Grays On Trays

If your snowboarding gets a little stale (that’s never going to happen, right?), you might consider spending some time on skis.

According to the National Sporting Goods Association, 20 percent of snowboarders are skiers, and 18 percent of skiers are snowboarders, so there’s some healthy cross-training activity going on. Trying out (or going back to) skiing can give you the opportunity to overcome a new challenge, which is what sends many people into snowboarding in the first place.

I started snowboarding eight years ago because skiing on my a little bump of 300 vertical feet lost its appeal pretty quickly. I thought that taking up snowboarding would make the hill a challenge once again. And you know what? I was right.

For several years after that, I only went snowboarding, and kept the skis in the closet. Then one year I took the skis out for a day, and decided I didn’t want to lose the ability to ski. So every season since then, I’ve taken my skis out a few times. Last week, I spent two different days (a total of 10 hours) on skis at my local bump hill. It wasn’t like learning to ski as a never-ever, but it did take me back to the days of being an advanced beginner.

I spent the first couple of hours on two of the easiest slopes, concentrating on making big, sweeping turns. Then I mixed in a slightly steeper slope, and with that came a new level of challenge. (Did I mention that you have to like challenges and not be afraid of being a beginner to switch up equipment?) Left-hand turns were easy; right-hand turns were not. In fact, I was in the grip of fear. What if I couldn’t complete the turn and started sliding downhill, out of control at an advancing rate of speed? Would I crash and injure my knee in the process?

Memories of the way we were. I briefly thought that a lesson might be required.

But I kept going, using my part-turn, part-snowplow maneuver to get to the next lift, which then took me to some slopes with long, fairly flat runs that finished off with lips that were not too steep. Or so I thought. Once confronted with making a right-hand-turn on the lip for the first time, I hesitated. I slide slipped, started a turn, slide slipped, and stopped again. Then I dismounted, turned my skis around, and skied off without having made a proper turn. Foiled by a left foot that had grown to 160cm, and a  leg that was immobilized as far as lateral movements go. So I went back to the novice slopes and started again.

Eventually the left-hand turns started coming back. They weren’t ideal, but they were coming back. New snow started falling, and the lights came on for night skiing. Both factors seemed to put me in a zone.  I was very briefly transported back, at least in my mind, to Elk Camp, a fine set of intermediate slopes at Snowmass. And then a little bubble of joy went off inside: “Yes. This is why I liked skiing!” My legs, skis, the slope, and gravity were working together to give an adrenaline rush for doing something that is at once dangerous and perfectly safe, irrational and logical.

Two days later I returned, and spent the morning on my snowboard. It was good to be back in my element, but it didn’t take long to cover all the interesting terrain on the board. Variety is something that’s important to me, so it was time to exchange the board for skis. Being on skis made the hill new again. Next up: running the NASTAR course on a snowboard, and then on skis.

Call me crazy, but I think that the opportunities offered by snowboarding, skiing, and other wintertime activities are too enjoyable to worry about how other people enjoy them.

Even as we wind down snowboarding’s third decade, the alleged feud between skiers and snowboarders still gets press. (Sometimes the attitudes are in fact not friendly; witness some online discussions when Taos Ski area announced that it would open its terrain up to snowboarders.)

But here’s something I was not aware of: an anti-snowboarder sentiment within snowboarding. Perhaps naive, I was surprised how vulgar and anti-human at least one expression of this sentiment was.

Karine Ruby won the first Olympic gold medal in snowboarding, at the 1998 games. In the words of one recent article about her, she became “the most decorated female snowboarder in the world, with 2 Olympic medals, 6 world championship titles and 67 snowboard World Cup victories.”

Unfortunately, that article was her obituary in the New York Times. On a mountain climb, she fell 70 feet to her death.

The Times included one passage that some people might find incendiary. Here it is:

“‘In the snowboarding world, she was an unavoidable icon,’ Joel Franitch, the French Skiing Federation’s director of snowboarding, said in a telephone interview. ‘It’s a huge loss for the sport.”

Did you see the offending text? “French Skiing Federation.”

