Snow Skills

When the warmer temperatures bring warmer (and heavier) snow, snowboarding can get challenging. Sure, the softer snow feels great under foot and it doesn’t take much to get the board gripping the surface. The heaviness of the snow, however, can put you in a situation where the board seems to have a mind of its own. A snowboard seems very long when you’re trying to turn it against a whole mountain’s-worth weight of snow.

A natural reaction to this condition would be to steer your board more with the rear foot to compensate, but a little high school physics can teach us otherwise. If to every action there’s an opposite reaction, then the more you try to push the board around, the more the snow will be grabbing back at you. There’s a solution; resist the urge to over-steer your snowboard in heavier snow conditions by keeping the rear foot light and directing your balance along the path of the turn.

An unintended effect of using a lot of rear-leg steering in your turns is that most of your balance tends to fall back on that foot. With the rear half of the board over-weighted, you’ve got to use more muscle effort to stay upright and it will be more difficult to get the board redirected into a new turn. In spring conditions, you’ll want to even out the balance between your front and rear foot; say a 55 to 45% split, respectively.

With this balance, you’ll be able to keep the nose of the board strong through the turn and keep that effort aligned along the path of the board’s edge. When trying to move through something with a lot of friction in it, your most effective moves are efficient ones that even out your movements and apply force exactly where it’s needed; in the direction you’re going!

By avoiding too much steering in heavy snow, you’ll be able to make better turns, not fatigue yourself, and be able to stay out in the awesome conditions longer.