Grays On Trays

Snowboarding with poles? What could be sillier than that? After all, in snowboarding, you rock back and forth between heel and toe, while on skis you rock from one side of the foot to the other.

I have read, on occasion, a recommendation for novices to try snowboarding with poles. But while at Crested Butte, I saw something I had never seen before: someone navigating an expert pitch while on a snowboard, and using skis.

Riding up the Paradise lift, you’ll see some steep glades to your east. They’re double diamonds. And who did I see coming through those glades, but a snowboarder with ski poles. It was an odd sight.

What gives? Perhaps the poles were for flatter sections–after all, you don’t come out of terrain like that at a great speed. Perhaps they somehow assisted in making tight turns, though at the moment I can’t figure out how that would happen.

Any thoughts? Leave a comment.

Though I’ve never been much of a gearhead, yesterday I tried out two new pieces of snowboarding gear.

The first was a new set of gloves. They’ve got some built-in wrist guards, designed to disperse the forces of a sudden impact so that you don’t suffer a fractured wrist. Did you know that wrist injuries are the most common injuries in snowboarding? I’ve suffered two mild sprains in my time, the first coming on my second day out.

I’ll have more to say about these gloves later, but I was pleased with their performance as gloves. I didn’t get to sample their effectiveness in avoiding injury, thankfully.

The second piece of snowboarding gear I sampled was an all-mountain snowboard. Thanks to being an instructor, I came across a guy who is a sales rep. He hooked me up with a new board for a few hours. When I held it in my hand and compared it with my current board, it didn’t feel any lighter. But it felt lighter when it was attached to my feet. Perhaps that’s because it seemed to have a quicker edge-to-edge response.

It didn’t ride too well for me, though; I wiped out on heelside turns several times. Though I rarely fall these days, it could have been operator error–an unfamiliarity with the board. Perhaps I’ll try it again next week.

Yesterday I went to my third and final ski swap of the pre-season. As was the case with the other two meets, I looked but did not buy.

Every sport has its gearheads. I used to think that golf was the most extreme case; there’s a new gimmick for drivers or irons or (especially) putters every year. And that’s just the clubs. A visit to a local “outdoors” store made me reconsider, however: maybe it’s fishing, with the variety of rods, reels and (especially) lures.

I’m not much of a gearhead when it comes to snowboarding, and I can take only so much tech talk. Still, I look forward to the swaps as an easy low-pressure way to see what’s new–or perhaps more accurately, what was new a couple years ago.

The first two swaps I went to this month were at local ski hills. Oddly enough, the new gear that was being sold came not from local shops, but from two shops at a distance–as in adjacent states!

Here is another oddity: you may think that snowboarding is taking over everywhere. Yet at each of the swaps I attended, there was much more ski gear for sale than snowboarding equipment.

Yesterday’s festivities took place at the fairgrounds, not at a ski hill. Perhaps that’s one reason why I had to pay an admission fee. Bummer. On the other hand, I got two lift tickets for the trouble, each one of which is worth more than the cost of admission.

I talked with a ski area representative about the show. He recommended to the organizers that they include the word “board” in the title of the event. They did. It didn’t help. There was even less snowboarding equipment at this event than at the two on-hill events. It was interesting to see a whole table of rental boots, however; they all had a metal rod, used for step-in bindings, that was perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the boot.

There were several exhibitors, with tables, distributing brochures, candies, and tickets for drawings. Sign your name, address, and get put on a mailing list–and perhaps win something.

I was going to stop at one table, but the woman attending the table was yakking on her cell phone. “Yah, it’s kinda boring here.” So much for customer service!

I bought my board from this swap a couple of years ago. If I get a different board (something smaller and more manuverable), it won’t be coming from a swap. At least not this year.

The Wall Street Journal picks up on the theme of a post from late last season, on the value of sex-specific sporting goods.

In “A Tennis Racket of Their Own,” Carmen Fleetwood says that “Sporting-goods makers target women with gear designed specifically for female physiques.”

Tennis rackets, for example, may now accommodate for the fact that on average, a woman will have less upper-body strength (not good) but more flexible joints (presumably good). The difference? The weight is distributed more equally throughout the racket, leaving less (proportionately) at the head. By taking some of the weight off the point furthest away from the player’s hand, the racket becomes easier to use by someone with less strength. Or at least that’s the theory.

Why do these design differences matter?

