Hello and welcome to some great skiing and snowboarding advice before you hit the slopes.
By
Alisha McDarris
|
Published Dec 27, 2023 12:00 PM EST
Get the basics, from learning from the pros to learning to fall. Check out the advice here.
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Every winter, after the first snowfall in the mountains, hordes of skiers and snowboarders begin their seasonal migration to their favorite ski lifts and powder-covered resorts. And to uninitiated onlookers, the way they glide down groomed trails often seems effortless. But everyone had a first day on the mountain and learning to carve a clean line after dismounting the chair lift takes time and effort to learn.
And while there’s not a right and wrong way to learn how to ski or snowboard, David Handy, the director of the ski school at Nordic Valley ski resort in Utah, says there are certainly more efficient ways. So if you’re ready to put boots in bindings, here are his tips for kicking off the season right so you can spend more time on the slopes and less time learning the hard way.
The case for taking lessons from an instructor
Handy learned to navigate the slopes “the hard way.” Largely self-taught, he spent years snowboarding, falling, getting back up again. Each fall brought a new, painful lesson. “The first time I was ever on a mountain, I remember for hours I was just beating myself up on the snow,” he recalls. But the day he took his first lesson as an adult 15 years later, “It completely transformed and revolutionized my riding.”
It put a voice to and concretely identified what he had or hadn’t been doing for years–and almost immediately made him a better rider. Lessons, he intimately understands now, have the potential to cut a significant amount of time and pain from the learning curve.
But more than that, lessons help beginners understand the rules of the mountain. Like trail etiquette for hikers, ski etiquette helps keep everyone safe on the hill. Lessons are useful for learning things like how to dismount a ski lift properly, how and where to stop, and who has the right-of-way on the downhill (anyone in front of you).
And while you may be able to learn plenty from friends who are more experienced skiers, neither Handy nor Richard Walter, the head of Ski School Arlberg in St. Anton, Austria, home to perhaps the first modern version of a ski school in the world, recommend going that route. At best, your companions may impart their bad habits or improper technique, and at worst, they’ll leave you high and dry at the top of a route you’re not experienced enough to safely complete.
Select a ski slope
The very first thing to do after deciding you’d like to start referring to yourself as a skier or snowboarder is to decide when and where you’re going to learn.
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