Ever since I joined Cernum people have been playing with the idea to do a ski or snowboard initiation with the colleagues, but often at the end of the evening the brilliant idea was put back in the closet together with the freshly washed beer glasses. However thanks to the persistence of some of us we finally got a date set to challenge the white slopes.
When (almost) everybody was at the indoor slope we could start the most difficult task of the day. Find a pair of boots that fit (especially when you needed a size 43), and a board that goes with it. With everybody fully equipped we were finally ready to face the cold. The experienced skiers and boarders went straight to the elevator and up the hill. The rookies were left under my wing. Because 15 people subscribed to the initiation we asked Ice Mountain” if they could provide an additional teacher. As a result, the charming Faye offered to take a part of my burden. Due to a series of unfaithful events only 12 were able to join, all taken still a large group, so I asked all newbies to choose an instructor for the day. As Faye was a nice young Lady, and 11 of the participants were male, I expected to have the smallest group to instruct, but one way or the other I ended up with 7 anxious students.
Like all sports we started with a small warming up followed by some basic exercises to familiarise yourself with the material. For an instructor this is the moment where you can predict the pace of the course. When your group already loses balance at the skating and star-jump on a flat piece of snow, you are bound to go real slow. Luckily everybody performed these exercises without any hick-up; so time to take it to the next level. By lack of an elevator we started hiking up the mountain. Somewhere 1/3rd up the mountain we regrouped and we started with the first real gliding experiment: let somebody help you up to your feet and direct your board in the fasted gliding position and just let go and hope you won’t crash. Again everybody completed this task successfully. At this moment in time I was sure everybody had the balance and the fearless attitude which is highly advisable when you start snowboarding, so now the real work could begin.
First mission: get to the bottom of the slope in a controlled fashion (meaning be able to brake at any time) and the best way to do this is to continuous brake until you reach the end of the slope. Braking appears to be a vague term. Some of us, like Kamikaze Tom, interpret braking as every speed which is below the high way minimal speed. Others consider braking as no motion at all. Luckily we were able to find the golden path in between.
Second mission: try to reach the left and right side of the slope on your way down. When you continuous brake, you scrape of the top layer of snow, and this is no fun for the ones using the slope after you, so time to use our board to glide from the left to the right side. In this exercise I had to admit I was working with highly gifted students. Everybody was able to perform the exercise in their first try, and only minor corrections were needed as a preparation for the next task.
Third mission: glide forward. Like a car, a snowboard can move forward and backward, and up to now we didn’t care how we were sliding, as long as we got down without falling over it was fine. However when you want to take longer slopes, the techniques up to now can become boring and fatiguing, so in preparation to the next level (curves) we needed to go through the most important basic technique: gliding forward (and only forward). And of course like in all things, when you point out a “law” you always have people who by nature can’t obey, so when I explained the goal of sliding forward, my first guinea pig decide to go backwards, lucky for him the time period for the lesson ended and I could just tell him to pay attention to going forward before I had to answer the calling of the group of more experienced boarders to go up the steeper slope and goof around a bit.
Each time I went up the elevator I took a look to my right on the other slope to see how everybody was getting along with his experiments, and I have to say that all did well; some even got the thrill to take the elevator on the steep slope and glide down the track without crashing.
I hope everybody who joined got a good sense of what snowboarding is about and I hope they are going to go further, because it is all down hill from here, and I know you’ll love it.
Enjoy Mario
For more, many more pictures, please check this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/duhoux.patrice/Ski
(Thank you Patrice!)
