How I learned to
snowboard
I started
snowboarding when I was in ninth grade, so when I was about fourteen years old.
Many of my friends participated in ski school, which was offered through my
school, and I had seen how much fun they had, so I decided to give it a try.
Ski school was on Saturdays and they started very early in the morning. We had
to be to the bus by 5:00 am so we could make it up to the mountain and have
plenty of time for snowboarding.
The First
Saturday of ski school is the one I remember the most. Being a teenager I loved
to sleep, so getting up at 4 am was not the most ideal situation. However I
wanted to learn to snowboard, so I got up and made it to the bus on time. The
bus ride to Stevens Pass was about 3 hours and in order to save time we had to
change into our ski clothes on the bus. Being almost six feet at the time this
was rather difficult because I hardly had enough room to get everything on.
Although it did prove to save time and before I knew it I was off the bus and
ready to get on the mountain.
Thankfully as a part of ski school
I had lessons and that was the first thing we did. The lessons were about two
hours long and because it was my, and everyone else in the groups, first time
snowboarding we first learned how to get up. When you stand up on a snowboard
you almost immediately start moving, so even though this sounds pretty simple,
it proved to be rather difficult. For probably the first fifteen to twenty
attempts I would stand up and within ten seconds have fallen right back to the
ground where I had started. Eventually I got the hang of standing up, so we
moved onto the next thing, which was to learn how to go down the mountain. This
was way more difficult than standing up and took numerous lessons, because it
required us to maintain balance while moving and to control where we were going.
Unfortunately for this first lesson we were only able to learn a little bit of
this because after about forty five minutes of it our lesson was over.
After my
lesson I met up with some of my friends who had already done ski school for a
couple of years and we went to get lunch. This was exactly what I needed
because after just a couple hours of snowboarding I was already tired and this
let me recharge my batteries. However, little did I know that how I would
really learn to snowboard was still to come. You see after lunch I went out
with my friends but they did not want to go on the beginner runs that I had
been doing and was more comfortable with. They wanted me to go with them and told
me I’d do fine on some of the intermediates. Now don’t forget this was my first
day ever so the thought of going on an intermediate run felt like doing an
expert run. I was definitely uncertain about it, but after doing some talking
my friends somehow convinced me to go.
The first
challenge I had to deal with on the intermediate run was the chair lift. The
hard part about chair lifts for snowboarders is getting off because we only
have one foot strapped in. It is very easy for your other foot to slip off and
make you fall right in front of other people that are getting off at the same
time. The difficulty was the speed of the chair lift, because on the beginner
run the chair lift was much slower and gave me more time to get off. Now I was
on a much faster lift and one that felt like it hardly slowed down so I could
get off. So getting off I was very worried and of course fell.
I got back
up, strapped my other foot in and was ready to go. My trip down the mountain
took about a half an hour due to my constant falling. I honestly couldn't tell
you how many times I fell on that run, but it was definitely a lot. I fell so
many times that I got frustrated and thought to myself that when I finally get
down the mountain I was never going up again. Although I did notice as I got
farther down the mountain I was learning from each of my falls and was able to
stay up just a little bit longer than at the beginning. My progress at the time
felt painstakingly slow, but it was progress. When I finally reached the bottom
and met my friends, who had made it down the mountain in about five minutes,
they told me to go again. I was very unsure because of all my falling but I
realized that falling was a part of learning, so I agreed and went back up
three more times that day.
The reason
this experience was significant to me was because I didn't just learn to
snowboard that day. I also learned that not giving is important and can be
successful. I also learned that sometimes taking a risk, going down the
intermediate run in my case, can be rewarding. If I hadn't gone down that run I
would not have learned to snowboard as fast as I did. I would probably have
probably stayed on the beginner run and learned at a much slower rate. The
saying you learn by doing was absolutely true in my case.
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