Yeah.

We all have our ways of getting through the offseason. For me, it was usually running, road biking, and weight lifting. More recently, the Onewheel XR became the Suboxone® to tide me over from my snowboard addiction in the summer. So, this is where you’re thinking it was the Onewheel that broke me off? It would be natural to assume so, everyone else thought I’d eaten it standing sideways. Nope!

 

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The Honeymoon Begins

Dave and Adam have encouraged me to get into mountain biking for about as long as I’ve known them. I’d resist, mainly due to the cost of entry and my lack of knowledge about mountain bike gear. There’s a lot to decide when getting a bike, and I didn’t know where to start, so I just put it off every summer.

That all changed during the last winter though. I could no longer deny that mountain biking was a natural choice for me. It would be an aggressive workout, it would get me outdoors, it would give me a reason to explore Michigan, and it would inject some of the adrenaline that I’ve gotten used to chasing since I’d gotten into snow sports.

It was time to bite the bullet, do my homework, and pony up the cash for a decent whip to ride single track.

After talking things over with a few friends, I compared options, specs, and the thought about the riding that I expected to do. I chose the Kona Honzo DL. The Honzo DL is a beefy hardtail with a solid spec package for a rider like me, and it came with a dropper. Droppers are cool.

It’s perfect for the trails I’d be riding in mid-Michigan, and it’s big enough to handle a bigger guy like me, without sacrificing maneuverability. I noticed that the brakes are pretty touchy though, I laughed once as I almost went over the bars on a street ride. I wasn’t used to such responsive brakes, they exposed my trash hand/brake placement!  In hindsight, this was a warning, and a bit of foreshadowing…

 

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Honzo DL and I became fast friends. I found out that my house is 20 minutes to a handful of different mountain bike parks in my area. I’m used to having to drive 1-4 hours for my snowboard fix, so I got stoked each time I discovered a new trail near me on All Trails or some other app.

I began getting out a couple times a week once the spring rains dried up. It was so great to rotate and explore the different places around. I noticed improvement from each ride to the next. Sometimes the progression was my fitness. I’d complete a loop without a break, then it became two loops, and so on. Other times it was my confidence improving as I became more familiar with the trails I rode. My loop times decreased and my average speed increased through the trails. I began watching mountain bike youtubers, started following mountain bike Instagram accounts…you know how all that goes.

 

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The Honeymoon is Over

You may have noticed that I said my confidence increased, but I didn’t say that my bike handling skill increased. In hindsight, I would have been better served watching how-to videos, tips and tricks videos, or even finding an instructor and getting lessons in person. But nope. Instead, I filled my mind with stoke content, first person clips of mountain bikers ripping through a trail, sending jumps, and leaning hard into each banked turn. A part of me wonders if this subconsciously changed my approach, dialing back the caution and dialing up the send. Maybe, maybe not. I suppose that it doesn’t matter at this point.

I hit the trail for the last time on the second day of summer. It was a pleasant Saturday afternoon and the trailhead lot was empty. It was a good day! About halfway through the first loop, I noticed that I was comfortable with a lot more speed than normal. I remember thinking about how pleased I felt with myself for getting better! Alas, this was not the case, because about a quarter mile later I’d be picking myself up off the dirt, dizzy from the searing pain in my limp arm.

The long story short is that I took a very small drop at speed and must’ve felt a little sketched by the downward travel in my fork.  In response, I grip braked.

My front brake.

Only my front brake.

Yeah, don’t do that. Don’t do any of it.

The result: Dislocated shoulder. Massive and complete rotator cuff tear. Supraspinatus, infraspinatus, and subscapularis all torn off the bone and retracted. Wrecked labrum. Bicep, shot. I no longer had a functional arm, and it was my dominant arm.

Summer was over, 2 days after it began.

 

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Repair and Rebuild

Following a month of tests and visits, and carrying around an arm that wouldn’t move, I underwent extensive surgery in August to put my shoulder back together. A few hours, and 9 bone anchors later, I was sent home with a good prognosis but a long-timelined road to recovery. The surgeon says that I should be good to be back on snow by January, however, he cautioned that this isn’t the winter to try for that tamedog or frontside board on a rail…and it is definitely not handplant season.

But I will ride!