Comfort. Performance. Less risk of injury. Heavier rackets for women may increase the number of injuries to the shoulder’s rotator cuff.

The WSJ says that there may be a bright future for products of these sorts, especially with an aging cohort of baby boomers.

Sounds like a winner to me. As a society and economy we are advancing in our knowledge of medicine and engineering. Why not take advantage of that knowledge? I’ve been a big fan of Flow bindings, for example, since they seem to require less stretching and bending than many strap bindings–good things for an older body.

Does gender-specific equipment help?

The other day I talked with Jeannie Thoren, a leading expert on the topic of women-specific ski equipment. Thoren, a former ski racer, is a passionate advocate of women-specific skis and boots. SkiPress World calls her the pioneer of women’s-specific ski gear. She spends much of the year traveling the country for Dynastar, giving clinics on how anatomy should drive ski design.

You can read her ideas at her web site, or do a Google search to find second-person accounts of her work. The essential point of her message is that women, having a lower (and further back in the body) center of gravity than men, are ill-served by most ski equipment, which is designed with men’s bodies in mind. It’s not that a woman can’t become good or even great skier on men’s skis–but she will be working with a handicap if she uses ski equipment that is designed for the physics of a man’s body.

I asked Thoren if the same problem exists with snowboards. Her answer: yes. (She does know how to snowboard, but works with, and rides, skis.) She said that there is still a need for women-specific equipment in snowboarding. I’d like to see that idea developed some more. Some boards are being sold as women’s board, but if I remember our conversation correctly, Thoren thinks that there’s still much work to be done in getting some truly women-friendly boards out there.

As someone who learned how to ski only after the shaped-ski revolution (borrowing from snowboards) took place, I would have to agree that having the proper equipment can make a significant difference.

I’ve never tried using poles while snowboarding. Good thing, you say? Indeed.

I have read that some people, including a doctors’ group, recommend using poles to help with the early days of riding. A woman I have skied with while during my Colorado trips has tried riding a board in her home state of Michigan. She says that she has tried using poles. Now I wish I had remembered how that experiment worked out.

Skiers–and here I mean people using two sticks to slide down the mountain, not “skiers” in the generic sense of snow sliders–use poles in at least four ways: for moving across the flats; as a prop while learning how to ski; for help in getting up small hills or going up big hills for a short distance; and finally, for establishing rhythm during turns (pole plants).

Snowboarders are in some ways at a disadvantage for not having poles.

Getting across the flats requires keeping up speed, a somewhat dangerous proposition. Why is that? On steeper terrain, you’ve got more of a built-in angle between the edge of the board and the ground. You can be a little sloppy by not paying as much attention to the edge angles.

But on the flats, you have lost that margin for error. If you tilt up on edge at the wrong time, or to the wrong degree, you will be punished with the dreaded “face plant” or “butt plant.”

You may, on the other hand, wish to ride through a flat with a board that is nearly, well, flat. This means that you’re going to pick up speed–perhaps more than you are comfortable with.

One way out of this challenge is to skate, whereby the front foot is in the binding and the back foot propels the board. But this has its own difficulties. Most beginning riders have no experience on a skateboard, and skateboarding is what you are doing when you are skating on a snowboard. Further, you are, most likely, going to start your riding career with a stance that is nearly 0-0 degrees. That is, if you draw a line from the tip of the board to the tail, your knees will be standing perpendicular (a 90 degree angle) to that line.

What this means is that while skating, your head will be looking beyond the tip, your back foot will be moving in a line next (parallel) to the board, but your front foot will be pointed sideways to the direction you are pushing. Not only can this be a strain to your knees, it’s just plain unusual, which is to say, awkward.

Can poles be a prop for learning how to ride? I have my doubts that this is a good idea. Poles are good for skiing. In skiing, your toes are lined up with the tip of the boards; in snowboarding, your toes usually … aren’t. So the way that you turn, the way that you stand, the way …. It’s all different. Where and how would you use poles, anyway?

Even if you are able to use poles a crutch early on, eventually you would not need them. Then what do you do? You’ve developed habits and muscle memory that will cause problems with riding.

Neither are poles useful in initiating turns, as they are in skiing. Riding requires a different logic.

Which brings us to using poles to get oneself up small inclines. The most common place that riders (or at least this rider) face this problem is when there’s a dip in the land between the end of the ramp and the start of the piste.

