Via e-mail, Kip from A Stitch in Haste directed me to the snowboarder menace. Bramwell doesn’t want to share the mountain with boarders, he wants his own personal stash of endless powder. I’ve got some advice: invest in some good back country gear, and learn to hoof it. The best powder isn’t serviced by any lift.

Now, in all fairness Bramwell’s rant was toungue-in-cheek, but it’s still a bit hyperbolic for my taste. Some commenters referred to snowboarding as evidence of “the decay of society”.

Unless Bramwell is a professional, I’m fairly confident that I could ride anywhere he skis.  And I’d probably look better doing it. Anyways, his complaints are numerous:

1. Snowboarders make wider turns than skiers, thereby leaving less room on the slope for others.
2. While skiers face downhill, snowboarders make half their turns blind, forcing everyone on the slope to get of their way to avoid getting hit.
3. While skiers carve turns, snowboarders (even the best of them) plow
4. The presence of snowboarders “now makes great skiing impossible.”

One commenter, a lifelong skier, did bring up the most important point, arguably defending the snowboarding menace:

Snowboarding saved skiing. No ifs, ands, or buts. By the mid-1980’s skiing was dying. Boarding brought a new generation out to play on the mountain. And that’s good.

True. It was snowboarding that saved skiing. Without snowboarding, it’s likely there would be far fewer ski areas from which to choose, those areas would be less developed, and lift tickets would probably be more expensive. I read an article years ago about some of the resorts in the Alps and even in the States, the proprietors of which described snowboarding as a godsend.

If kids didn’t want to go to Disney World, Walt would be out of business. The push-marketing game, “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black” doesn’t wor any more. All the kids want to snowboard. Resorts cater primarily to family vacations. If the resort wants a bigger share of the vacation wallet, (e.g., Mom’s day at the Spa, Dad’s $40 steak dinner washed down with $8 beers, etc.) it needs to cater to the entire family. QED..

This commenter offers another explanation for the seeming crowdedness of slopes where boarders are present:

Occasionally I see a boarder in the glades/woods. Never in a chute, steep pitch, headwall (except sliding down on their posterior), and virtually NEVER in a mogul field.

This is selectively true. It may be true most of the time for most snowboarders, but it’s also true most of the time, for most skiers.

As an avid boarder, I love the glades. There aren’t enough of them here in Michigan. And if I can find a good, natural mogul field, you better believe I’m headed straight for it. But Michigan moguls are usually vulgar mounds of solid ice. Sure, most boarders won’t touch a mogul field, but most skiers won’t, either. We also don’t have steeps or chutes, but I’m proud to say that I handled my own at JHMR last February, even crossing paths with several Moose.

Note to Bramwell: the “cacophonous” cruuunch is due to the fact that the steeps at JHMR were entirely iced over that day. They were wicked iced over, the type of iced over that happens after a few days of melt, and maybe some freezing rain. Chunky, choppy, sick, and not a lot of fun. Fortunately we had a sick powder day at Targhee.

As for Bramwell’s objections:

1. There are an awful lot of skiers who make embarrassingly wide s-turns, and there are an awful lot of skiers who frankly have no business being on the slopes. The only thing worse than a novice snowboarder, is a novice skier, who is capable of going even faster than his single-planked counterparts, with not one iota more control.
2. Additionally, when snowboarding, your torso should be pointed down the mountain, just like it would be if you were on skis. You may have marginally less peripheral vision to your left (if you ride regular) than you would on skis, but you have a greater range of vision to your right. Recognizing this, a good snowboarder is aware of his surroundings and “blind” turns essentially don’t exist.
3. Snowboarders plow? If I’m not mistaken, the “pizza” or “wedge” is a staple in every first-timer’s ski lessons. Many skiers barely evolve past this rudimentary technique. I’ll admit that lots of snowboarders don’t know how to point their nose down a fall line and charge, but the same is true for most skiers, who never figure out how to make parallel turns, and end up flailing, pointy ski poles swinging haphazardly down the hill.
4. As for the difficulty of finding “great skiing”, I’m not sure where Bramwell is skiing, but neither JHMR or Targhee were overcrowded in any sense of the word. I also found that the slopes at Whistler/Blackcomb, The Canyons in Park City, Kirkwood, Alpine Meadows, and Heavenly at Lake Tahoe had plenty of acreage to share, whether you were on one plank or two.

Honestly, can’t we all just get along?