As of today, I’m about 9 weeks out from surgery and my wins include the following: I can pick up a coffee cup, reach up for an empty dish, tie my hair back (this was huge), and I can use both arms to pull my pants up. Strength training starts in about 3-4 weeks. In January I should be ‘normal’ to outsiders, and by next August I should be 100%.

 

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I got lucky.

An injury as extensive as mine could have ended differently. I hike a lot these days, and I’ve hiked the spot where this happened. The fall itself could have been even more consequential had I landed a foot in a different direction.

Honzo DL and I aren’t quitting each other though, I’m getting back in the saddle next spring. However, I respect her and the track much more today than I did in June, and so I plan to get back to basics and focus on the fundamental skills that I ignored the first time around.

I had a similar come to Jesus moment with snowboarding, when I broke my back because my stoke was greater than my skill. You’d think I would have taken that lesson to mountain biking, but they say that familiarity breeds contempt. How hard can it be to ride a bike, right?

My takeaway? Respect action sports. Take the time to learn the fundamentals before you take the time to hype yourself up on tricks that you’re not ready for yet.  Don’t take yourself out of the game before it really begins.

I’ll see you in January

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When Jake Burton showed up at Pando in 1979 with straps on his Snurfer, he wasn’t a beginner. He was an expert level snurfer who had hit limitations of having entirely free feet. All of the equipment used in snowboarding today was created to make high performance snowboarding easier. But snowboard bindings did not enhance control that Jake, and all other snurfers didn’t already have. Bindings do not necessarily give you move control.

A great example of this is riding with loose binding straps. This winter, ride a few laps with your ladder straps only two clicks into the buckles. You will notice that your movements must be incredibly precise, that nothing can be forced, and your form has to be perfect. This is what it means to be in control. If that sounds easy, find a blue mogul run to ride through. Do this for a few laps and strap in like normal. Carving will be incredibly easy and your mogul riding game will have improved exponentially; you might even find them enjoyable. This is an experience that every snowskater is familiar with. 

Everyone knows that snowskating is more difficult than snowboarding. Skaters will also tell you that skateboarding is more difficult than snowboarding. And yet, more people skateboard than snowboard. As you’re reading this, someone somewhere just landed their first ollie on a skateboard, maybe even their first kickflip. So what gives?

The entire snowboard education industry has been designed around fitting the beginner snowboarder into the mold of an expert. Expert equipment modified for beginners, and expert movements broken down and fed piece by piece to a student. But we haven’t spent much time, if any, discussing how humans learn.

In 2015, Professor Sian Beilock of the University of Chicago ran an experiment to test whether or not students’ understanding of physics could be increased by adding proprioceptive experiences to the learning process. A lab experiment was designed that would allow students to experience what torque feels like in their hands. 

What they found during this experiment is that by adding bodily sensations to the teaching process, more regions of the brain were activated while learning.  This led to a deeper understanding of the forces at play due to the multiple streams of data coming into the body working in congress with each other. The force of torque moved from the abstract realm of thought, to a tangible and touchable idea. The more this skill can be engaged, the easier it is to learn and understand a subject. Snowboard bindings reduce the tangibility of pressure management making balance an abstraction.

When you have bindings to hold you to the board, your balance can be much further away from ideal since it is impossible for the board to escape. This wide range of false positives creates a condition where riders form habits that inhibit progression and can be difficult to break. It also requires the rider to rely on what they are being told by the instructor rather than feeling it themselves.

People with low proprioceptive skill are those who struggle and most need our help as instructors. Something they aren’t feeling, that their body is not sensing, is causing the self preservation mode to kick in and override the attempt of performing a new movement. Some feeling, some subconscious sensation deep in the core of their being, is telling them “no”. This is also part of why many of these people appear to struggle with lower risk tolerance. The physical, bodily reaction of fear and excitement are almost identical and all it takes is one piece of data to change from fear to excitement, or vice versa. This is why your friends may not react the same way you do standing atop extreme terrain.

Yes, the learning curve of a snowskate seems higher and like it should exacerbate this issue. And at some places along the way, this is true. But how many people are afraid of snowboarding because their feet are strapped to one board? Others are frightened by the fact that you’re pulled by gravity for movement rather than propelling yourself. All of this amounts to people being afraid since they do not have control over their own movement. All this before they even put the snowboard on.

