Blog

You should start every snowboarding season with fresh wax on your board. And, as I remembered today, change the wax as required.

It should have been a great day for riding. The air was warm, but not so warm that you’d get hot wearing the usual clothes. One section of the “mountain” that has been open only on weekends (of late) was open, and hey, it’s late March and we’re still riding!

The sky was overcast, and that’s what fooled me into thinking that the snow was fine. But the snow was, well, challenging. It had a lot of water in it; while on the lift, I could easily make snowballs out of the snow that was riding on top of the board. (I’m a poor shot and only infrequently hit a lift tower.)

But the snow wasn’t, as was the case two weeks ago, mashed potatoes. That snow, though also wet and sloppy, was a lot easier to work with. You had to push stuff around, but the board slide through it. Today’s snow, by contrast, was unpredictable, alternately grabbing and releasing the board. You’re moving along–not too fast, but still, moving–and then bam, it’s like a dozen little fingers reached up from the ground and grabbed on.

And no, it wasn’t just me; other riders and skiers reported the same problem.

I adapted, though I’m not sure how well I did. The approach to some of the steeper runs is gently sloping, and very long. To keep the board moving to where the hill dropped off, I crouched very low and towards the tip of the board. It seemed to work.

Alternately, in “cruising” areas, I sometimes leaned as far as I could towards the tail.

Eventually the air temperature dropped a couple degrees, and that made a big difference. But I was ready to leave by then.

Taking a lesson is a great way to learn how to snowboard, or to improve your skills. How can the beginner maximize the joy of that first day, and minimize the trouble? Here are a few suggestions:

– Arrive plenty of time before the lesson. If your lesson at 2:00 pm, arrive at 1:15 pm. This will give you plenty of time to purchase your lesson, fill out your rental paperwork, and help the staff figure out what your board and boot setup should be.

– Before you leave the rental shop, ask the rental shop employee to show you how to secure the boot to the binding. If you’re a mechanical klutz who has no sense for engineering, this can be essential. Even if you’re not, it may be helpful to have someone point out which parts do what.

– While you still have your shoes on, find a waist-high counter. Put the board on top of that, and practice putting a boot into the binding, and then removing it. You will be getting into and out of your bindings a lot this first day, so it’s good to know how to do it.

– If you can, plan your lesson for a day with perfect weather. Seriously. A sunny day will improve your spirits, and more importantly, make the snow softer and thus better for learning.

– Ask someone at the ticket counter when the slopes were last groomed. Some skiers and snowboarders resist going out on anything other than “corduroy” snow, so called because of the lines of snow made by the grooming equipment. It’s even better snow for first-time students.

– Don’t take a lesson if the snow is icy. That’s asking for trouble, since a slippery board will be even more slippery, and falling may hurt.

– For more ideas of what to expect, read First Day.

It’s been said that an expert skier is someone who can ski all snow, all terrain. Well, yesterday I got a lesson in the “all snow” part of that.

In the afternoon, I rode in mashed potatoes–choppy, slushy, wet snow, what we call “mashed potatoes.” It was fun in its own way, conducive to dancing rather than powering your way down the run. It was THISCLOSE to being too warm. I had to open the pit zips on my coat and pants. Fortunately, the wax on the board held, and did not smear.

I wanted to experience how the snow changes when the temperature drops. So I did some night riding. And boy did I get an experience! Night riding on soft snow is great. Night riding on hard snow? Hmmm. Let me think about that.

Mashed potatoes can be fun. Frozen mashed potatoes can be … well, work. It’s like driving your car over frozen mud.

Bump. Bump. Bump. Rattle, rattle, rattle.

I made adjustments, though right now I’m not sure I can tell you what those adjustments were, except for making more use of traverses, especially on the steeper runs. One benefit of the frozen potatoes: I didn’t have to concentrate so much on finishing off the turn on the steeps. It just happened.

It also pays to pay more attention to the terrain, and anticipate frozen “waves” in the snow.

A blog reader and Grays on Trays bulletin board participant sent me a private message. It seems that this little blog has been included on a link of other snowboard blogs, on a list compiled by the snowboarding guide on About.com.

Snowboarding and blogging. Share the love.

Hope that you won’t need an ambulance on the slopes. But know that if you need medical attention, it will be there.

Yesterday I went to an open house for a local chapter of the National Ski Patrol. It was a soft-sell recruiting session for new patrollers. Though this ski area has nearly 100 patrollers, they’re looking for more.

We met over at the ski patrol building, and went to the chalet to secure our caffeinated beverages of choice. It’s here that I was introduced to the fact that the ski patrol isn’t a seat-of-the-pants operation; there are protocols to observe. According to OSHA for example, you’re not supposed to have food or drink in a room used for medical treatment. (OSHA is the federal agency that issues regulations related to workplace safety.)

