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| Geilo, Norway |
Technically, snowboarders don't throw themselves off mountains. That is the domain of the certifiably crazy cool adrenalin junkies called base jumpers.
The vast majority of snowboarders prefer to say they surf or rather, ride the snow down the mountain. In my case, ploughing and barreling through the pow would probably be more accurate.
Whilst I am by no means an accomplished snowboarder having only just reacquainted myself with it a few years ago, suffice to say, I am utterly and madly in love with it. Even if it really isn’t easy for someone like me who lives in the tropics.
Most of the time, I get asked if my trips to snow-covered mountains is to ski.. and 99.9% of the time I am having to explain that I am going snowboarding and not skiing. I’ve tried skiing before, but the experience of a pair of really really bad boots and an unpleasant collection of multi-coloured bruises, plus the fact that I couldn’t walk properly for a month kinda put me off the two-planks. Anyway, I probably can ski but I just don't want to.
Anyway, that I had had some (incremental, really) experience with snowboarding on a dry slope from another lifetime, the inclination was already there.
Snurffing out the roots
Where I come from, snowboarding is so niche that I would dare say that the majority of the population would not know it. It is a concept that is as detached as the abominable snowman. Well, I can’t fault them. After all we live in the equatorial tropics, where the heat is always at a constant +30 degrees Celsius (= 90 degrees Fahrenheit) and the closest thing to snow is what we find in the freezer.
Anyhow, by definition snowboarding is classified as a “recreational activity” by certain quarters, with a fuzzy history that potentially dates farther back than Wikipedia's referenced decade of the 1960s.
I say that because I recently discovered an image in a snowboard museum (yes, a snowboard museum, one that I will write extensively about in my next post) of a Vern Vicklund (or Wicklund) riding what looked suspiciously like the predecessor to today's snowboard, in 1939!
I say that because I recently discovered an image in a snowboard museum (yes, a snowboard museum, one that I will write extensively about in my next post) of a Vern Vicklund (or Wicklund) riding what looked suspiciously like the predecessor to today's snowboard, in 1939!
Even that's arguable after what snowboarding legends Jeremy Jones and Stefan Gimpl discovered while on a film shoot in 2008. They had learned that residents from a remote mountain region in Turkey had been riding a lazboard for over 400 years. There are also tales of Austrian miners riding long wooden boards in the 16th century.
Anyhow, www.skimuseum.net references to a contraption called the "Sno-Surf" that brothers Gunnar and Harvey Burgeson and relative Vern Wicklund had filed for a patent in 1939. It came with an adjustable strap for the left foot, a mat for the right foot and a rope to control speed and to steer. Though the trio did go on to form The Bunker Company, they were not able to sell the boards and with the onset of the second world war, the idea of snowboarding would sit quietly on the back-burner for a couple of decades.
Then comes the story that you will find on Wikipedia with snowboarding commonly associated to its roots and inspiration from skateboarding, surfing and skiing. That story links snowboarding to an engineer dad from Michigan who bound two skis together and dubbed it the “snurfer” (the combination of snow and surf) for his daughter.
Fast forward a decade or so, in walked a surfer dude who invented bindings to secure his feet to a board for a snurfing competition. The birth of Burton in the 1970s also led to the use of the term “snowboarding” away from snurfing (thank goodness!!).
After numerous competitions, it would still take another decade before snowboarding would become a competitive sport following the first World Cup in Austria. The grunge years would see snowboarding competitions regulated through the founding of the International Snowboard Federation in 1991. ISF was eventually replaced by the World Snowboard Federation, which was formed in 2002.
Fast forward 20 years and modern snowboarding has come a long way despite and in spite of the animosity the sport has tended to attract particularly it’s tumultuous relationship with the two-plankers.
Two versus One
These days, with the onset of the winter season, regardless of which side of hemisphere you’re on, snowboarding has well and truly etched itself a place into the winter sport culture.
These days, with the onset of the winter season, regardless of which side of hemisphere you’re on, snowboarding has well and truly etched itself a place into the winter sport culture.