Both of these issues disappear on a snowskate, making it feel more comfortable for the student at the start of the lesson. This is especially true with single level snowskates on flat terrain. And just as a skateboarder learns to run out a fall on a skateboard, so does a snowskater. This means fewer downhill edge catch falls to break wrists and slam heads. It also means fewer panic stricken, unable to sit down snowboarders accidentally barreling down the beginner hill. But what it really gives you is more direct, immediate feedback.

The unforgiving nature of a snowskate is precisely why it can be a great tool for teaching snowboarding. The smaller range of acceptable pressure management means fewer false positives for the rider. If someone leans too far backwards, the front foot comes off of the board and the rider will know to shift their weight forward. This makes pressure management more intuitive, gives the rider more control, and inspires confidence. Fear becomes excitement.

This is also the premise behind learning how to traverse on a snowboard with only one foot strapped in. Dragging their heel or toe in the snow makes them slower and feel safer. And by tilting the board up against the back foot, they can control the board by tuning and stopping. If they fall, they can stand back up easily and get going again. So while one footed snowboarding is more difficult, it simplifies progression by giving personal, tangible feedback.

Yes, this pedagogy requires some specific situations. The ability to easily switch back and forth from snowskate to snowboard, and the terrain necessary to create a reduced risk environment. With a little creativity and some walking, this can be found at most places. In many ways, it makes for an even more hands off lesson for the instructor. It also gives the student much more freedom to learn and explore on their own, asking for help when they want it. But even without the ability to use a snowskate, the lessons learned from thinking like a snowskate instructor will improve the methodology in place across the entire industry.

Whats more, we could begin teaching snowskate lessons as an industry to pay for it. By having a snowskate program, you create an entirely new customer base for the snowsports industry. And it’s not like snowskating doesn’t exist already, so production would just need to increase. If people can skateboard all over the world, why can’t they snowskate on any street where there is snow? They’ll still buy lift tickets, and even more people will join the snowsports industry whether on snowboards or snowskates, perhaps both. Nothing makes a 300′ hill more entertaining like making it more challenging.

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Currently PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America) teaches it’s instructors to teach how to ski in a wedge as the foundation for the student progression. This is what makes it seem like skiing is easier to learn, and biomechanically this is true. Skiing in a wedge is in many ways easier than walking. The balance is easier with its wide stance in all directions, and you just need to look where you want to go while pushing yourself in that direction.

Teaching the wedge is like training wheels on a bicycle; it gets people moving but is missing critical components for high performance maneuvering. As you move faster, the wedge no longer works just like a tricycle becomes more difficult and even impossible to turn. At this point you have to go back to a slower pace and learn fundamental skills that were omitted for the sake of brevity. Some of the learned habits have to be modified as they impede the progress of the participant, making skiing harder to master.

Simply removing the pedals from a bicycle allows someone to learn all of the fundamentals of bike handling in a lower risk environment. Learning to balance and lean the bike comes naturally while the rider gets to manage risk on their own terms. Starting on a single, short ski allows the skier to have similar results to removing pedals from a bike. Particularly when used in low angle terrain and in spaces where the skier only needs to turn one direction. This is why a growing number of instructors are proponents of direct to parallel as the foundation of teaching skiing. These things take more patience and terrain management from the teacher, but they also seem to make the learning process easier for the student.

There are ski schools that have developed the “direct to parallel” pedagogy, and it’s largely all they teach. Places such as Aspen Snowmass use much shorter skis and shape terrain to simplify the complex movements of skiing. It may look ridiculous when you see a 6 foot tall person on a pair of 145cm skis, but the results of the progression speaks volumes. Even though people start a little more slowly, they advance more quickly later on. Establishing a stronger sense of balance and more precise movements leads to a smoother learning experience.

For someone who just wants a way to spend time outside, the wedge is great. It gets them moving quickly and movement is fun. It’s all about introducing the right methods for the desired outcome of the guest. If they want to become better later on, there is an incredibly proven method for doing so. At the end of the day it’s best to teach your guests’ desires.

