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Comment by tribeofone | Hacker News Reader

My 2 cents for beginners, most of these are covered in the article:

1. Get a flying-v or CamRock - makes turning easier and will hold an edge better until you figure out how to carve.

2. Don't put your feet perpendicular to the board, you want some angle, 30° Front, 15° Back. It will make it easier to square your shoulders down the hill and get your weight on the front of your edge.

3. Start on a Blue slope. Seriously. I hate seeing beginners exhausting themselves on green slopes straining to get enough speed to get on edge and then catching the opposite edge because there is not enough slope.

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Start on a Blue slop IF the conditions are good, i.e. you can dig your edge into the snow at least an inch.

If the conditions are not good, i.e. hard-pack or icy, then put the board away. Trying to learn in poor conditions is counterproductive and very painful on your ass, wrists and head.

I live in the Midwest U.S., those are the only conditions we have. :) (You're still right. It sucks and is painful, but it's all us non-mountain people have).

You also don't have any mountains. - someone who just moved back to the PNW from Michigan and Illinois.

The UP has some interesting stuff, but living in Ann Arbor, it's a shorter trip just to get on a plane and go to Utah.

As others have said, your #3 point is controversial, but potentially not as bad as they seem. This really depends on what resort/part of the world you are. My home mountain in Oregon is about 65% black diamond, and there's only one green circle run. The first blue square you can use is actually very steep and quite dangerous for beginners.

At the same time, I was living in the Midwest a few years, and the only black diamond I found honestly wasn't even as steep or interesting as the intro blue square I mentioned before.

So, your advice might be accurate in context of a beginner mountain, but at many resorts blue diamonds are best left to intermediates only.

When ever going to an unfamiliar mountain or doing the first run of the season(or after an equipment change) it is a good idea to just hit a green and then move on.

I've been snowboarding for 12 years, done many 120+ day seasons, and I'm a certified Level 2 instructor in Canada, have done the course for Level 3, need to take the exam. (There are only 4 levels).

I don't love all your advice.

1. Sure, marketing gimmicks are great, and you're right, it will help a little. Learning good technique will help a lot more. Learn how to control the edge and how to turn the board when you want to turn the board.

2. 30 front and 15 rear is too much of a difference, which means you'll never learn switch, and things will feel wrong when the board accidentally goes the wrong way (beginners get this all the time). WAAAAY better to go something like 18 front and 12 rear. i.e. it's like 15/15 duck, but then move both of them forward 3 degrees.

CASI (Canadian Association Of Snowboard Instructors) are fine if you want to go "forward facing" like your 30 front foot, but you have to do it all the time if you want to pass any exams, which gets hard. It's not a good footing to build your snowboarding career from (excuse the pun)

3. No. Three thousand times no. Then another thousand times. (I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you just failed your CASI Level 1 instructor exam.)

One of the biggest parts of the level 1 instructor exams is terrain selection, for very good reason. It depends a lot on the temperature at the time, and the snow conditions, but more often than not you do not want a blue slope for a never-ever. Find a green slope that does NOT go off to either side. ie. you roll a snowball down it, the snowball goes straight down the middle, it doesn't veer off to either side.

If you go too steep, your students will be terrified of the "dead zone" when they are between edges and pointing down the fall line, because they will accelerate and be afraid. That's how you teach people to go top to bottom on one edge, which is not what we want.

You MUST pick a suitable slope so the student is not afraid to actually make turns, otherwise they'll never progress. I see this in students all the time who say "I can snowboard" and they go down pretty fast, all the while standing perfectly still on their heel edge.

For what it's worth, I had been snowboarding for 5 or 6 years before I took an instructor course. Before the course I would aggressively go down all the double-black runs on the mountain, as fast as anyone, and fell rarely. During the Level 1 course my mind was blown, my snowboarding was torn back to square one and I have been building on a correct foundation ever since. It's like a whole new sport, and I fell in love with it all over again. The title of this post caught my attention because I'm a Geek who learns and does things very intellectually. I highly, highly recommend taking an instructor course, even if you never intend to teach. It's the cheapest lessons from a very experienced instructor you'll ever get.

> If you go too steep, your students will be terrified of the "dead zone" when they are between edges and pointing down the fall line, because they will accelerate and be afraid. That's how you teach people to go top to bottom on one edge, which is not what we want.

100% correct on this one (obviously, you're an instructor). I find the hardest/scariest part of people learning snowboarding OR skiing is the point in the middle of a turn when they have to face downhill and start to pick up speed.

Absolutely, the beginner linked turns are some of the hardest in snowboarding.

Usually the trick is to get them to point and look across the hill (not down the fall line) so a) they won't get scared and b) they'll go across and make the turn, rather than rocketing down!

Thanks for this detailed post. I'm stuck at advanced beginner/intermediate forever, and find it frustrating to be able to get down groomed runs just fine, but as soon as the terrain gets a little bumpy it all goes to pieces. Been looking into snowboard camps or private coaching, but love the idea of an instructor course so thanks a million for that!

