Activity: Alpine snowboarding
Location: Beaver Creek
My BomberOnline post generated a lot of great replies, and even an invite to ride! Jeff Cooper generously offered to take Lisa and me for a day and give us tips and suggestions -- and it was great! We met him at Beaver Creek on Saturday, my first time at that area. Push-pull was my main lesson of the day, and that's what I practiced for the next few days, in addition to raising the inside shoulder and the other twenty things I had to remember :) With us that day were also Scott McLaughlin and Pete Cogan. We were too busy riding, and I didn't bring the camera, and so I have no footage of Jeff or Pete -- too bad, because they're excellent riders and it would have been nice to watch them on video to pick up more ideas. I'll remedy next time I see them.
Lisa and I spent the next day at Vail, where the snow wasn't so good and the crowds were huge. At first we went into the Northwoods area and dropped into the bowl, but large icy bumps and crusty packed powder wasn't too interesting, so we went back to riding towards the front face. Monday, the MLK holiday, we rode back at Beaver Creek with Scott, and that's where most of the footage is from.
MOVIE
My main lessons from this weekend were:
- Push-pull from Jeff -- I am now able to push the board a lot more, and started getting airborne transitions -- the board actually goes airborne for a few feet during edge changes
- Scott pointed out my toe-to-heel transitions were done in two steps -- first I edged the board, and then weighted it (bent my knees, etc). I started working on doing both at the same time, and the transitions got a lot sharper -- esp. on the steeper hills
- Looking at the video I can see that my heelside still needs lots of work -- even though I do feel very stable and comfortable on the board
- Started working on two distinct styles of boarding -- first is easy and mellow ("soul-carving"?) where I bend my knees but am not aggressive, and just follow the arc that the board wants to make. Feels like surfing. The other is harder, with the push-pull stuff, really bending my knees, and that's a lot more dynamic. Kind of fun to play with both of them, and the first is a nice way to carve and to rest at the same time
LISA
Lisa was a bit freaked with all the people on the slope, and that shows in her tentative toe-side turns. She was practicing the same drills that I was (per the Bomber thread), and that helped. Her heel is much stronger, as seen in the movie.
SCOTT
Scott was ripping it up! We didn't ride a ton with him, but I got a few shots -- his turns are very aggressive, very sharp, as seen here:
TOM
I noticed that I'm still C-shaping a little bit -- especially when I start picking up a lot of speed. I don't think that the movies are representative of what I was doing, as I was changing my turns to get closer to the filmer.. but clearly I need to concentrate more on the drills.