The education process for snowboarding has also been simplified to its most basic movements, but it doesn’t have the same cheat hack as skiing or cycling. Even just learning to whip your back foot around to make your snowboard turn is incredibly demanding and complex. It also creates some incredibly brutal falls when you are learning how to do this. Thus, snowboarding looks “more difficult to learn, but easier to master.” Especially by those who never took lessons.

Terrain based learning (TBL) areas help when shaped well for the way a snowboard moves, but they are often built with skiing in mind. These spaces are usually miniature halfpipes or snow wedges, and low angle banked turns to establish basic movement skills. Moving on to a low angle, single fall-line piece of terrain makes it easier to expand these skills. But what is easier for beginner skiers isn’t always easier for beginning snowboarders. Because of this, it isn’t uncommon to see snowboard instructors eschew non ideal TBL for the old school teaching methods.

The snowboard education process is effective, and a lot of time has been devoted to refining it. But without the aid of equipment changes to simplify the movements it can require more time to learn. This also requires instructors who have the desire to take time to work with guests who struggle. And with the “crutch” of wedge skiing to fall back on, there are many instructors who take this “out”. 

There are some projects in the works to develop something like the balance bike or short skis paired with TBL spaces. Hopefully these projects will change the understanding of which sport is easier to learn. But at the end of the day, the sport that is easiest to learn is whichever one the guest is most interested in. Even if they will struggle a little bit more at the onset, internal motivation is effective. Hopefully soon, hearing someone tell guests “you can always try skiing” will be a thing of the past. Because if your instructor doesn’t believe in you, who else will?

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Not only did the prohibition of snowboarding create a level of angst that brought snowboarders together, we knew where our allegiances were. Banned from almost all resorts, snowboarders had to poach lines at night to develop product or even just snowboard at all. Because of this, snowboarding produced style and passion not yet seen in skiing. For many, snowboarding has always been about experiencing freedom of expression through movement, and in the early days that freedom was prohibited anywhere that skiing existed.

Somewhere between then and now, snowboarding became too good for itself. Snowboarding became less about hanging out with your friends and having a good time to being more about instagram shots and contest prize money. Maybe, just maybe had we not gone this route, small places like Pando in Michigan would still be open and lift lines shorter for it. You may think of Suicide Six Vermont as the first place to allow snowboarding in 1982. But what about Ski Cooper Colorado in 1980 or Pando Michigan with snurfer contests in the 1970s? Now, Pando sits vacant and even most Colorado residents don’t really know that Ski Cooper exists.

Think back to the time before you got your driver’s license. If you were a skater, you would skate literally anything. If you had some pavement and a curb, you figured out how to make it entertaining. An empty parking lot meant flip trick practice and ollie contests with your friends. And on those days you made it to an actual skate park, life was perfect. You got to use all the skills you honed on city streets in a space designed just for you. No threat of the cops, no angered neighbors, and no wanting to throw your skateboard through the windshield of angry impatient drivers rushing to their shit jobs.

Then you got your driver’s license and you drove to the skateparks you always idolized, maybe even skated to. This was the dream you had dreamt, had been waiting for. And it lasted for exactly one summer. Then your skateboard started to collect dust as you had to work and were controlled by hormones. You would skate here and there, but eventually you just stopped. The kids aren’t alright after all.

The lift ticket is your driver’s license. It’s gotten so expensive now that places in Michigan can demand a hundred dollars a day. We did this to ourselves by chasing bigger and better terrain parks at all costs.  So now, snowboarding seems like one of the most privileged sports in existence. Second not even to skiing.

Snowmaking is expensive, and it takes a lot of snow to build parks. Even a 300 acre area will have a six figure budget for making snow. It’s rumored that a super pipe is a million dollars a year to build and maintain. But corporate interests started to realize that snowboarding was a cash cow and big resorts had enough money to spend to draw the attention of snowboarders to them. Especially after 1992 when the Pipe Dragon was invented and snowboarding became all about halfpipes. These ditches became less hand dug works of love to something machine made in comparably shorter periods of time. They also became much, much larger.