Reading about and watching the videos of snowboarders vs skiers, I can’t help but giggle. But in all seriousness, having been on the wrong end of skiers' displeasure at “us” and having two-plankers plod, stomp and trample all over my board while waiting in line for the chairlift, is SO NOT funny.
And when one not very good skier ploughed straight into me, tipping me and my board 180degrees, face down, then started to scold me, I was like "DUDE, what the... ". Thanks to him, I pinched a nerve and couldn’t sit or walk properly for over two weeks. SO NOT cool.
HOWEVER, despite that rather unpleasant and quite frankly a rather inelegant consequence, those incidents, though irksome, are more the exception rather than the rule. I do respect the two-plankers and I have seen equal amount of respect from skiers towards snowboarders.
I also have an enormous amount of respect for competitive Alpine ski racers, freestyle skiers and ski-jumpers, and consider myself somewhat of a fan.
If I were to be seated on an aircraft next to either Marcel Hirscher, Felix Neureuther or Aksel Lund Svindal, I'd faint first, blame the altitude, then summon some inner power to recover some semblance of a cool exterior, before I could muster the courage to even consider talking to them.
I can say with absolute certainty that the first words out of my mouth would sound a lot like a mash-up of Klingon and Romulan.
I also have an enormous amount of respect for competitive Alpine ski racers, freestyle skiers and ski-jumpers, and consider myself somewhat of a fan.
If I were to be seated on an aircraft next to either Marcel Hirscher, Felix Neureuther or Aksel Lund Svindal, I'd faint first, blame the altitude, then summon some inner power to recover some semblance of a cool exterior, before I could muster the courage to even consider talking to them.
I can say with absolute certainty that the first words out of my mouth would sound a lot like a mash-up of Klingon and Romulan.
Now if I were to be seated on a long haul flight with Travis Rice, Andreas Wiig, Torstein Horgmo, Terje Håkonsen or Kazuhiro Kokubo or even Silje Norendal, I would really have no inhibitions to start sobbing uncontrollably and hyperventilate.
As it is statistically improbable that I would ever get the chance to speak or interview either of these incredible individuals, my reality is that I still get to meet some equally amazing people whose lives and livelihood gravitate around snow, regardless of whether they are on a ski or snowboard.
Mind you though, I did get to meet an Austrian who had competed against the great Hermann "The Herminator" Maier!! *Gasp*! He was a skier and is now an amazing snowboarder.
Then more recently, I got the incredible opportunity of getting to know a truly wonderful and beautiful Norwegian family who welcomed me like an old friend. I would soon learn that the family are related to Norway's freestyle ski sensation, Winter X-Games multi-medalist supercool superstar, Andreas Håtveit.
Courtesy of my wonderful host, I knew I was in the presence of greatness, the one the X-Games commentators called the dimpled Viking. In those kinds of moments, it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to keep one's composure, regardless if you're a two-planker or a snowboarder, cool is definitely in da house yo! I could feel the Klingon words flowing out of my brain.... *gasp*
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| Andreas Håtveit won gold at the 2008 X-Games in the Ski Slopestyle event |
Cool Runnings
Though I do prefer and love snowboarding, I cannot possibly choose which of the two is cooler, though some may argue that I would be automatically inclined towards one....
Back in 2013, at an unplanned, impromptu and accidental dinner with a rather famous Irish-born actor, we got to talking about winter sports. After declaring that he was a skier, his response to when I said I snowboarded was, "ooh, you snowboarders are really cool!" (Imagine that in an Irish accent.... #lol)
A comment to which I responded, "snowboarders are cool, yeah! Me on the other hand, not particularly, especially when I have mastered the art of tumbling down in the most uncool possible way!" We laughed and that broke the ice and we had a great dinner.
It's true though, snowboarders always give off that cool, laid-back, pretty chillax'ed vibe. But is it really confined to just snowboarders? After all, snurfing was such an un-cool name (sounds like the smurfs getting high on painkillers).