What gives?

Here’s the answer. The Olympic games are run by the International Olympic Committee, or IOC. For each sport, the IOC picks which governing body sets the rules for who can participate. When the IOC decided it wanted to have snowboarding in the games, it had to pick which organization to deal with. There was an existing organization for snowboarders, but the IOC instead picked FIS, the worldwide skiing organization. That move provoked some anger among snowboarders, and the world’s leading snowboarders refused to participate.

Over 20 years later, a few people are not willing to let that sleight go, as revealed by the following conversation I had on Twitter with a party I’ll call “AS.” My comments are preceded by “GOT.” I’ve done some editing, if you can’t tell.

AS: honestly was Karine Ruby a f—ing saint or something? Her skis were stuck together and called a snowboard

GOT: Karine Ruby a saint? No. But she was a pioneer, champion snowboard racer, etc. Too much anger there? Why?

AS: pioneer of what keeping snowboarding in the ski genre? Racing isn’t snowboarding, she’s dead people deal with it

GOT: Still mad about the role of FIS? You *are* an angry dude. I beg to differ: snowboarders *can* race.

GOT: BTW, remembering someone’s contributions and life is in fact a way of dealing with death. Is that a problem?

AS: hard booting carvers are nothing more than spandex wearing wannabe skiers that couldn’t hack it ski racing

AS: also how many people knew and remembered her before she died? These are the same people that suddenly cry about it, that’s sad

GOT: Spandex ain’t my thing either, but live and let slide, I say.

And I still do. I’m not a hardbooter, though I’m intrigued by it and may try it out sometime. I seldom watch snowboarding or skiing events (for one thing, they’re hard to find on TV), but I do think that the death of anyone who has accomplished something and has a lot of life ahead of them is a sad, and a loss to many people. No man is an island, and all that.

So whatever you enjoy doing on the snow, do it, enjoy it, and be grateful for the opportunity to do it. And don’t hate. Save your energy for something productive.

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.

I was a cross-dresser. By that, I don’t mean that I was wearing women’s clothing; instead, I had skis rather than a snowboard attached to my feet.

Last season I went out for a day on skis, after going three years without having been on skis. It was awkward enough that I decided to spent at least one or two days a season on skis, just so I wouldn’t forget.

Due to some problems with my snowboard bindings, I spent my first day on the hill this season was on my old Volkl carving skis.

Why did I do it? Because a few days before I had spent $36 on some new straps for my ski poles.

Most poles have a strap built in, and you stick your hand through the strap to keep the poles from flying away from you. Leki has a system in which the strap is permanently attached to the glove. Stick the yellow piece of plastic attached to the strap (see photo above) into a slot at the top of the ski pole, and you’ve got a secure strap-pole connection. Need to put your poles down? Push a button on the top of the pole to disconnect the strap.

It’s a pretty nifty system, but if you lose your gloves, you’re out of luck, forced to use other poles or skiing without a strap–which could mean that if you somehow lose control of your pole, you may find yourself 100 feet down the hill from your pole.

I figured it was time to get my ski gear back to full functionality, so I bought the straps. And that meant, of course, that I had to try them out.

So for the first time since February 2005, I went to a hill with proper skis and ski poles. Having the right poles certainly made skiing easier than using my hand-me-down cross-country poles of the wrong length. And I started my turns much better than I had in December.

Having your head always pointing down the fall line is an advantage that skiing has over snowboarding, though the whole package (skis and especially boots) felt rather heavy under my feet.

Next up: Taking both board and skis to a ski area on the same day and running the NASTAR course with each setup. If I recall correctly, snowboarders get a 10 second handicap on NASTAR, which was, after all, started by skiers for skiers. It will be interesting to see how my own times actually compare to each other.

As a kid, you waited and waited for Christmas, didn’t you? As you grow older, that sense of anticipation may be replaced with the wait for your first turns on the snow. Happily, I didn’t have to wait until Christmas.

