Snowboarders Are the Scum of the Earth!  :) ..Or something like that.

As a skier for thirty-one years now, raised in one of the more famous ski communities in the eastern United States, schooled at perhaps the skiing (or "ski-bumming") mecca of higher education (The University of Colorado), shouldn't I say something like that? Are not skiers and snowboarders like cats and dogs, generally living in the same house, but never REALLY able to get along?

I grew up next to three large and well-known ski resorts, where nearly every weekend of my Elementary and Middle School days, at least during the winter, I was skiing, along with many of my peers. Many of my friend's parents had met skiing, as had mine. The presence of a ski academy the next town over saw that many fine skiers were in the midst of my surroundings (the school's graduates include famous downhiller Doug Lewis, and current Super-G World Champion Daron Rahlves, among others). Some of my childhood friends went on to the US National Ski Team, both Alpine and Nordic, Olympic Competition, NCAA, and even NAIA Championships. The one constant through all this was Skiing, Skiing, Skiing, and even more Skiing.

So why is it that I don`t completely castigate boarding? It is certainly in my upbringing. Many "back home" do. Mad River Glen, which gained notoriety as one of the last ski areas in the United States to ban snowboarders is a mere six miles from the first house I lived in. My brother, who can pocket one hundred or more dollars a day as a local ski guide, and his skiing friends often derisively refer to snowboarders. 

A friend from elementary school, who went on to compete on the pro mogul tour, and get his picture on the cover of SKI magazine, thought it the epitome of hilarity to try to convince me he was "a boarder" now (I didn't fall for it), when I had met him for the first time in about six years. In all fairness, I will try to give snowboarding its due. After all, Jean-Claude Killy (yes, THAT Jean-Claude Killy), arguably the most famous skier of them all, has become a "`boarder", at least on his own snow time, as he still makes a ton of money slapping on the "planks" for skiing "How To" videos. There must be something to the snowboard phenomenon.

Nonetheless, whatever this magical "something" is, I certainly did NOT experience it the one time I tried to snowboard. I fell, and then fell a few hundred more times, before calling it a day. I experienced nothing like the thrill of doing a very quick non-stop run on a slick, steep slope of "packed", being in hip-deep powder, or successfully navigating a mogul course (this done BEFORE a bad lumbar disc forced me to all but give up moguls completely). I keep saying I will try it again, maybe even force myself through those painful "first six or seven times" boarding, that an experienced skier or relatively athletic person (I'm both) will need to become a capable boarder. I keep saying that, but it is yet to come to fruition.

However, lately, if someone asks me (or many other skiers who make the same juxtaposition, at least if they do it fairly), I recommend taking up snowboarding first, before skiing. Certainly, it is much easier to learn than skiing. I have seen rank beginners become capable of boarding expert trails capably in the space of half a season. If someone is driven enough, athletic enough, and willing to take their lumps, they will pick up snowboarding to a point where it "really" becomes worth it in a much shorter time. I have seen people attempt skiing with all the aforementioned perseverance and athleticism, and it still took in excess of a ski season to really become "quite capable on skis". 

I can also recall how many of the thirty-one years I've been skiing it took me to be competent.... it took long enough.... OK! In light of how much it costs to equip yourself, and then pay to be at a resort on top of that... it really isn't worth it to take up skiing unless you have a lot of time, money, and patience, or at least time and money. For someone coming to Japan, having never seen snow before, and then finding themselves next door to a winter playground and wanting to take advantage of it, why waste a winter getting decent when it can be done in a month or two? Get "your bang for your buck (Yen, Mark, Pound, Loonie, Franc, etc.)".  Snowboard!

It has been a relatively short time for snowboarding's impact to be felt by the mountain resort industry. Jake Burton is believed to be the inventor of the snowboard, and that was done in the early 1980s. It was the fall of 1988 when reading a University of Vermont student newspaper, I read something about a "fad" that some college-aged students of the time were participating in on Vermont ski slopes, including yet another one of my peers from elementary school days. 

Well here it is, a little more than a decade later, I'm half way across the world in Japan, and that "fad" is here to stay. Judging by the relative age of those choosing to snowboard, or "mini ski", or "ski board" (or eschew the former standard "alpine" ski in any other form on the mountain) that it will only grow in proportion. 

The alpine skier, much like the Caucasian-American, faces a day in the future where they are in the minority. The changing color of the United States has been a phenomenon that has been going on for decades, but snowboarding? Twenty years ago Jake Burton was probably having troubles paying his bills every month and eating ramen (and I'm NOT talking about the "good" stuff that is served in a large steaming lacquer bowl here in Japan), let alone contemplate what to do with his next billion dollars.

