I need this. But I'm not sure I'm willing to take the risk.
After a season of enjoying black and double black diamond runs on skis (including my favorite, 65cm short skis), I tried snowboarding. Never in my life of sports have I subjected myself to so many hard contacts as I did in my first few days of snowboarding. Day one I cracked my helmet.
Maybe it's a matter of environment. Fresh powder is like butter, and the board is a fat knife. But on packed or groomed runs, the slightest balance mistake, putting your back edge down inappropriately, result in a whiplash-like fall with nothing you can do but absorb with tailbone, wrists, and head.
Falling on skis is so different since you have control over your legs (even if the skis don't snap off). I've done accidental front flips on short skis and recovered. But on a board, once you lose control of it your feet are barely useful.
Part of me wants to try again, but part of me would rather take risks doing new interesting things (like hang gliding).
If you like skiing, try boarding. If you hate it, go back to skis and be happy. Just because you _could_ do it doesn't mean you have to :).
OMG no. Please - every beginner out there - learn to fall properly before putting on a board. If you are going for instruction, they should be teaching you this as well and if they do not, pipe up and ask.
DO NOT put your arms out to break your fall. It is a good way to instead break a wrist. If you catch a toe edge, belly flop/dive. If you catch your toe edge, roll on your shoulders/upper back (try to tuck your head in a little too). It is a good idea too to disengage the edge and then gently re-engage as you are sliding to slow and stop.
When they say to tuck your head, tuck your head to the side so you roll over your shoulder. Don't just tuck forward so you roll over your neck. Think of it as putting one of your ears on the same shoulder.
Telling someone to "fall properly" is empty advice. Falls happen too fast as a beginner for them to take actions to lessen a blow. Wear protective gear. Take it slow. Expect to fall, and expect it to hurt.
It's really only the first days/weeks of snowboarding that you're likely to fall often. Mostly, you need to have an instructor and pick the suitable terrain and snow conditions for a beginner. Really, it's not that hard.
I've also noticed that for an intermediate snowboarder, it's quite easy to go through steep/bumpy slopes or powder where intermediate skiers struggle. But you're usually faster on skis.
That being said, if I could go back in time and learn skiing instead of snowboarding, I would. It's more versatile, and I think less demanding on the body overall (in particular, snowboarding is asymmetrical which I think puts extra burden on your neck.).
Skiing deep powder is a ton of fun. My snowboard friends constantly worry about getting stuck in deep powder with their boots buried and no easy way to unbind. If they fall they end up doing the worm until they can bring their board to the surface.
Probably only a concern on low angle stuff, but yeah, one weekend I was repeating this traverse in the trees, trying to only lose like 20 feet over a longer distance, and it became very like, low speed technical. Take two nice powder turns, then head between those two trees, stay in existing tracks, duck branches and just try and make it so you don't have to unstrap and hike to the next incline. Skiers can definitely manage that better.
If you fall on the board you roll over and come up again and keep going. On the skis you lose the skis to the right and left and get a spiral fracture of your legs and a hip join breaks off :)
I did opposite, grew up snowboarding, and then switched to skis. Never looking back lol! Snowboarding is really rough, and honestly it was designed for the park. If you want to dominate in the park and then do some powder runs pick up the board, otherwise you arnt missing anything!! lol
Hitting a nice not too steep good condition slope on the correct board can be a lot of fun.
Once I got my first actually wide board that I could really carve like a mad man it opened a totally new world of fun for me.
Ryan Knapton on youtube has had some really nice videos about this for a long time now. For example https://youtu.be/1a-oj70PFqc
With "actually wide" I mean not what most manufacturers call "wide" but proper 31cm wide or more from the narrowest point for my mondo 29 feet making sure I will never catch my toe or heel when carving really hard.
So happy to read this. All I have ever done is snowboard... 25 years of it. I am going to try skiing next month and I am just excited to not have to strap in on every run! I don't care that I will have to walk all dumb around the restaurant, lol.
Once you get over the edge catching hump, it can be as effortless as skis, and catching an edge is not really something I worry about. That being said, there is only so much time in a life, and if the sort of "balance" aspect isn't clicking, there are a lot of fun ways to get down a snowy mountain.
I've been trying to learn telemark and parallel turns on my off-track cross country skis as someone who has basically only boarded downhill, and uh, it's an interesting challenge (and a bad season for it...). The skis have basically no sidecut, but if the conditions are right, I can struggle out a gentle telemark turn.
Freeheel is still the only way to do "complete" skiing, where you go from flat cross country, to mild uphill, to a low angle descent without changing a thing on 3 pin or NNN-BC bindings, so it's a handy technique to have in that context. But yeah, it's pretty silly, and I think just worse than a parallel turn in a lot of conditions. Maybe I wouldn't think it was silly if I felt a good one!
The first few days of snowboarding are really tough -- when you catch an edge, you don't have a second ski to regain your balance with! Wear those helmets and wrist guards! But after you get the hang of it, progress comes easily and quickly! Stick with it and you'll get there!
Like you I'm an expert skier. The most difficult thing about learning to snowboard is that I see the awesome ski trail in front of me, and if I try to go, I'll just painfully fall.
I learned to snowboard in my 20s as an expert skier, and the only reason that I did it was that I had moved to California and so was skiing with a bunch of beginners, so being a beginner with them was a lot more enjoyable. Once they got good enough to ski blacks, I put away my board and haven't taken it out since.
I basically had the opposite experience last time I tried skiing. After snowboarding at least weekly for most of my teens, just going down the slope facing it triggers my reflexes and I keep trying to lift my toes.
After a season of enjoying black and double black diamond runs on skis (including my favorite, 65cm short skis), I tried snowboarding. Never in my life of sports have I subjected myself to so many hard contacts as I did in my first few days of snowboarding. Day one I cracked my helmet.
Maybe it's a matter of environment. Fresh powder is like butter, and the board is a fat knife. But on packed or groomed runs, the slightest balance mistake, putting your back edge down inappropriately, result in a whiplash-like fall with nothing you can do but absorb with tailbone, wrists, and head.
Falling on skis is so different since you have control over your legs (even if the skis don't snap off). I've done accidental front flips on short skis and recovered. But on a board, once you lose control of it your feet are barely useful.
Part of me wants to try again, but part of me would rather take risks doing new interesting things (like hang gliding).
If you like skiing, try boarding. If you hate it, go back to skis and be happy. Just because you _could_ do it doesn't mean you have to :).