WHY PATROL?
Each of the recruits talked about their reasons for showing up on this day. My reason? I wanted to gain some perspective for my web site. Other reasons included “bringing several kids here is expensive; some free season passes would be nice” and “I’m going to be here all day anyway; I might as well make use of the time.”

Actually, most people find more than one reason to join the patrol, and with experience, they find more reasons to stay in the patrol. There’s the camaraderie and teamwork (Alexis de Tocqueville would have felt at home). There’s knowing (and reviewing) first aid principles that have proven useful not only on the hill, but elsewhere. There’s also the fact that a person’s ski and riding skills will advance. And face it, a small Midwestern resort (where this event was taking place) isn’t large enough or challenging enough to occupy a person’s interest for long. Being part of the patrol expands the experience.

TWO TASKS
The local patrol is part of the National Ski Patrol, which establishes various protocols and expectations. There are rules for giving first aid, and rules for transporting people off the mountain. In fact, the two parts of ski patrol most emphasized today were getting injured people off the slopes in a quick and safe manner, and offering them first aid that will, if need be, get them ready for being transported by ambulance elsewhere.

The pattern of injuries has changed, the leader of the patrol told us. A lot of the traffic is now walk in, wrist injuries to snowboarders rather than, say, knee or leg injuries to skiers.

ONE BIG HAPPY
I also met some experienced members of the patrol. They spoke of the reasons they joined, why they stay, and what they find enjoyable about this particular patrol. Management support of the patrol stood out as one key factor; a strong sense of solidarity on the patrol is another.

I’m amazed that patrol and ski area managements squabble. Most patrollers (at least here; I don’t know about what happens in the Rockies) are volunteers. The care and feeding of volunteers is an important consideration for any organization.

And let me emphasize that volunteering comes at a cost. Yes, patrollers get free tickets (at this area, at least, for their minor children as well). But the face significant opportunity costs. There is a 50-hour classroom requirement, to start with, plus another 8 hours of refresher training each year. Official jackets and fanny packs or backpacks in which to store the supplies, a couple hundred dollars, are purchased by patrollers. And, I wasn’t clear on this, but I think they must purchase their initial basket of supplies.

Patrollers also get lessons in how to ski and ride. This may seem ridiculous; after all, you would expect that people who want to serve on patrol already know how to ski and ride. And in fact, you do have to already know what you’re doing on the snow. This is not the place for a newbie to get free lessons. As part of the vetting process, we took a few runs down the steepest pitch offered by the ski area. (We all did fine.) The reasoning was simple, and sound: injuries can occur anywhere. You need to manage whatever terrain on which people will need help, in any snow conditions.

A patroller does undergo ski or snowboard training that goes back to the basics. The purpose of the snow training is not to create powerful movement, or fast movement, or graceful movement, but stable movement. If you’re sick or injured and riding in a sled being pulled by a patroller, the last thing you want is a bumpy ride. Oh yes, you can indeed be a snowboarder and serve on the patrol: the person who took the lead in the demonstration of toboggan handling was using snowboard equipment.

(Question: I’ve seen, out west, people pull toboggans with a snowmobile. Why not here? I don’t know. Snowmobiles are used by management to quickly transport patrollers to the top of a slope, if need be.)

Patrollers do have the authority to pull the lift ticket of a skier or rider who endangers others, goes out of bounds, and so forth. But I get the impression that the patrollers prefer that management “goons” deal with those problems, and focus instead on first aid and transportation.

Still, customer safety depends on good customer behavior. The person who skis out of control can injure himself. That’s bad enough. But such a person can also injure others. Then bad behavior certainly becomes a broader concern. However a resort chooses to accomplish the task, “law enforcement” and first aid go hand in hand.

ADDENDUM:
I just looked at the web site of the national organization. It looks like some ugly political debates and fights are going on. Over time, even the best organizations lose sight of their original vision, become bureaucratic at the expense of the mission, or change in other, harmful ways. It looks like some of the same problems may be going on here.

It’s best to be honest with your doctor, your lawyer, and … your snowboard instructor. Neither overestimating nor underestimating your abilities serves you well.

Today I was part of a group lesson–three instructors and 11 students. The students ranged a lot in ability. One or two may have never made it off the little teaching bump. I ended up working with one fellow who, by the end of the lesson, was cruising down a green run, linking turns.

Looking back, I wonder if we spent too much time on the basics, repeating certain drills.