When you face a situation like this, you have this sequence:

- Leave the chair, with the back foot outside the binding.
- Come to a stop, even though one’s ability to use edge control has been compromised by the fact that only one foot can actually control a binding.
- Get into the binding and start sliding down.
- oops! Did you forget that ever-so-slight incline? No sliding for you! Unbuckle and walk up that incline. Re-buckle.

This is where having poles around would be helpful. Or would it? Very few riders (carvers, mostly) ride with stance angles anywhere approaching those used by skiers–that is, with the toes of both feet pointing to the tip of the board.

Given that, using poles could be rather difficult.

And assume for a moment that you could use the poles to maneuver to the next place where you can start sliding downhill. What do you do with the poles? Reduce them, sci-fi like, into something that would fit into the palm of your hand? Throw them off to the side of the trail and hope that someone can hand them to you next time you come by?

No, using poles on a snowboard just doesn’t work. Riders must find other ways to cope with the problems that make the use of poles an interesting possibility.

A few weeks ago I took my board into a local shop to get it waxed before the season. Yesterday I picked it up. Now all I need to do is put the bindings back on.

I had taken the bindings off. One reason was to give the topsheet a good cleaning; the other was to make it easier for the shop to store the board before they actually started working on it.

Shows you what I know.

When I took the board in, the store employee asked if this was a new board that had come without bindings, or if I had taken them off.

“I took them off,” I answered.

“Well, it would really help us if you left them on. It gives us something to hold onto as we work the board.”

I suppose the whole question would go away if I started doing the waxing myself. But the house already has enough winter gear–downhill skis, poles, and boots; the same for cross country; and for the snowboard, the board, boots, not one but two bags, and a variety of protective gear. Adding more “stuff” — iron, files, scrapers, six kinds of wax, etc. — doesn’t seem that attractive at the moment.

On the other hand, if I start getting the board waxed more often, the cost savings may make the stuff storage worthwhile.

After renting gear for a while, it was time for my own set of equipment. But did I do myself a favor, or a disservice?

If you’re just starting out with snowboarding, renting gear makes a lot of sense. There’s a fairly high dropout rate, and why would you shell out a few hundred bucks for something you are not sure about?

So when should you go and buy your own stuff? There’s no easy answer, but if you’ve been out more than a few times, and you’re seriously interested in learning how to ride, it may be time to buy.

In my case, I had gone long enough to know that snowboarding was something I wanted to keep going at, even if it might take a long time to get up to speed. The rental gear wasn’t itself too bad, but I resented having to plop down a $300 deposit on the board each time I rented it. I never had to do that with rental skis, after all.

Since I had already paid a fair amount of money for skis, ski boots, and modifications to both (ski alignment, custom foot beds for the boots, etc.), getting top of the line snowboarding gear was out of the question. After all, I haven’t given up skiing.

So when word came to me about a ski and snowboard swap, I went.

As it turns out, it wasn’t the greatest experience. I went on the final day, and there was little selection left. Still, I did come away with some stuff.

The most obvious need was a board. I could have gone for a semi-scientific approach, but at this point, I don’t know enough about my own abilities or preferences to have much of a feel for what I need. Hard boots and alpine boards are out, since I’m interested in all-around riding. So then, freestyle-specific gear isn’t that important, either, since it will be a while before I hit the pipe or park.

So I went with two simple requirements (aside from the board being tall enough). One, that it be wide enough to accommodate my large feet. Two, that it not have any of the “teenaged graphics” that seem to populate boards. I wasn’t looking for a fashion statement, after all.

Fortunately, I found one (and only one) that fit the bill. The graphic was essentially no graphic. Aside from two solid borders along portions of either edge, the board itself simply has a wood finish. In fact, it looks something like the lane of a bowling alley, with visible grain.

That’s pretty cool, actually. It takes me back to my childhood, and to the roots of snowboarding. The Snurfer, a prototype of today’s snowboard, was sold by Brunswick. And Brunswick’s chief product in that day was … stuff for bowling alleys. So I have a no-nonsense, “roots” board.

It came with strap-on bindings attached, which could cause problem. I picked up a pair of boots, cheap. I figure that if they don’t work out, I can always sell them.

So while this setup doesn’t make me a snowboarder, and the purchase did violate all the rules about how to buy gear, it does get me more involved, and sets me on the path to having a familiar situation each time I ride.