A Skier Tries Snowboarding: What the First Day on the Mountain Entails
Even for those who have skied for decades, switching over to the sport of snowboarding is no trivial task.
By Steven Reale
In our recent piece on tips for getting started with mountain sports, I wrote that “[we] want to connect with readers and viewers who already know the exhilaration of breathing crisp, mountain air while gliding through ankle-deep powder or shredding corduroy; but we also want to introduce that life-changing excitement to newcomers, too.” But connecting with newcomers means empathizing with them and really understanding just how daunting getting started can be.
In this spirit, I decided to take my first turns on a snowboard. Having skied since I was 5 years old, it’s impossible to remember what it was like to learn, and so it’s equally impossible to imagine myself in the boots someone experiencing the excitement, nervousness, and fear of sliding downhill on skis for the first time. So I did the next best thing: I experienced the excitement, nervousness, and fear of sliding downhill on a snowboard for the first time. In short, it was humbling, but thrilling. In this article, I share the details of this experience, from arriving at the resort, paying for the lesson, meeting my instructor, putting on gear, and making those first turns.
Arriving and other logistics
This was my first visit to Peek n’ Peak. I found the resort by checking Google Maps for ski resorts within a reasonable drive of my home, and then checking their websites for their lesson offerings; although there are some resorts closer to home, they couldn’t touch this price: $80 for gear rental, the lesson itself, and all-day access to the learning area. Additionally, the lesson was in early March 2023, the tail end of an abysmal winter for snow sports. The resort, situated about 10 miles from Lake Erie, benefits from the lake effect, and as such had considerably more snow than my more local resorts. Having settled on Peek n’ Peak, I made a note of the lesson time and ensured that I left home early enough to arrive with plenty of time to find my way around the resort, pay for my lesson, and get geared up before it started.
Peek n’ Peak has a dedicated entry for those learning.
Because it was a Monday towards the end of the season, there was no one else learning to ride that morning: I was fortunate to get a private lesson, even though the package I paid for was supposed to be for a group lesson—and this is a tip I’d share with anyone else considering taking their first turns: if you go on an off-peak day, you’ll get closer, more personalized attention from your instructor than on a busy day—and maybe even a discount private lesson!
At the Snow Sports desk, I paid for my lesson package, and was directed to the Learning Center around the corner and up the stairs. Upon entering, I met my instructor Cole, who, after introducing himself, showed me to the learning center’s dedicated rental gear setup, where he helped me select my boots, then found me a snowboard. This was my first of many realizations that day about how much I take for granted about my familiarity with skiing. I have been putting on ski boots and snapping in and out of my bindings without a second thought for years. But as I was being handed a new, foreign piece of equipment that I had no idea how to use, adjust, or even equip, I was super grateful to have an instructor tell me what I was supposed to do.
Peek n’ Peak’s Learning Center has its own dedicated gear rental facility. It was only when I walked into it that it occurred to me that learning how to equip this new, unfamiliar gear would actually be part of the lesson.
First Turns
Geared up, Cole and I headed outside to the cordoned off learning area. He showed me how to strap in one foot, and then we did a few exercises. First, I made a 360-degree turn standing on my free foot while spinning the board around me, then we practiced skating for a bit. Finally, we skated up to the top of the very small incline, and I made my first turn with just the left foot strapped in: towards the right, using my toe edge.
The author’s first turn: a good start…
…then on to losing balance.
Once again, I realized just how much I take for granted about my skiing ability, and how little I need to think about how to turn and stop on skis, even at fast speeds. But here I needed to move my body in a very unfamiliar way, and it was quite intimidating. Even in this learning area where there was basically no grade at all, it was nerve-wracking to start moving when I felt I didn’t know how to stop.
At first, I tried to turn the snowboard the way I would turn my skis, leaning to one side and putting pressure on the tongue of my boots. It was not very effective. Instead, I had to keep reminding myself that I was doing something new and resist some very long-standing muscle memory. It didn’t matter how ski turns work; here, the keys were to shift my weight to the left foot; to stand straight and lead with the hip; to point my upper body in the direction I want to turn, and only then to shift my weight to my toe to engage the edge of the snowboard. But at this point of the lesson, I didn’t have a feel for this at all. My body started to turn, then kept turning, then I fell over. We skated back up and attempted the toe turn a few more times, then attempted the same with the heel turn.
The first of many falls…
…and the snowboard just keeps on turning.
To the top of the hill
“Okay,” Cole said, “we’re ready to take the lift.” “Really?” I replied, aghast. “But I haven’t made even a single turn down here without falling!” “That’s normal,” he answered. “It’s actually really hard to turn without both feet strapped in. You’ll see. By the way, the magic carpet isn’t running for some reason. We’ll have to take the chairlift.”
Once again, something I’ve done a million times on skis—getting on and off a chairlift—became unfamiliar and scary now that I had this whole new contraption attached to my foot—especially getting off, where I knew that after sliding down the ramp, I’d need to stop—something I had still yet to do without falling over.
Once at the top—and I did manage to unload without falling—I took my first look down the hill. It’s amazing what an impact confidence has on your perception. When you’re not certain of what you’re doing and the gear you’re wearing is unfamiliar—and especially if you have no confidence in your ability to stop yourself while wearing it—the hill looks steeper and scarier than it is. “Is this steeper than most bunny hills?” I asked Cole. “It’s pretty typical for the East coast,” he responded. “They’re probably steeper out West.”