Sometime after we were into the lesson for a while I found out that he had a skateboarder–for two years. It made me wish I had been more vigorous in asking about his sporting experience. Perhaps I didn’t ask him directly, or perhaps he had answered my question, posed to several students at the beginning of the class, and I just didn’t hear it in the hubbub.

Still, it was in fact his first trip down some green runs, so it’s not as if the time in the lesson was wasted for him. Far from it. It’s just possible, though, that he would have gone even farther had there been better teacher-student communication.

After a morning in which I helped 200 students get through their first day on skis, I quickly ate some lunch and took a snowboarding lesson.

When I got to the staging area, I saw a young girl and two women. The girl, no surprise. One of women was going to be in the class as well. That was a surprise.

The three knew each other. One of the women was not taking in the class. Instead, she had a video camera and shot some footage of the rest of us. I jokingly told her that we would charge spectators double.

We started out by learning how to fall. There were some jokes all around on that subject, but there was actually less falling in the lesson than you would think.

The girl had some experience in riding, but the older student had none. It’s hard to work with students of such differing abilities, but I tried to alternate the points. The more advanced student does one thing, the other student does something else, and so forth.

I’ve got to move on to other tasks for the day, so I won’t go into much detail on the lesson. But it went very well. We got the novice student sliding down from the top of the bunny hill. (Fortunately it was walkable. Her fairly nice gloves would have been chewed up by the rope tow.) She was able to traverse from one side of the hill on the toe edge. Like many people, she found it easier to slide on the toeside edge rather than the heelside. By the time I thought we should try the heelside, the lesson was already running late, and she was probably too tired to attempt a more advanced maneuver. She thought of stopping. That’s learning the smart way. Learning to ride involves taking on something more advanced than what you are comfortable with–but never biting off too much.

I was very pleased at the end of the lesson. First, because she had made substantial progress, progress that I could see at various points throughout the lesson. Two, because she said “Now I can cross something off my list of life goals.” That may have been a joke (or not), but I know how satisfying it was to determine to learn how to snowboard, and then figure out how to do it. My student needs to learn more, of course, but she is on her way. The third reason for my pleasure is that she gave me a nice tip when it was all over. Few instructors are in the business to get rich (and even fewer succeed). Still a little cold, hard cash is a significant sign of appreciation.

For three years, I took ski lessons each time I went to Colorado. Each time, I had the same instructor at least one of the days. In the third year, I finally tipped him. Now I wish I had done it earlier.

Remember your last exhausting, exhilarating day? That was today, when I had 200 students, plus two.

My ski school put out a call for instructors today; they were expecting over 200 students. Every couple of weeks or so, a group of students, usually in grades 5 and 6, or 7 and 8, converge at the ski area for a day. (Day in this case means 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.)

I don’t know how the arrangements are made, but I suspect that someone from the ski area approaches the school, says “Have we got a deal for you,” and the two parties negotiate a price for the bulk purchase of lift tickets and instruction.

Most of the kids, especially in grades 5 and 6, take lessons on skis. Yes, I said skis, even though it’s contrary to all of what you would expect from popular culture. For a variety of reasons, if you’re dealing with a small village of people who have never strapped engineered wood and wax to their feet, it’s easier to run them through ski lessons rather than snowboard lessons. Still, I have given a few snowboard lessons on these days. (If a kid claims some experience on the snowboard, he can try snowboarding.)

So today I went to the ski area, hoping to snag a lesson with one or two kids. Though the web site I operate is geared towards adults, teaching time is teaching time, and it gives valuable experience.

But when I got to the ski area, the director asked me to help with skiers. That was fine; I also own a pair of skies–but have used them only 5 days in the last two seasons–and I learned to ski not that long ago. Without skis in my car, however, what would I do? Plenty to occupy my time and tax my energy, it turns out.

When the ski area gets a group this large, they put the kids through “stations.” Every instructor encounters every student, and vice versa. Each instructor stays in one spot, and each student travels from station to station.

Station zero, you might say, is in the rental shop. Each customer coughs up information such as shoe size, height, weight, and skiing ability. A technician selects a boot size, ski size, and adjusts the binding on the ski. This is the first phrase of organized chaos.

Once they get outside, the students see a plastic flag with the number 1. This is the first station, where an instructor tells them how to stand up (yes, bend zee knees, but don’t bend the waist), and perhaps a few other things.

But before they get to station 1, the students must put boot into binding. Most have never done this before. So I tell them: push your toes forward into the binding, and then push the heel down. Sometimes, a student needs help, so I align a heel into the proper position, or step on one ski so that the student can get that second foot into the ski.

Did I mention that I’m wearing snowboard boots? Much better for walking around in than ski boots.

