Boarding Styles
Believe it or not, there are a bunch of different styles for snowboarders to execute while they’re riding down the slopes. At face value, snowboarding can be seen as just simply riding down a hill and maybe catching some air and doing some tricks. But look a little deeper and you’ll find a subculture, a way of life, and certainly different styles that come attached. Try and pick out which one you’re most likely to use and then the next time you’re at the resort, try it out and get back to me.
The first style of riding is known as the free ride (no, you have to pay to ride the lift) and is the most basic style that every beginner basically executes. Free riding, also known as “all mountain boarding” and basically what you do is ride up and down the mountain, exploring it, and getting a feel for it while you ride down. This is by far the most relaxing and peaceful way to ride your board.
The next type of riding is free style type. Don’t confuse this with free ride because they’re drastically different. Free style type riding includes busting out some crazy tricks, aerial spins, flips, and grabs. Once you’ve mastered this, you can pretty much impress any snow bunny on the slopes so I suggest this to all the guys that read this: practice, practice, practice. But that goes for the girls too. I’d be super stoked if I found a girl that could land a backside 540.
Are you a speed junkie? No, not the drug, I’m talking about like speed. Race cars, sky diving, that sort of extreme. Well if you do, and you want to try your boots at snowboarding then maybe free carving is what you should get into. With free carving, you speed down the hill making turns as short and concise as possible so it looks like you’re not really turning at all. This type of boarding takes extreme skill, concentration, and is physically exhausting…but oh so worth it.
The last and final type of boarding is a relatively new type. It’s called splitboarding, and it basically lets you go either skiing or snowboarding at any given time. The board is split down the middle vertically and can be used as either skis (but who would want to do that) and a snowboard and is quickly gaining popularity. Although I don’t have any personal experience with this piece of equipment it looks like it could just open up a ton of possibilities.
Check out the splitboard in action and tell me what you guys think, and what style you guys think you can conquer.