So in the late nineties and middle aughts, there were half pipes all over the United States just to bring in snowboarders. Early terrain parks often didn’t allow skiers to enter them, so that money was being invested entirely to bring in snowboarders. It worked. Places that couldn’t afford that level of expenditure were abandoned for brighter horizons and bigger parks, even though they were the first to accept us as people. And now? Halfpipes are just gone. More and more resorts are tearing them out and you consider yourself lucky to have one. Even luckier still if you have a bowl park like the one at Timberline or Pine Knob.

Snowboarding, in the form of dollars for lift tickets means we have quite literally paid for our acceptance into normative culture. Sure, season passes are cheap for the big resorts of our childhood dreams if they’re on Epic or Ikon. But day passes of $200+ and lines that are hours long are the fruits of no longer skating, or snowboarding, your local parking lot with friends. And all of the evidence points to these companies not caring about the sport, but simply the money they can extract from it.

We’ve stopped working with whatever we have out of necessity, and started paying exorbitant fees to places who only want us for our money.  We stopped building a laid back culture at small indy parks and riding anything we could find. It’s easier to just buy a lift ticket and ride the terrain that is obviously more fun, that doesn’t require being creative or walking uphill. It’s the staleness of competitive snowboarding compared to wandering the wilderness. There’s a reason Craig Kelly walked away from the arguments of Sim’s and Burton. Life was better out there.

You don’t have to wander off in the backcountry investing hours into one line to get back to the heart of snowboarding. When’s the last time you looked at a green run as a playground? Butter tricks and tail blocks are just as fun as cliff drops. A powder run on the coast of Lake Michigan with its 200 feet of vertical is majestic. Just make snowboarding as fun as you can with what’s available where you live. Hang out with your friends, and your kids when the time comes. Take a few laps at the closest hill and just have fun. There’s a reason the best moments are free.

To this day, one of my favorite snowboard memories isn’t while snowboarding itself. It was skipping school with my friends to build a backyard booter. With a beater plow truck to move snow, a crew of three or four to shape the lip and landing, we were just hanging out. With no inrun hill, the plan was to use dirt bikes or snowmobiles to hit the jump we had just built. All we needed to do was wait for one more big storm to fill the landing back in. That storm would never come. I remember driving by it almost every day to the lift access hill, watching it melt little by little. 

I don’t think anyone ever hit that jump, but the memory is cherished all the same. We were friends playing hookie and fighting the man just to have fun. Even if the plow truck driver was a dirty skier, we just wanted to hang out and hit big jumps together. (That truck eventually caught fire on the way to the hill one day. Dirtbag life, eh.) And every day that I passed that booter, it was a sign of hope as much as of sadness. Yes it sucked to watch it melt, but there was still the anticipation of that one storm that would let us rebuild it and bring it online. That one magical storm that would let us huck meat hanging out with friends under the glow of construction lights.

It’s not that snowboarding was better when the world hated snowboarders. It’s that we had a cause to rally around and a necessity to be creative. There was a unity among that “core” crowd of people, and it’s what separated snowboarders from “people who snowboard”. Snowboarders see the whole world as a playground. That street rail over there, the picnic table in the park, everything is fair game if you don’t get caught. You don’t have to increase your responsibilities as an adult to afford a big resort holiday, you just have to see the world as a child, like a playground, once more.

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The next question is “What am I still getting from this?” Something about you, deep inside your core, wants to keep this going. You begin to lose track of why, sometimes it bringing anguish as the problem becomes more difficult to solve for. All without knowing if the work will be worth it, but sure in the knowledge that failing this idea will bring greater frustration. Rainer Hertrich had over eight years of skiinig every day before, his streak ended with heart problems that required immediate professional attention. Does it make it easier when you’re choosing living over dying for that next day on snow?

If you drill down deep enough, all the way to the very foundation of it, snowboarding is fun. Snowboarding is a form of adventure every single time you slide down the hill. It doesn’t have to be anything more sophisticated than a kid with a piece of cardboard on a grass hill, sliding is fun. Giving to gravity is fun. And every single day that you give in to its pleasures is a day worth commemorating. Then life gets in the way and you lose track of that one, simple concept. The most fun days become deep snow and cliff drops, not hand rails on ice rink snow. Neither is more or less of an adventure when you think about it. One of them just looks a little more impressive to the outside world.