I send the kids on their way to station 1. They awkwardly skate or do the herringbone move to move slightly uphill to the station. A few of the weakest ones need some help in mobility, so I grab a number of hands and serve as a human towboat. I also pick a number of mittens off the ground. If you’ve never been in skis before, those sticks will feel awkward. Bending over at a strange angle may not be the best thing for you to do at the moment!

You may ask “why don’t the kids have poles?” Good question. I don’t know; my class used poles when I learned how to ski just six years ago. But here are three guesses: one, less equipment for the staff to deal with. Two, eliminate the possibility of the kids stabbing each other. Three, they kids won’t be learning enough today to make poles that useful.

(Here’s an old-school note: on any given Midwestern ski day, at least in my experience, it’s rare to see any skier under the age of, oh 17 with ski poles. That just doesn’t seem right.)

After my station–call it 0.5–the students move on to station 1, and then 2. After it appears that most everyone has gone to at least 1, I go over to station 3, halfway up a tow rope. My job: snag the students as they get “off” the rope and direct them over to another instructor, who will send them down the hill in their first “wedge” formation.

A few students know what they do when they let go of the rope: slowly turn the skis from the straight-uphill position to one that faces across the hill, and then slide over to the next instructor.

Most don’t know this. Some release the rope and start sliding downhill, backwards. Some don’t even get this far, but instead, fall down shortly after letting go.

So I spend the next 90 minutes working the crowd. I serve as human tugboat again for some, pulling them over to the staging area for the pie-wedge ski down. Others simply need a little verbal encouragement. Others need some instruction: point your skis in that direction. And still others need the most work: a helping hand in getting off the ground.

Of course, standing up from a fallen position takes some work. You don’t think about it normally, it’s so ingrained. But then put two skis on your feet, wooden objects at least as long as your legs, and you’ve got a recipe for difficulties. Skis cross. Legs are in awkward positions. Just when you think that you’ve got this business known as “standing up” figured out, one of your two skis slips away, taking your leg with it.

This is where my gym workouts have helped. I do a lot of exercises to strengthen my lower back and abdomen. (Later on in the day, I learn that I could have been smarter in my attempts to help the students off the ground.) Is it me, or have kids got fatter these days? I also notice that some look so big (not fat, just big) that they ought to be in eighth grade, not sixth.

Fortunately, I don’t spend all my time picking hundred-pound weights off the ground. At various times, I’m the one sending the kids down the hill: make a piece of pizza with your skis, put your hands out in front of you, squeeze a basketball between your knees, keep straight from your waist up, and don’t lean backwards.

Just when I think that I’ve just got to go get some lunch, the school director calls over to me. “One o’clock,” he says. “Can you do a lesson?”

Without thinking, I say yes–even though I’m already beat. I’ve got 30 minutes to grab some lunch.

The other night I may have figured out why snowboarding can be so enjoyable. It’s got the grace, fluid movements, freedom of expression, and athletic demands of ballroom dancing. At least it can. At least it seems like it would.

Now, I’m no ballroom dancer. I took a class in it once, 6 weeks long or so, and I could never remember the steps, and never felt comfortable when I could remember. And I am more likely to take a fast way down the piste–even in the vertically challenged Midwest–than playfully swirl and twirl.

Yet a snowboard allows a person to be, compared with skiing, light on the feet. Both feet work as one. The boots are much lighter. And yes, it can be easy to make spins.

I may change my mind. Maybe snowboarding isn’t like ballroom dancing after all. But until then, it works for me.

The best kind of lighting for snowboarding: full sunlight. The second best: artificial lights in full power. I’m going to expand on my previous comments on night sliding. In most cases, there will be a limited number of runs open. It’s going to be colder out. And you can’t see as well. Still, there’s something appealing about the night life. The lights cheat the darkness by exposing the snow. Instead of sitting in front of the TV, you’re being active. You also see the terrain with new eyes. But what of those in-between hours, especially on cloudy days? When the sky is merely dark gray, not black? When the lights have been turned on, but they’re not terribly visible? Yuck.

The other day I bought a pair of night vision goggles. Sounds pretty cool, like something that Army Rangers would use to hunt down the bad guys. Extend your capabilities, and all that. And for the most part, they worked. On occasion I had to lift my goggles up (while riding the lift) to let some condensation out. But they worked flawlessly on the slopes during 3 hours of night skiing.

I had figured that I would get just plain old clear plastic, but the shop owner said that these items, with a greenish tint, were specifically designed to filter out the glare of man-made lights. They did seem to work better than the old amber shades that I use for bright light. Then again, maybe it was a placebo effect. I’ll have to do a comparison sometime.