How To Ride A Burton Snowboard Lesson One

12.17.2007 by Raymond Burton in Life, Snowboarding

Why are we learning to ride Burton Snowboards? Because it matches my last name and I like geeky things like that.

Today was a great day to go riding. It’s Sunday night and no one was on the hill. Good time to try to ride goofy, but we will get to that a little later. Since I have just started to learn how to ride a snowboard, I thought I would go through some of the tips that have helped me out.

The first thing you want to do when you go out riding for the first day is make sure you have snow pants on because you will be spending a lot of time on your butt.

If you are going to fall, you want to fall into the hill, uphill. Don’t fall towards the nose or the tail of the snowboard. Get as low as you can straight down and then pick the direction that will make you fall uphill. If you are going straight down the hill when you are going to fall, just pick a side! I prefer the butt side because there is more cushion and less chance of hurting my wrists.

When you start to learn how to ride a snowboard you need to know about the toe edge and the heel edge. When you are standing on the board, your toes point to the toe edge and your heels are on the heel edge.

The first time you go out to ride, take it easy even if you are type A. I’m speaking from that side of the fence. Spend time on the bunny hill riding only your heel edge all the way down. Once you get the hang of being able to stop yourself using only the heel edge of your snowboard it’s time for step two. The toe edge.

Now you are going to face into the hill, looking at the top of the hill. Ride the toe edge of your snowboard all the way down to the bottom. You increase your speed by putting less pressure on the toe edge and leveling out your snowboard a little bit by letting the heels drop a little. I say a little because if you let the heel edge of the snowboard dig into the snow, then you will do a very fast backward fall. When you want to slow the snowboard down, you just put more pressure into the toe edge and pick up the heel edge of the snowboard.

When you feel comfortable being able to stop the snowboards momentum down the hill on both your heel and toe edges, its time to go a little faster.

Now for leafing. Still stay only on either your heel or toe edge of your snowboard. Now we are going to let the nose of the snowboard point downhill for a little bit. Let’s use the heel edge and assume that you have your left foot toward the nose of the board.

Riding the heel edge like before, stay on your heels but start to turn your left shoulder towards downhill. This will cause the snowboard nose to point downhill and you will start to pick up speed. When you have had enough speed you can bring your right foot up to match your left foot by turning your right shoulder downhill and you will be right back where you started with your snowboard perpendicular to the hill going at a controlled speed. Dig the heels in a little more and you will come to a complete stop.

Here is a video of learning to ride the heel edge of the snowboard down a hill. You can see the leafing as first the nose points downhill and then the tail points downhill.