It’s really easy to get caught up in what everything looks to the outside world as an adult. We make videos and put music to them to try and share with others how we felt inside. While it matters to the rest of the world how cool or gnarly it looks, what emotions they feel when they see your video, it doesn’t have to matter to you. Sometimes all you need is the smallest patch of snow, some good friends, and that lost feeling.

It’s easy to get caught up in the thought of “is it good enough for someone else?” But that’s not what matters. What matters is that you enjoy what you are doing. Everyone who goes after turns all year has ridden the worst strips of snow to make it happen. Because they are natural formations, they feel acceptable. For some reason, more so than a truck full of Zamboni snow and a handrail on a hill.

Life doesn’t always have to be bigger, better, faster. It can’t always be that way, and when it becomes such it borders on the line of addiction. That day on snow, those turns don’t even have to look or feel official. Since when have dirtbag snowboarders and skiers given a damn about what’s “official”? How many people do you know who have set up a hand rail in Nashville Tennessee and gone snowboarding on it? It doesn’t really matter though, because it sounds like an adventure to me.

So this year, when you put your snowboard on in the living room, feel it. Believe it. It’s you way of reconnecting to an experience that you have missed since all the snow melted. Sure, it seems silly. So does getting a truck load of snow from the local ice rink. But something about how it makes you feel is calming, reassuring. So who cares?

If you’re out chasing turns all year this year, go ride that white ribbon that you’ve hiked five miles to get to. Isn’t it the spectacle of it all part of what creates the thrill? You know the absurdity of it is what makes you smile, so who gives a damn whether or not anyone else thinks your day was legit. Just make sure it helps you smile both in the present and the future.

Plus, you never know what you might see.

The post What is a Day on Snow? appeared first on agnarchy.com.

All of you have seen the dimples in the base of your snowboard from over tightening screws. You’ve even felt the dreaded disco foot of your screws coming loose, which is what made you over torque your screws in the first place. I even saw a lead shop tech tighten someones screws so tight to stop the disco foot, that they had to cut the screw heads off to remove the bindings later. While that was just bad binding design and an “everything is a nail when all you have is a hammer” sort of shop tech, it still happened. Trash your old binding screws, they suck. Buy you some hex head screws, because it’s the cheapest board upgrade you’ll ever buy to give you that feeling of being a cool tinkerer.

Hex Head screws, newly installed on my Rad Air Tanker.The first advantage, and maybe the most important of hex head screws, is no more stripped screw heads. A lot of people don’t even realize there are different sizes or types of cross slotted screws. People just aren’t exposed to the environment to know this, so any screw driver that kinda fits is the right one. But with hex heads, you have to use the right size. Either the driver fits, or it doesn’t. This way you don’t wind up with screws that look like the ones below.

And if somehow you do wind up stripping one of these out, there’s still a solution. Anyone who has spent a lot of time around hand tools is familiar with the idea of driving an over-sized torx bit into the head and carefully backing the screw out. While this requires some hammering and is probably still not good for your equipment, at least you can get the screws out. And if you really duffed up, there is still the trusty old die grinder to let you turn your screw into….a slotted screw for a flat head screw driver. 

The best part though, is snowboard binding companies can put out torque specs with hex heads. Cross slot screws are so susceptible to camming out that you can’t measure torque ratings. Don’t lie and act like you’ve never slipped a posidrive out of the head of a screw as you were over tightening it, stripping all the material out. This is an exaggerated version of “camming out”. And with that pesky design flaw gone, you can use torque specs to make sure you’re not ruining the core of your snowboard. Did you really think you weren’t pulling the binding inserts out of the core of your snowboard? That’s what those dimples are from.

If you want to claim dirtbag snowboarders won’t torque their screws to spec, mountain bikers do. Carbon fiber is expensive and no one can just afford to go buy a new bike. If they could, their bike wouldn’t cost more than their car. Bike companies make single size single setting torque wrenches for this reason. No one wants to break their $5,000 carbon frame because they over tightened the screw on their seat post. Snowboarding has an opportunity to sell a new product now, and it’s one that will actually improve the experience of snowboarding. Especially if you’re riding mini discs. They don’t even have to design it since many bike companies already make them. If you can rebrand Kinco Gloves and sell them for three times the price….why not torque wrenches? (Please don’t over price these. This pastime is getting too expensive as it is.)

