carving

If you want to potter slowly down the piste side-slipping along whilst you're ground into the dust by intermediate skiers, then you're on the wrong page.

Back in the 1980s when most people had never seen a snowboard I was always being asked to explain what it was I was riding. Snowboarding hit the main stream in the 1990s, and for a while everyone knew I was a snowboarder. But now I'm back having to explain what it is I'm riding again. I think that's because nearly all the snowboards manufactured and marketed these days are designed for the half-pipe. They're short floppy things which are designed for skate-style tricks in specially constructed parks. My piste board doesn't look at all like those, so people ask what it is. It also attracts attention because of the way it can be ridden, which is faster and more fluid than any pipe board. Oh, I also use hard snowboard boots, because they're more comfortable and responsive than the laces, straps and leather of the soft fashion boots most people wear.

carving?

In the last few years my style of snowboarding's become known as "carving". I'm not a fan of that name. Carving's just how any competent rider (irrespective of boots and board) turns a snowboard. Any expert rider can and does carve. Worse, the name is generally thought to suggest something you can do only on piste with hard boots, which isn't true at all. And of course everyone has to sideslip in order to stop.

A second name you may hear is "hardbooting". That doesn't work either, because competent soft boot riders carve their turns too. On the odd occasions when lost baggage has forced me to return to leather and lace, my feet hurt and the gear was unresponsive, but it didn't stop me from being able to ride and turn.

Finally there's always "Euro carver" or more recently "extreme carver". But these are descriptions of particular styles of turn, neither of which I'm particularly interested in. To me those are stylistic forms in the same way that many park "tricks" are: you wouldn't do them in the woods if no one was there to look at you. Like ski ballet or synchronized swimming, I can't really see the point of those things.

Anyway, here's some information about riding snowboards on the piste. "Carving" if you must. I think that sideslipping a snowboard on piste isn't all that much fun, so most people give up before they figure out how to carve. Hence this is a minority interest, but Snowboarding's always been a renegade sport for those who were there at the start, so continuing to be "on the dark side" is fine by me. Just don't call my board a "ski board", sideslipper!

what's a carve?

Carving is turning the board using the board's edge, as opposed to side slipping it around a turn.

I remember being shocked when I first heard in the early '90s that the newly established snowboard-schools in the uk were teaching sideslipping as a way of turning a board. It may be easier to teach, but it's got very little to do with how competent riders actually turn. They teach people onto a "plateau" where they can sideslip the mountain but never actually learn to ride it. Try sideslip-turning at speed, or on ice, or in powder, or even with style, and you'll rapidly realize that you'd be better off skiing. Or you could just sideslip to the park and hang out there for a couple of years until you find something more interesting to do.

To carve a board you pressure the cuffs of your boots (which is easier if they're hard) to tilt the board onto its edge. Your weight should be centred on the board, evenly distributed between both legs and over the edge which is in contact with the snow. It helps if the board's flex is balanced to your weight and riding style. If you get that right, then the board will track along the sidecut radius like it's on rails. You can control the amount of sideslip in the turn in order to control your speed by feathering the angle your edge makes with the snow, which you do by subtly altering the how you're applying pressure through your boots. If you push harder you can flex the board more, so it'll turn sharper; if you push less it'll make a gentle curve.

As a contrast, the sideslipping approach used by most novice riders involves uneven distribution of the weight between the feet, with the board ridden flat rather than on edge. When on piste, typically most weight goes on the front foot. To turn, the body is rotated by swinging the shoulders and possibly arms, or just kicking out the back foot to one side. The magnitude of the upper-body movements necessary will reduce with practice. The board is flat so it can be slid from one "tack" to the other in this way. It's not clear to me why people actually bother "changing tack" in this style; it would really be more effective to simply sideslip the whole hill on one "tack".

The key issue is that in the sideslip turn the turning-moment is generated by the rider's angular momentum: they twist on top of a flat board. Contrast this with the carved turn, where the rider generates centripetal force from the edge of the board in the snow to drive the turn. This leads to design differences between novice gear and gear intended to be used at speed:

• Sideslip boards don't need sharp edges. In fact sharp and bevelled edges make sideslipping harder because novice riders may "catch an edge" and face-slap. Some sideslip boards go as far as having recessed edges (although there are other reasons for this too).
• Sideslippers don't use the board's camber to turn, so the board's length and flex are broadly irrelevant. A shorter board requires less torque to turn, and running length is largely irrelevant if you're riding flat relatively slowly. Hence most sideslip boards are short and flexible.
• "Swing weight" is important if you're relying on your own angular momentum to turn the board. Hence sideslip boards favour light weight over (say) torsional stiffness, which they don't need.
• Precise edge control from the board/binding/boot interface isn't necessary - all you need is something which allows you to swing the back of the board around like a rudder.

It took me about four hours to learn to carve, once they'd invented boards with metal edges. There were no lessons in those days to put me on the wrong track. It's not hard to learn to snowboard, it's just that the marketing people want you to think that sideslipping in a one-piece fluorescent suit is the same thing. It's not.

next page