Today I made my first turns, though this is probably the latest that I’ve ever had to wait in a season. The problem hasn’t been the snow, but a variety of work and family issues, as well as the fact that the local hills started their season later than they have in some other years.

A snowfall last night, combined with bluebird skis, got me in the mood to make a quick run, even if it was on skis.

Skis?

Yes, skis. I haven’t yet retrieved my board from the shop, where I had to take it after some of the fastening hardware had worked itself loose. Besides, my one-day excursion on skis last year convinced me that I didn’t want to lose the ability to
ski.

Ski boots vs. Snowboard boots
Once I got to the parking lot of the ski area, I realized, once again, that there are trade-offs no matter what you put on your feet. I like being able to tighten down my ski boots, but hate how heavy they are.

Snowboard boots are much more walkable than ski boots, but the distance from my car to the base area was short, so I opted to change in the parking lot. Doing that was actually easier than carrying the boots–they’re bulking and 8 pounds each–to the lodge and changing there.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Poles
I must have looked fairly odd, since I was sporting my year-old Obermeyer jacket and toting 30-year old cross-country skis with orange-sized baskets. To make me look further out of place, the poles are all knotty and made out of bamboo, looking like you’d use them for an old-school fishing day. Never mind, at least they have straps. (My regular ski poles have detachable straps, which have disappeared somewhere into the clothing black hole.)

Though snowboarders, lacking poles, can get into trouble in the flats, they’re sometimes better off in the lift line without them. On skis, you’re pretty much at the mercy of your poles to get you up to the starting line. But if the snow near the lift is as hard as ice–as it was today–poles may not be as helpful as a free foot that the snowboarder uses to skate with.

Ice skating and Skiing
So how did I do skiing? It was a bit rough. For the first half of my 90 minutes, my preferred method of starting a turn was to go back to the wedge. Only later did I start moving towards making direct-to-parallel turns.

The experience made me think that skating (ice, in-line, or otherwise) is good practice for skiing. Of course, it doesn’t help at all with snowboarding.

Anyway, after I was done, I called the shop. My board is ready. Next time out, it’s back to snowboarding for most of the season. But regardless of what equipment is on my feet, it’s great to be on the snow.

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.

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 season I’ve taken the cross-country skis out a few times, to a neighborhood park and the playground of a nearby school. The sensation of gliding on the skis is quite different from that gained by sliding on a board. I made just enough very small turns along the way to remember that making turns on skis is different, too. So how, I wondered, would I do back on downhill skis?

We’re coming near the end of the season here in the Midwest, and I’ve felt the need to mix things up a bit. Call it the Colorado comedown. In February I took my board out to mountains with a vertical drop of 2,000 or 3,000 feet. Now that I’m back home my terrain has 300 vertical feet and I’m looking for a way to make it look more interesting. Oddly enough the desire to spice things up is one reason I started snowboarding a few years ago. So maybe it was time to complete the circle and try a little downhill ski action.

One powerful way to learn anything is to make comparisons. Maybe it was time to advance my snowboarding knowledge by putting in some time on skis. Compare and contrast, you know.

So I pulled the ski boot bag off the shelf in the basement, where it has remained untouched since February, 2005. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I could put on my ski boots, and I wore them about the house for an hour or so.

A few days later I decided it was time to bring the skis out of the office closet, where they’ve been standing, unused.

When the appointed day came, I gathered my stuff. Getting everything out to the car was a bit of a struggle. Skis are heavier than any snowboard, and the boots are heavier, too. Then you’ve got poles to deal with, too, leading to some clutter in the hands.

But I got everything into the car just fine and drove to a local hill. Once there, I was able to get my boots on without any trouble, step into the bindings, and start skiing.

So what was it like?

The experience was both more pleasant and a bit more awkward than I had anticipated. It was more pleasant in this way: I had no foot pain, much unlike the last time I was on skis. Then again, the last time was on 2-mile runs out west, not the 45-seconds-and-you’re-done trips we have here. So there would probably be some adjustment for my feet–a toughening-up time–if I spent a lot of time on skis again.