You're welcome. I hope you see this.

I see a lot of students get to the point you describe then Plataea. Without seeing you ride, I'm guessing you are not always going where the nose of the board is pointing, but often sliding down the fall line - either a lot or a bit. So after you make a turn (swap edges), you might be going across a little, but you're also going down. This will be evident by the line you're leaving in the snow. If it's a thin line going across the slope, I'm wrong. Chances are it's a big washy scrape that goes down as much (or more) than it goes across.

When you're not going where the board is pointing, you don't have a good stable base and balance, so when something like a bump or tricky snow comes along, you fall.

To improve this, do some edging exercises, and really concentrate on making a turn, then absolutely go across the run on a diagonal, really going where the nose of the board is pointing. Point with your front hand and arm where you want to go (across the fall line) and look there with your whole head. Practice in both directions so you are doing it on both edges.

You can even traverse so hard you actually go back up hill a little. It's good edging practice.

You will use your knees & the muscles in your legs and ankles to change how your edge is biting into the snow so you can actively control how much you're traversing across, vs how much you're sliding down the fall line.

Once you get the feeling of going where the snowboard is actually pointing you will feel what I mean and it becomes addictive!

Good luck & Have fun!

100% agreed, 15/30 is wayyyyyyy too much, unless you are racing.

> 2. 30 front and 15 rear is too much of a difference, which means you'll never learn switch, and things will feel wrong when the board accidentally goes the wrong way (beginners get this all the time).

Not true. Mentally you'll be riding reverse even with full duck stance. People do it on skis and alpine boards. But people put on a very awkward stance for regular riding because they feel they can't ride switch otherwise.

> Not true. Mentally you'll be riding reverse even with full duck stance

But the difference is with duck when you ride switch everything feels the same stance-wise because your two feet are still at the same angle they always where.

If you ride with 30 on the front and 15 on the back, when you ride switch you will feel like your front foot doesn't have enough angle (because it only has 15 when you are used to 30) and your back foot has stupidly too much angle (because it's 30.... which is plain stupid for your back foot).

You never, ever want to ride with 30 on your back foot, which means if you have that 30/15 stance, you're locking yourself out of switch riding.

And you might say "who cares, I hate switch anyway", which is a perfectly valid thing to say, but riding switch even for just one or two runs a day is an excellent, excellent way to improve your all around riding. So if you don't do it, you're severely limiting your potential.

The truth is that while people are exposed to a lot of snowboarding that shows a lot of park and jumps the majority of snowboarders simply enjoys going down groomers at moderate to fast speed.

If you set up your binding angles for stuff they don't do at all or not very often you're taking out the fun of what they're actually doing in favor of something they might feel they should be to fulfill the image of what a snowboarder does.

And all I'm saying is that riding reverse / fakie is more of a mental thing than something that you should reflect in your bindings. I regularly saw people and alpine bindings carving down steep slopes on race boards that have no rear tip at all. I can ride reverse on a simple blue slope, not carving yet but I really didn't try that hard yet.

One of the prime reasons skiing took off again is that you'll rent a pair of hard boots with carve ski's for going down groomers and they're way easier because they're optimized for what people actually do all day on the mountain: going down groomers at moderate to fast speed.

I agree 100%. In fact, I almost never go near the park, except when I'm forced to in a training course. I don't enjoy it at all.

Riding switch is still a fantastic way to improve your riding - yes, even just "going down" groomers. And a more balanced stance allows you to do that.

It also keeps more of your body more balanced over the board when things go wrong, so you stand a better chance of regaining control because more of your body (hips, knees) are symmetrical.

I'm not even really talking about my personal opinion here, this is straight from CASI.

> 3. Start on a Blue slope. Seriously. I hate seeing beginners exhausting themselves on green slopes straining to get enough speed to get on edge and then catching the opposite edge because there is not enough slope.

You need a _wide_ slope with good snow. Could be an Austrian black, as long as you have enough time to ride to the sides in between turns. Slopes that are too flat are bad for sure.

2 - unless you plan to become a park rat I would suggest riding 15/0 or 20/5

3 - its not that they can't get enough speed on a green slope, it is that they panic. It is very difficult for most people to grasp that turning is actuall easier at (reasonable) speed. Even on greens it is pretty easy to push 40+ mph.

Do you mean -15 on the back foot, your angles have both feet pointing downhill don't they?

Maybe its just me but I ride duck stance, so front foot point towards the front of the board and back foot points slightly towards the back. Makes riding switch a lot easier.

I think they did mean -15. Either way, 30 up front is SUPER aggressive.

Re: #3, it is important to remember that slope difficulty is primarily rated for skiers. The two sports are very significantly different, even though both can get you down the hill. Ask other snowboarders which runs are the best for beginners.

Yes. All correct info.

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