You can also be an early adopter. These screws are just an M6x1, 12mm long, flat head socket cap screw. They sell these at most hardware stores for under a dollar a screw. Then you need a 4mm hex bit to tighten them. If you’re using a pocket tool with interchangeable bits, you can slot the 4mm in and replace the T3 cross slot driver. Good to go for on hill repairs. Bontrager even makes a 4mm torque wrench set to 5 Newton Meters that you can toss in the glovebox and forget about until you’re looking for your registration and insurance.

If you don’t want to deal with finding them at the hardware store, Bomber Online sells sets of these screws already. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about the hardboot carving world.

For binding companies, it also allows more screws on the binding to be 4mm hex heads. Which means fewer tools to adjust bindings making it easier to actually do all those pre-ride screw checks that no one does, and still wont do. But seriously, upgrade your screw game so you don’t keep holding back your buddies by being the one with the disco foot.

The post Why Are Snowboard Binding Screws Still So Terrible? appeared first on agnarchy.com.

It isn’t that great terrain parks don’t exist, but how few and far between they are. Everyone seems to have heard about Holy Bowly, Audi Nines, maybe even the Pine Knob Parks in SE Michigan. These are some of the most fun terrain parks in existence, and most of us see them from afar. All because most snowboard areas don’t want to spend the money on them anymore. It doesn’t help that most good cat drivers will also make a better living as heavy equipment operators than cat drivers. This is part of why most park crews are made up of twenty-somethings; it’s a job that only “pays enough” when you’re in college. When you pay the bare minimum, your talent will always be scooped up.

 

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During the late 90’s and early 00’s, half pipes were all over the place. Resort operators knew it was the only way to get the freestyle riders on site. But many of them sat unused, because cheap profit ideas forbid that we teach people how to use them safely and manage fear/risk. So their million dollar projects sat unused and the idea was scrapped instead of improved. Back to the rails in a line followed by jumps in a straight line, back to limited freedom of movement. And freedom of movement on a snowboard is why most of us ride, right?

Yes, flow parks are hard to build and maintain.  But just like all skiers who want to pretend to make perfect turns, snowboarders and freestyle skiers yearn for freedom of movement, of flow. This is precisely why Holy Bowly is so popular. The reason Brain Bowl Sessions on Instagram goes out and build their own. Yeah, that’s right. A crew finds back country spots and builds bowl parks by hand. And often in flat spots requiring them to be towed in by a winch. This is what lengths people will go to to get 15 turns of creative flow that puts them in the air. Jump as high or low as you want, choose the line you want, ride how your soul says to ride. Largely because your ability to ride that terrain isn’t determined by your fear of casing a jump, or falling from 15 feet in the air at 40 miles an hour.

 

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People fly to Holy Bowly locations for the open ride week they love these parks so much. The same with It’s Tits, the breast cancer awareness bowl park that is also put on by Snowboy Productions. People drive from all over the midwest just to ride the super pipe at Seven Springs Pennsylvania. Imagine what they would do for a bowl park that can be ridden a different way each lap. Not just different tricks, but completely different lines through the same park.

Snowboarding deserves better parks, you deserve better parks. And if for once we pay the builders of these a wage that isn’t abysmal, the amount of quality builders and designers will expand. Which will mean more people on snow because they aren’t bored of snowboarding or skiing anymore. Until then, I’ll be finding side hits everywhere else on the mountain.

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This can be seen most recently with the announcement from Vail Resorts that they will start charging $30 a day over weekends and holidays for parking at Stowe. There are few things that are more easy money than a parking lot. It has high turnover, low maintenance, and functionally zero staff. This is the closest you can get to money growing on trees, and it’s more free than that. From Stowe alone, Vail stands to profit $3,000,000 per winter. This will also come at the cost of the local culture that made these places feel comfortable to you and I. It seems that $1,910,000,000 in revenue and being valued at $9,493,000,000 isn’t enough for Vail.