I started out on the bunny hill, since I wanted plenty of room to play with the skis before diving into something steeper. Getting on to and off of the chair lift was no problem. But once I started heading down the hill, uncertainty crept in.

How do I turn? I’m doing the splits! One foot is turning this way, but my other foot wants to go another!

When skiers start snowboarding, they sometimes feel uncomfortable with the fact that the feet don’t move independently of each other. Now I was feeling uncomfortable with the fact that on skis, they can.

It didn’t take long, though, for me to start moving my feet into something resembling parallel turns. I’m sure that my form wasn’t ideal, and I slowed down more than I wanted to. But I was skiing, and even started making some short-radius turns.

There are still more conclusions to draw from the day, but here’s one immediate one: Each season I should spend a day or two back on skis. I don’t want to relive those first awkward runs. Besides, “compare and contrast” isn’t just for college and graduate school exams; it’s a way to learn and appreciate the different qualities of all that is good.

Early spring can be a good time to break out the cross-country skis. There’s a “been there, done that” feeling to the hills that I call my “mountain home.” And driving to the gym for a workout loses some of its appeal when the sun is out and the temperature has warmed up a bit.

So over the last few weeks I’ve taken old the old skinny skis. They’re so old that nobody makes those kind of bindings anymore. But I do like the fact that they’re easy to get into and out of–easier than some of the new bindings that I tried one day last season. The cross-country boots aren’t necessarily more comfortable than snowboard boots, but they’re even easier to don, since they are glorified shoes, though with not as much padding in the soles.

But those skis. Oh my. They’re fine for straight glides on flat terrain, though they’re probably quite slow. Still, sliding down a slight hill can give me a sense of not-being-in-control. Unlike a snowboard, skis allow (and sometimes seem to force) you into doing a version of the splits. Time to get back to the gym and hit that adductor machine! I could feel that I had been working my inner thighs with some of those desperation snowplow moves.

A second adjustment of stepping off the snowboard is that the skis are so much longer. Downhill skiers have adopted the parabolic shape of the snowboard, but cross-country skis–or at least the relics I am using–are straight, and long.

I never learned how to make turns on straight skis, so the length of the skis leaves me in an awkward state. Granted, the “turns” I am making on the cross-country skis are barely noticeable on downhill skis. But then again, these aren’t downhill skis. There are no edges!

So taking out the cross-country skis almost–though not quite–brings back the delight and frustration of being a newbie, and the question of what the experience of downhill skis would be like after being exclusively on a snowboard for four seasons.

More on that later ….

One of my favorite types of news articles are the ones about adult snowboarders. They have this “Holy Cow! Can you believe that?” quality to them.

I’ll grant that it’s a rather old story now, as adults have been snowboarding for years now. Then again, you’ll always find stories telling you that winter is here and guess what, there’s an outbreak of the flu. In both cases, old news can be informative (get that shot! give snowboarding a try!), and at least with snowboarding, it can make the winter go (too) quickly.

The latest publication to catch on to the grays on trays phenomenon is Crains Detroit Business. It features Patrick Becker (age 40); Greg Flowers (42); Brad Hynes (44); and Oliver Dixon (42). These men are no slackers, working (respectively) as a vice president of sales and marketing; an automotive designer; a vice president of operations; and a marketing manager.

They’ve got some pretty good skills for grown-up riders. Becker is an experienced instructor; Hynes teachers a snowboarding team at a local high school; Dixon has participated in USASA competitions; and I suspect that Flowers is no slouch, either.

The story offers several benefits of snowboarding:

• Innovation is the spice of life;
• It’s a resume boost [really?];
• A thrill of competition;
• A rush from big air [sorry, I can't relate];
• Joy of playing in the snow;
• Families can enjoy it together;
• The equipment is lighter (no back strain!);
• There are plenty of opportunities to try something new;
• A community of people with a shared passion.

So dads, moms, and just anyone 30 and up, if you haven’t tried snowboarding but find it interesting, find a snow sports school and take a lesson or three. (You might benefit a lot from getting a private lesson from another adult.) It may be one of the best purchases you’ve ever made.