I nodded uncertainly, then strapped in my other foot and Cole taught me how to skid. First, facing uphill, I’d slide backwards a few inches, then tip forward to engage my edge to stop. After doing this a few times, we traversed from one side of the hill to the other, using the same skid/edge technique to throttle my speed, but adding to this the idea of pointing the body to steer while putting weight on the toes. At the end, I stopped by pointing my body uphill.
“That was great,” Cole said. “Just a few things to consider …” And then as Cole rattled off some suggestions for my next attempt, my mind went blank. I was aware that he was giving me lots of good advice, reciting what I was doing well and what I could have done better, and giving me things to focus on in my next attempts. But because the experience was so new, it overwhelmed my senses and overtaxed my brain, and all this information washed over me like ocean waves. I could hear what he was saying, and I was aware he was telling me useful things, but cognitively, I was in a state of stimulus overload and none of the things he said sank in. This kind of thing happened throughout the lesson, he’d ask me, “How did that run feel?” and, even though it happened seconds earlier, I couldn’t remember any of it.
He finished giving me advice, and we turned around and did the same skids but facing down the hill so that the heel edge was engaging. The exercises were the same—skid forward, stop, skid forward, stop—but this was considerably harder than the toe stops, because if you don’t lean back far enough, you don’t stop the skid. But if you lean too far back, you fall right on your butt—which I did, many times.
After working on the heel slide/skids, we then traversed back to the other side of the hill, now with the heel edge engaging. From there, we started linking the traverses with turns. We rode the lift maybe three or four more times during the lesson, and each time I got more and more confident—not just with being able to traverse, but also with my ability to link the turns to make a smooth run from top to bottom.
Confidence and hubris
Towards the end of the lesson, I was feeling maybe too confident, and I took a particularly bad fall. I found myself pointing straight down the hill, freaked out a bit, my old habits took over and I tried to turn like I was on skis. I caught an edge and fell right on my butt and then my head crashed down moments later.
Wear a helmet, folks!
It amazed me to think about how no one wore helmets when I first learned to ski. It’s only been in the last 20 years or so that helmets use became nearly ubiquitous. And it was so long ago that I can’t remember what it’s like to fall as a beginning skier, but since skis run parallel to the direction you face, it seems like the skis themselves would make it hard to fall like this—right on the back with the head crashing down after. Though I now always wear a helmet while skiing, this was the first time ever in mountain sports that my helmet ever made hard contact with anything, and even with it on, and even though it was just snow that it hit, the impact “scrambled my eggs” for a few moments, and I was really grateful to have been wearing it.
So, a little humbled, I dialed things back a bit and returned to the traverse/turn/traverse/turn flow, and by the end of my time on my snowboard, I began to really get a feel for how turning the body turns the snowboard and how the weight shift helps drive the edges in. I was torn hen the lesson ended: I was having so much fun I wanted to keep going, but because the winter was so bad, this was also my first time on the snow at all and I was itching to get on some skis and see what the rest of the resort had to offer. Still, I’m confident that this won’t be my last snowboarding lesson. On a bigger outing with some more time, I’d like to just take a day or two to keep exploring this brand new bodily sensation.
The author starts to get the hang of this!
Final thoughts
Before I arrived, I imagined that my skiing experience would translate, and that I would make effortless progress during my lesson. Perhaps this was more hubris. What I found instead was that over the course of the 90-minute lesson, I would not only be learning how to turn and stop on a new piece of snowsports equipment, but that I’d be learning to move and turn my body in a brand new, unfamiliar way. In fact, beyond my intuitive understanding of how the edges of the board would work (but not how to engage them), and how loading and unloading a chairlift would happen (but not with a snowboard on), my skiing experience didn’t help much at all.
Less than a week after the lesson, my wife took her first turns on a pair of skis. After her own beginner’s lesson (which, unlike mine, was a full group that could not possibly progress as quickly as my private lesson), I took her up for her first ride up the big magic carpet (and eventually the chair lift) and guided her down as she first made some wedge turns, and then even some stem christies. As we skied together, I thought back to how steep the bunny hill looked to me on a snowboard, how overloaded my senses were as I learned to make these new movements for the first time, and how important it was to be able to turn my body up the hill to stop any time I felt out of control. Keeping these experiences in mind allowed me to really empathize with my wife, and I believe this empathy gave her just the support she needed to conquer her own fears of the hill and start descending with confidence.
All in all, it would be good for all of us to try to remember what skiing and riding felt like at the very beginning. Not only would it help us introduce our loved ones to the sport, but it would make the sports safer if every time we saw a less experienced skier or rider downhill from us, we could keep in mind how very different the slope looks to them than it does to us. Oh, and just before I left for the day, I went back for one more run on at the learning area with my skis on, just to see what it looked like. Yep, on skis, it was definitely a standard-issue, pretty darn flat bunny hill.
Looking to compare resorts for your next ski trip? Check out our overall North American ski resort rankings here, as well as our comprehensive how-to guides on Skiing or Riding for the First Time and Booking your First Ski or Ride Lesson.
