Snowboarding, once a prime route for teen rebellion in dress and action, today is definitely mainstream. Those teens—both guys and Shred Bettys—who took up snowboarding in the late 80s and 90s now are riding with their kids. Just ask Toni Fletcher, the adult supervisor for the Copper Mountain Ski and Ride School (800-458-8386, www.coppercolorado.com). "Our program is so large because the parents are snowboarders, and they want their kids to start riding instead of skiing," she said. Fletcher reports that wannabe snowboarders showing up for classes range in age from 3 to 60, with women in their late 20s and 30s forming one of the largest groups.
Snowboarding—or riding, as it's more commonly referred to—is all about having fun, whether cruising down a groomed slope, doing a corkscrew 540 in a pipe, or sliding over a tabletop in a park. The resorts are rife with terrain parks and pipes, snowboard classes for beginners who want to freeride or freestyle, and competitions for amateurs, pro and Olympic riders.
Smooth Riding Moves and Maneuvers
As with skiing, there are different styles of riding. Free-riding is all-mountain riding, on the slopes, in the trees, down the steeps and through the moguls. Freestyle is snowboarding in a pipe or park filled with rails, fun boxes and other features. Race (also called alpine) riding is primarily competition (picture the riding at the Winter Olympics).
Playing in the Parks and Pipes
Nationwide, terrain parks are popping up faster than moguls on a steep slope carved by freeriders on twintip boards after a two-foot snowstorm. In layman's terms: they're everywhere. Here in Colorado, the newest parks are designed for specific skill levels, from beginner parks with tiny rails hugging the ground, to parks with roller-coaster rails, fun boxes and tabletops. Within huge parks, such as
Keystone Resort's A51 Terrain Park (970-496-4FUN, www.keystone.snow.com), you'll find all different ages playing—from a skilled rider sliding on the 50-foot BBQ rail to a 50-year-old experimenting on a wider, lower-to-the-ground fun box. In the Rail Yard, one of Winter Park's three parks and two pipes, there are duplicates of the rails on the steps of Colorado's State Capitol building as well as the rails on the steps at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
Learning to Ride
Whether you're a first-timer or already comfortable going lip-to-lip in a pipe, there are classes and special clinics for you at Colorado's resorts. Every resort offers basic snowboarding classes, but the most popular clinics show riders how to play in the parks and pipes.
Beaver Creek's Parkology (800-404-3535,www.beavercreek.com) program, for example, features progressive learning terrain in a park designed for beginners, another designed for intermediates, and a third for intermediates and experts. Othello's Rail Riders, led by former competitive skateboarder and snowboarder Othello, in conjunction with the
Ski & Snowboard Schools of Aspen/Snowmass (800-525-6200, www.aspensnowmass.com), is a step-by-step progression, teaching advanced riding techniques focusing on riding rails and jumps in terrain parks. A lot of the resorts offer multi-day clinics, so if you're headed to ski country this winter, consider wrapping your vacation dates around a clinic. (These clinics may be listed under the events calendars or in the ski-school section of the resorts' websites.)
If you want to learn more about riding—or if your kids ride and they talk about that rider who did an awesome switch cork 9 on a 70-foot table—here are two websites that might prove helpful. Burton, a major snowboarding company, has a learn-to-ride section on its website at
www.burton.com/burton/learntoride. The EXPN website has a terrific
glossary of terms to help you understand riderspeak.
Prime Events for Riders and Spectators
Colorado's reputation as a home for snowboarding is nationwide, as the state has been selected to host events such as
ESPN's Winter X Games (at Aspen/Snowmass) and
Outdoor Life Network's Winter Gravity Games (at Copper Mountain). Most of the major resorts and many of the smaller ones have amateur competitions, ranging from the Copper Mountain Snowboard Series Superpipe Competition to Breckenridge's Mountain Dew Vertical Challenge. The SOS Outreach Series is a series of 15 competitions for amateurs at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Steamboat Springs and Buttermilk. Visit
www.sosoutreach.org for details.