How hard is snowboard?
 

Waiting for my plane to goto colorado right now for a snowboarding trip with the wife/friends. I have never snowboarded before in my life. Is it hard?

I can skate(board) pretty good. Will that help me any?

Yes it will help you some, but expect to fall a LOT on your first day snowboarding.... and make sure you do up your inside buttons so you don't get a shitload of snow up your jacket and on your stomach or lower back... not fun lol :)

good luck man, you will have a BLAST :)

pick it up in about a week

As was said it should help.

Very steep learning curve but quicker the get good at than skiing (IMHO)

I'm sure you'll like it Tony just hang in there!:thumbsup - Talking about boarding, we're going to Whistler in a few weeks, anyone know the conditions up there? I heard this season sucks and it's very icy :helpme ?

I go boarding in Austria from the 3rd till the 14th of march, can't wait.

It is pretty easy when you can skateboard imo. Helped in my case ;))

Thanks for the advice cold wet pants would suck

good luck, my friend recently tried snowboarding for the first time and broke his leg :(

Skiing is hard for some reason.

Hopefully i don't spend all weekend falling on my ass :1orglaugh

I picked it up in about 2 bunny slopes.. I was an avid surfer and skateboarder as a kid thru my 20's so I think it definately helped. I think surfing helped more than skateboarding though... Big different from riding on rails feeling of a skateboard and riding on a sliding board.

snowboarding is easy, maybe my earlier skiing career helped me. Tommorow I am going to the Hintertux glacier (Austria) with my friends. Will be fun with my winter tires, last time I was there with old bald summer tires on my M3 and it was really crazy :D

I excitedly rented a board and gear last winter here and was ll looking forward to it, and I fuckign hated it, it was so damn hard, just felt like I was slipping on an ice rink the whole time. I had a go at it in Canada about 8 yrs ago and got the hang of it, maybe I was younger and more fitter than. I might try again one day, just fuckign standing up is hard enough, ekkkkkk

i live there part time, and yes the season seriously sucked balls this year.

Even if you hate it the first day stick with it because the second day will be much better.

Jesus christ bald tyres? lol, I was too whimpy assed to go up the slopes in my 4wd let alone a beamer with bald tyres, that must have been some trip dude!

I'm sure it will. :)

As long as you're not afraid and have good balance, you will be able to go down the slopes without falling too much after an hour or so.
If you hesitate going down, then you will end up falling on your ass a lot :)

Well in fact it was pretty common, I do this all the time :)) This time I decided to put on a winter tires because there is really and I mean really a lot of snow in Vienna.

I have a couple photos from that trip, sorry for the poor quality.
Here you can see how much snow there was:
http://blizzard.peakclick.com/img_6089.jpg

And here is my tire, it has like 3mm of the thread on the edges of the tire, the inner part of the tire is completely bald

http://blizzard.peakclick.com/img_6087.jpg

First few days are the hardest but you'll get the hang of it quick. In less than a week most people are able to follow a crowd of seasoned veterans at moderate speeds and go without falling. Tipsy's right, it is easier and much faster to get good at than skiing but it's a little tougher at first cuz you fall harder.


Have someone show you the ropes if you can, such as learning progression: here's a basic one i like to teach people:

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SNOWBOARDING 101:
here's a basic order that's easy to learn: before you go, setup your board "duck footed" which allows you to try both types of stances and eventually pick goofy or regular which is important to find out quickly. then like it or not, you have to learn how to get on and off the chair first. survival instinct will guide you through that one. Immediately you can start learning to feather in control using your heel edge, learn to stop using heel edge, do that a few runs till you get good at it. The next step is learning to go straight on your base without any edges digging in and keeping your balance, learn to position your body for turn control (point your eyes and belly button in the direction you wanna go), practice that and heel edge for a few more runs and after that is a good time to learn your toe edge. It's a little harder than heel but just as important. Spend a few more runs practicing that one as much as possible and try to switch heel-flat-toe to toe-flat-heel and back. It will take a while and don't expect to link turns like this the first day but you should try at least a couple of times. By then you should have done probably 6 to 10 very short bunny runs, a few dozen falls, several hours elapsed and be ready to progress.

You should gradually move up and start practicing on different kinds of flatter and steeper terrain and slightly longer runs, both greens and blues. After a few days of doing all that and getting comfortable on the board, you can finally force yourself to completely learn to link your turns and you're ready to follow the crowd. When you're in a tight spot, just feather your way out of it!. Some people can do all that in 2 or 3 days but it's a bit painful so don't be afraid to gear up with a helmet, knee pads, TP in your back pockets, thick sweaters, anything you got! It took me 6 days to get that good but I had to discover everything myself. Follow my tips (or anyone with experience) and you'll be able to progress much faster and with less pain!

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Your sense of balance from skateboarding will help, but it's still a very different sport so be prepared to put in the time to learn. And tungsten's friend probably followed a friend who thought the best way to learn was to go straight for black diamonds and learn the hard way, so just be careful not to follow that guy and progress in control and you'll be fine. It's hard to break a leg from just falling down on the bunny hill.

Have fun, I've snowboarded about 500 times since I moved to Tahoe and I absolutely love it.

Ok that's very sad to hear :( Would you say that the slopes are ok? I assume they're creating machine made snow up there now?

snowboard is dangerous as fuck man! Just becareful..

up high it's actually been pretty good the past couple of weeks. some decent dumps. if it snows while you are up, i recommend doing the fresh tracks: http://www.tourismwhistler.com/to_do...?sid=2&aid=190

basically you get up on the mountain before everyone else, get a free breakfast, and get to hit the runs before it gets all tracked out. the nightlife/dining is as kick ass as ever, so i'm sure you'll still have a great time :)

be ready to BUST YOUR ASS on day one, maybe day two.

i have been snow boarding since i was 16... i'm 32 now. old school burton air (first design) is what i started on. lol

every person i have ever seen try it, day one is a hard one. once you get it down, its great. stick with it, it will happen, and remember to keep an edge or you will go down.

damn easy ;) been doing it for years now, i still remember my first time on the board... took about 2 - 3 lessons and just went on my own from there...

heaps of fun, deffinatly worth doing :D

That sounds very cool, we'll try that for sure :thumbsup Thanks

Ick - nasty typo in my original post :)

And yep. Skiing is easier to get sliding without falling on your ass. However it takes most people ages to get half-decent parallel turns. With boarding you spend loads of time on your ass for the first week but it gets MUCH easier after that :)

The goofy/regular thing *shouldn't* be an issue with you if you skateboard. You'll usually just have the same foot leading :)

It is hard only first 2-3 rides :pimp