped snowboarders.”

For the record, Mad River Glen and anyone else who wants a skier-only (or snowboarder-only) “ski” area should be free to do so. MRG is a co-op, not a profit-seeking organization, and as such isn’t going to put profit above principle. I expect it to ban snowboards indefinitely, which is just fine.

Snowboarders who are adults should, among all riders, be most sympathetic to the right of an organization to decide how it wants to run itself. After all, we’ve been around long enough to know that you can’t–and shouldn’t–go through life expecting that everyone will cater to your whims. Riders, not being able to take your snowboard to 3 lift-served terrains out of 500 or so isn’t going to ruin your life.

I’m always open to adding new snowsports-related blogs to my reading list. A new one on my list is Skiing and Snowboarding by Martin Griff, published by NJ.com. Griff writes a regular ski column for the Times of Trenton, and added the blog in December of 2007.

I haven’t had time to browse the collection, but it has a mix of photos, short commentaries, and links to full-length columns he has written. Check it out.

One blog entry that caught my attention is “That gray haired guy is a competitor!” It’s about Dick Schulze, a retired attorney who teaches snowboarding in Tahoe–and competes in snowboarding events. Somewhere in one of my e-mail boxes, I have a letter from him or from someone else about him from a few years ago. It’s good to see that he’s still going strong.

Now if you were going to be a 62-year old competing in snowboarding events, which would you pick? Slopestyle? Halfpipe? Big air? Boardercross?

It’s springtime, which means that your cold-weather gloves may just be too hot for riding. So what do you take on the mountain with you for that snowboarding session? Spring gloves.

I’ve been trying some Obermeyer gloves. They’re lightweight but cover your hands well. The shell is 96% nylon and 4% polyurethane, mostly around the wrist. The topside of the hand is nylon, while there’s an extra coating of leather on the underside–on the palm, fingers, and wrist.

The gloves have a cinching strap that hooks across the top of the wrist, with velcro. Truth be told, I have worn them more driving about town than on the slopes, so I can’t tell you how water-repellent on the slopes they are. I do know that they don’t hold up too well if you try to fish chunks of ice out of standing water, as I did about a week ago. I had to let them dry overnight.

If memory serves, they do a good job with a casual amount of snow. Just don’t expect them to stay dry if you’re always wiping out in spring slush. (Overly pessimistic? Perhaps. I prefer to be on the cautious side in writing a review.)

They come in both black and silver. (I’m showing the silver since it displays better on the screen.) Unfortunately one glove is already showing a bit of wear: there’s a stray thread near the cuff, and there’s a slight separation of nylon and leather on one of the fingers.

I also have a pair of spring gloves from the North Face.

They’re mostly polyester with some spandex to help promote a snug fit, but they feels cheap, and are more suitable for even warmer weather than the Obermeyer glove.

My favorite places for snowboarding are in the Rockies. But how about … Scotland? Yes, there’s a trade association called Ski Scotland that will tell you all about skiing in the land of kilts, bagpipes and haggis.

Not that I’d expect a Yank traveling across the ocean to hit the slopes go to Scotland rather than the Alps. But if your business needs send you to Glasgow or Aberdeen or if you’re fascinated by all things Scottish, why not.

You’ll immediately notice some differences from the U.S. For one thing, the trails or slopes are called “pistes,” which are colored in terms of easier to more difficult, go in this progression: green, blue, red and black. The bunny slope, as far as I can tell, is called the nursery. Ouch! Talk about wounding your pride!

You may be surprised to learn that the vertical drop is respectable, though not spectacular: 1,900 feet for the Nevis Range, for example.

But there’s one fact of these resorts that problem won’t appeal to U.S. riders: surface lifts dominate in Scotland.

Three “ski” areas in the country are still ski-only: Snowboards are not allowed. That’s quite a change from the late 1980s.

The three are Alta and Deer Valley, in Utah, and Mad River Glen in Vermont.

Mad River Glen is a co-op, and its members like it just the way it is. That’s fine with me, but a certain snowboard company has encouraged riders to take their equipment to the Glen (and the other holdouts) and ride them. “We’re all about rebellion,” the thinking goes.

I’m not a great fan of the idea–it just strikes me wrong on so many levels–but the marketing director of Mad River Glen isn’t bothered. He belongs to the school of “any publicity is good publicity.”

Martin Griff reports.

This snowboarding season I’ve had a season pass at an area that also has “mountain” biking and golf in the summer. As with lift tickets, you can pay for your biking or golfing on a per-day basis or for the whole season, with a season pass.

In a promotion called “Snowballs to golf balls,” winter season pass holders get a substantial discount on a season pass at the golf course. Substantial, as in 65 percent or so. Sounds interesting. I think I’ll bite. It’s not the best course around, and it’s a bit quirky. Don’t hit that chair overhead with your approach shot! But it may, for someone of my limited abilities, a good value.

But for today, it’s all about snowboarding. I’ll be paying a visit to a local area where I used to have a pass, and get some photos for a review.

Don’t expect any blog updates tomorrow. I’ll be taking the day off to observe Easter Sunday.

Here’s one of those themes that should get old, but doesn’t: A 40+ year old adult takes on snowboarding. This one is from the Calgary Sun.

An excerpt:

One of the best things about the sport is being able to share it with her daughters.

“It was amazing to be riding up the chairlift with Vanessa on her 16th birthday. I wouldn’t have believed it four years before.”

Now her younger daughter, Sydney, is also hooked on boarding.

Her advice for wanna-be boarders — “give it seven days and be prepared to get hurt, dust yourself off and get hurt again.” Don’t get too worked up about that; the “hurt” is more to the pride than anything else. She recommends taking time off in the week to snowboard with a partner. It’s a short, sweet read. Check it out while you can.