Will I join this phenomenon? No, at least, not in any major way. I have seen some skiers completely convert to a snowboard, never to look back. I have seen others pick it up and become competent giving themselves a bigger variety of choices in coming down the mountain. I think that when it comes to navigating powder, the snowboarder may just have it a little better. I have even seen snowboarders flying by at great speeds, and some who can even maneuver through mogul fields as if they were on skis, things that snowboarders are supposed to relatively weaker at. Yet, I still will not join that, in any major part.

The first reason I will not join that is due to age. In my early thirties, I'm just too old to start. The youth of today snowboards in great quantity, and when I do see anyone older than their mid-twenties on a snowboard, I tend to gawk, yes gawk, just like the Japanese Elementary Schoolchildren (and more so) their little brothers and sisters, who have never seen a foreigner and get confronted with my 6'1"(184 cm.), 200 pound (90 Kilogram), goateed and side burned presence. It just seems so out of place, like my appearance does in Japan, where I am part of a 1% minority. Yes, I believe in freewill, personal freedom, and the lack of importance in others opinions (OK, to a CERTAIN extent), but nonetheless, I don't choose to become a boarder in earnest.

The second reason, is a much more important reason. It is the reason why skiing is so good these days, and it is the reason many skiers choose to stay skiers, instead of converting. That is WAR. WAR? Yes WAR! Ski and snowboard manufacturers are in competition for the resort goer's dollar. The hegemony of skiing is a thing of the past, never to return. It has forced may ski equipment manufacturers to retool, diversify, reequip, reorganize, innovate, invent, in short, improve or perish. This has caused a revolution in the industry, that can best be explained with...forgive me, a WAR metaphor.

In World War Two, Germany and Japan challenged the status quo of the world order that was spearheaded by its innovative technology, most notably in aviation. In order to combat this, the allied forces were forced to innovate to survive. Technology was forced to jump a generation in the space of less than a decade, in order to turn the tide of the war. Much like the Allies who didn't turn the tide of the war until they could surpass the Axis in the air, the ski industry has had to make an equally revolutionary jump, one that without the competition for control of the ski buyers market would never happen. My current Dynastar 

"Speed" model skis, that carve on a dime, and are the fastest skis I've ever been on (at 192 cm.????) are like a supersonic interceptor, compared to the propeller driven bomber-like, lumbering Dynastar "Omeglass" 207`s, that were "state of the art" in ski manufacturing a decade or so ago. To this end, every skier should be grateful to those who don boards and contributed to this "revolution" in the ski industry. Don't think that carving skis, fats, mid-fats, what-have-you, etc. would have been developed for another ten to twenty years yet (if ever?) without the push of the snowboard. I started to find skiing a bit tedious a few years back, and also quite expensive. I could have succumbed to a "fresher alternative". A revolution started in the hills of Southern Vermont and echoed throughout the world. That revolution, that brought a "fresher alternative" of the snowboard, prodded ski manufacturers in to producing their own "fresher alternative", and for that I am grateful.

I now can ski faster, and with better form than I ever have before, thanks to the "revolution". Needless to say, I can maneuver much better than before. The fading memory of my thick 207-cm. skis now seems like slapping telephone poles onto my feet compared to today's skis. Even returning to a "regular" ski is enhanced, as my biomechanics, attuned to a carving ski, can produce the same or similar movements on a regular ski that they couldn't before. I'm able to ski in ways that I couldn't before, or at least had to make twice the effort to do back then. Quick turns that I worked hard at before are now produced effortlessly. Powder? Almost non-existent in my upbringing in Vermont, and financially inaccessible more than a few times a winter during my time in Colorado. Powder? It is a WHOLE NEW ADVENTURE here in Japan, where it falls in ample amounts in places like Hachimantai and Hakkoda, and the legendary Hokkaido snow awaits. Snowboarding, ironically, gave me a "fresher alternative" on skis, and has enhanced my skiing more than any other innovation I can remember.

Snowboarders, can be a tad inconvenient when they block your way with those wide swooping turns, but I really don't have a problem with that. I have them to thank for perhaps the best thing that has happened to skiing since someone was timed going down the Hannenkamnh for the first time. Really, in the long run, which is a bigger difference in the type of person? Is it the difference in what one chooses to go down the mountain upon? Or is it those who choose to spend their leisure time shopping at a department store, perhaps flopped on a couch with the remote in one hand, potato chips in the other against those who choose to get outdoors and accept what the Rockies, Andes, Alps, Sierra Nevadas, Green and White Mountains, and that mountain range disguised as an island nation, Japan, has to offer? I'll take the latter.

Anyone who wants to go to the mountains in the winter (spring, summer, or fall, too) and hit the slopes is Ok in my book.... Just don't tell anyone back home I said that...being the birthplace of Snowboarding, and Skiing (in the United States) it could get me in a lot of trouble!