Somehow these days, whilst that grumbling between the two camps continues to exists, there was one thing I could not help but notice whilst I was up on the Kitzsteinhorn glacier, or in the Graubunden valley or waist-deep in the Niseko pow or on the wind-swept Norwegian pistes.
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| picture from www.skiersrealm.com |
In a bygone era, aside from the obvious equipment differences, it was still possible to tell the skiers apart from the snowboarders if you didn't look beyond the waistline. These days, there's been a bit of what I call a cultural overhaul, as the two disciplines become more and more enmeshed with one another.
For instance, two-plankers - particularly the younger ones - are opting for that baggy, street-look "cool" ensemble perhaps typically associated with snowboarders. To which I say, perhaps they prefer to be comfortable?
And that's just it. Who cares what you wear when you ride or ski? Yes, it gets people's attention and to some extent influences people's perception and potentially buying habits. (Let's not stray there..)
But, I do actually think and believe "cool" is a state of mind and being. "If you're happy, you love what you do and you get to indulge in that passion, that's cool" was how it was explained to me. Ultimately, it boils down to what you enjoy doing and as 20-year old Canadian freestyle skier and Olympic champion Dara Howell puts it, "it's about keeping it fun." And that is cool regardless of whether you prefer to shred straight or sideways.
On life support or on the back-burner, again?
Honestly, I don't know if there are companies out there that conduct surveys on who's on two planks and who's shredding it sideways. Me, I don't really sit at the top of the run counting the number of skiers vs snowboarders. All I want to do is enjoy riding my board. But, if I were to pitch in with a counter argument, I dare say, I don't think so!
I would then ask, define "death throes" and do provide us the evidence that drew the author to that conclusion. Is it purely based on observation or is there some kind of survey to denote a decline in numbers, sales or interest? I'd need to do some research and get the numbers from Burton, DC, Ride, Allian, Capita, Rome, Arbor, Salomon, Jones.. etcetera.
Perhaps it could also be argued that like all sports, snowboarding is evolving. Like at one point, inline skating was so popular, then people switched to cycling, but the fact that I still see inline skaters in my local park doesn't mean that it's dead.
Also, as I don't travel as extensively as the pro riders do, I am in no position to provide a commentary on whether skiing is more popular to snowboarding.
But, in the few places where I have been lucky enough to ride my snowboard, I always see other fellow snowboarders - be it on the skibus, on the slopes, in the board shop or sharing a chairlift - even in the more traditionally "ski-friendly or ski-oriented" resorts.
In Japan, I dare say (and I do not have the corresponding survey numbers to back this up) that snowboarders outnumbered the two-plankers by a fairly big margin.
And, the snowboard camps in Norway are still as robust as ever with plenty of young kids, young adults and adults shredding it sideways. And the age range is pretty wide for these snowboarders, from as young as 4 to 60-years old.
Then there's this - while on the hunt for my snowboard recently, I walked into a number of shops that had seriously depressing number of new snowboards in stock. They all seem to agree with the argument that snowboarding is not as popular as before.
But while in conversation with a snowboard and ski instructor in Austria, could it be possible that the current economic climate in Europe was affecting sales and distribution of snowboards more than skis. Then perhaps it could be argued that the majority of popular snowboard manufacturers are US-based (Burton, Ride, Salomon), whilst the big ski-brands are European (Atomic, Rossignol). The economy might go some way toward explaining the decline in sales and therefore, perhaps interest? Maybe? I have no idea and this line of argument is totally going to give me a migraine. Suffice to say, perhaps it's an economic consequence. *shrugs*
The thing is, I recently hung out with a 13-year old boy who is well and truly on his way to being a future X-Games champion; and met a guy who showed me a picture of arguably the youngest kid I have ever seen at just over 3-years old snowboarding. I've hung out with snowboard instructors who are half my age and have a constant supply of eager students. I've watched the pros continue to produce unbelievable snowboard films at incredible locations around the world. All of which proves snowboarding is alive and well in my eyes.
So, to all my fellow sideway shredders out there: share the love brothas and sisters; live long and prosper!
*makcik - a Malay word meaning Aunty, an affectionate term younger Malaysians use to address an older women.
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