1. Put on Boots
Skiing: Have you ever seen a skier run? The boots are tight, clumsy and difficult navigate stairs in. Forget about flexing your ankles or shaking your legs. Some skiers bring a set of slippers to change into when they stop for lunch.Snowboarding: Way way better. These feel more like a set of normal shoes, a slightly heavier and higher cut pair of boots.
2. Put on Skis / Board
Skiing: It's satisfying to kick in the toe of the boot into the clasp, and step down on the heel with a loud snap. Position skis so that you are stable after wearing them. Taking skis off is just as easy, use the pole to release one boot and then step on the clasp of the other boot.Snowboarding: You have to position your boot correctly in the holder, before using your hands to fit the strap and tighten. Likewise, you have to use your hands to remove the straps. Not much fun when your gloves get wet, the snow melts and your hands are freezing.
3. Carry the Luggage
Skiing: Juggling 4 individual pieces of equipment is not so easy. The poles dangle around hitting your legs while the skis are too thick to hold comfortably with one hand. While it's easier to swing the skis up onto your shoulder, that requires space and careful maneuvering to make sure you don't hit someone in the face.
Snowboarding: Simply tuck your arm under the top boot catch, hug to body and you're good to go!
You Raise Me Up So I Can Stand On Mountains
4. Bunny Slope (ie no ski lift)
Skiing: Side step, side step, slip back down. Repeat until arrived at top or collapsed from exhaustion.
Snowboarding: Either unlatch both boots and walk, or unlatch just one and "step and glide".
5. On the Lift
Skiing: Ski directly from run to start of ski lift. Poles are excellent in helping control where you stop.Snowboarding: Did you ever wonder why boarders "hang around" the ski lifts entrance blocking the way of skiers trying to ski directly to the start? Wonder no more! Boarders have to unlatch one of their boots before getting onto the lift, and there's no way to do this quickly and elegantly. So they're not intentionally trying to irritate you, they are unable to board directly to the start unlike skiers!
6. Off the Lift
Skiing: When getting off, simply snow plough your way down. Use poles to dig into icy parts and prevent falls.
Snowboarding: Boarders have to "skate", balancing the unlatched boot on the board and gliding down the usually icy slope at the life exit. Controlling direction and stopping is a whole new skill set and horribly difficult to master. Many boarders fall off, risking injury, getting hit by the next ski chair, or blocking the next set of people getting off the lift and potentially causing a very very nasty pile up. Getting off the lift was an absolute nightmare, and the cause of many a painful spill.
7. Start the Run
Skiing: After getting off the lift, you're immediately good to go!
Snowboarding: Having (un)sucessfully gotten off the lift, boarders now have to strap in their other boot before heading down. Again, there's no elegant way to do this, the easiest is for them to sit down and do it. Of course, having sat down, they might as well stay down a bit longer and enjoy the view...... again blocking skiers from direct access to the ski run!
Let The Music Take Control And Let Your Body Move
8. Down the Hill
Skiing: For beginners, there's basically only 1 move you need to learn, the snow plough. Just lean your body forward, bend your knees, "open-close" your feet to alternate between the plough and parallel positions to control speed.
Snowboarding: Bend knees forward but lean body left and right depending on 1) which leg is leading and 2) whether you are going faster or slower. Body weight has to shift accordingly, and you can either go "left-right" in what they call a Floating Leaf down the hill, or learn how to do turns and board down facing up the cliff instead of down. This was very very confusing for me, bending my legs in one direction, facing another, pushing my weight in a 3rd direction. After a while I started unintentionally doing 360s! I do understand why boarding looks more cool than skiing though. There are just so many directions and movements you can do, it looks like a dance!
9. Stop!!!!
Skiing: Keeping legs in the snow plough position, simply exert more force. Once you have slowed to a stop, adjust feet so that they are stable and not pointing in the wrong direction.
Snowboarding: Stopping is not easy even though slowing down is, becuase it is very very very difficult for snowboarders to stand stationary on a hill. I didn't realise this until I tried it myself, and I immediately understood why you always see boarders sitting on the slopes. It's just too difficult and tiring to stop and be stationery on a gradient, so they have to sit down to rest.
10. Plonk... Ouch!
Skiing: There are limited directions to fall, and it usually happens when your skis cross accidentally. Most of the time its simply easier to take the skis off, reposition them and put them back on. Using the poles also helps you "recover" when you lose your balance, or secure you if you start gliding off unintentionally.
Snowboarding: Because you can move in a million directions facing different ways, there are also a million ways for you to fall. Downhill/uphill, Forwards/backwards. The worst is to fall facing uphill and backwards (ie your body falls backwards in a downhill direction). The strain on the neck and potential whiplash is seriously no joke. You can get bruises on seriously any part of your body, the most vulnerable being the knees, hip, butt, wrist, arms... Getting up is not easy either, if you're facing downhill and the slope is gentle. I had many an embarrasing episode where I managed to raise myself halfway, before the board slipped out from under me and I either plonked back down with a loud thud, or started gliding off out of control and half squatting down.
11. Moving On
Skiing: The snow plough is easy to pick up, and can last you for quite a good gradient. You just need to adjust how horizontal a direction you move in. If you want to go at higher speeds and try more difficult slopes however, you need to be able to ski parallel.
Snowboarding: The gradient of a slope doesn't play as important a role as it does for skiing, because its the edge of the board you're relying on to slowdown and stop. So once boarders have picked up the movement, its quite easy for them to start tackling the more difficult slopes much faster than skiiers.
Final Score: Skiing 7, Snowboarding 4
One last word of advice... if you want to pick up skiing, 0.5 to 1 day of lessons should suffice. If you're picking up snowboarding, do at least 1.5 days so that you can learn the basics of all the moves and do actual runs. While skiing ranks higher on my score system, its mainly because snowboarding is a lot harder to pick up. We were quite discouraged after the first half day, but forced ourselves to continue just to prove that we could do it. After 1.5 days however, we managed to pick up the basic moves, got the hang of it, and it became fun.
Enjoy!
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