In the beginning, the multi resort passes were a good deal. For many customers, they still are. You can ride legendary mountains of your childhood dreams for…cheap. Vail Resorts buys your local hill, and now your season pass works at their flagship resorts as well as at home? Hell. Yes. Stephen’s Pass here I come. But it was better for Vail because they had opportunity capture of your business. The target audience isn’t you and I, it is wealthy enough to eat and drink on sight, and especially those who would fill resort owned hotel rooms. They don’t care about the money from the lower middle class, because they don’t have enough of it. Vail and Alterra only want our business because it’s our chatter and employment that keeps those mountains open. And typically keeps them operating at poverty wages instead of something that would let parents raise their children in town.

Savvy travelers can still dirtbag their way around all the legendary mountains that have been swept up by Alterra and Vail Resorts. Buy the multi-resort pass, build a van, and head out on the road. You can even rent a couch from locals on AirBNB trying to pay bills, but that is getting more difficult to find given how houses are now investment properties in any major mountain town. But it seems anymore like we are just digging our own graves. Year after year another legendary name, or three, falls to the Epic/Ikon conglomerates.

Season pass sales have never really been the money maker for snowboard and ski areas. It was a way to let the locals in, and to guarantee food and beverage sales to them. You’ll spend a few hundred to a couple thousand on food and beverages over the course of a season, largely out of convenience. Buy the season pass to make your hobby cheaper so that you’re just “at the hill”. The after work bar crowd at Michigan snowboard areas is great. But financially, nothing compares to property management and paid parking lots. Get people into hotel rooms at high enough demand that the per night prices go up. Get enough people to come to town and see how cute it is, and then they start competing over condos, too.

This is what happens every time a quiet town gets too popular. Towns can’t support the volume, so the wealthy start bidding wars that price out everyone who actually lives there. Everyone who actually does anything to make the town run can’t afford to live within an hours drive anymore. The average single family house price for Aspen hit $12,000,000 in April of 2022. What school teacher, general practitioner doctor, or ski patroller can afford that? None of them.

When the money savvy well heeled vacationer realizes why the locals all gave up on the American Dream for a life in the mountains, they start throwing money around. The only thing that doesn’t get more expensive is labor costs. Humans should be cheap, even when the housing is exorbitant. Industry creates efficiency of cost, and the easiest way to do that is to make the labor cheap.

What’s worse is everyone who is waiting for their local governments to do something about it. But they need to make money just like every entity, and have also realized the tourists are more valuable to that end than locals. The sale on a multi million dollar commercial property generates a lot of tax revenue. The sale of each room by the night makes a wonderfully steady stream of income. On the surface of it, why would the state fix it? They don’t care about you anymore than the resorts. The real estate industry is more lucrative than the tourism industry, and we’ve turned life into a numbers game.

While Vail Resorts may be going after parking, it’s old news for Alterra. While Aspen Skiing Company, owned by the same family as Alterra, could have ran top to bottom snow making for the cost of their re-branding efforts, they didn’t. Instead the expanded their superficial market by launching their own clothing brand, Aspen X. Buying the 686 factory to make production costs cheap, and then even pairing with Prada to make a $10,000 outerwear ensemble.

They do not care about you, they do not care about snowboarding. It’s time we as snowboarders got back to our roots. Small mountains, creative riding, and dirtbagging in parking lots. Let Vail Resorts destroy their towns, leave Alterra for the extravagantly wealthy. We’ll go build new ones, just like the 10th Mountain Veterans who built access to this hobby the first time.

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No, the worst part of it is the suicide. You stay in this industry long enough, and even the most reclusive will have at least known someone who has intentionally ended their struggle with this world. This is the suicide belt of America, better known as the Rocky Mountains. 

The place I want to work, where I want(ed) to make a life, has a suicide rate three times that of the entire state of Colorado at 22.5 per 100,000 people. A town built for tourists alone, is not and cannot be built for the people who keep it running. They are an afterthought, but “it’s okay because they chose this.” No, they chose the mountains just like workers in Redstone chose to dig coal instead of starve. If we all agree it wasn’t right then, why is it okay now? Because the facade and amenities of a ski town is better than a company town based on coal?

All the things you’re seeing come to light right now isn’t because COVID has made employees lazy. It’s that there is a shortage of people willing to live without personal space and privacy. To grind away at two or three jobs that are physically demanding all winter long in order to live in the mountains. You may not know this, but if you can be successful in a ski town you can be incredibly successful in most places. 

There does seem to be a selection bias in mountain towns towards those with anxiety difficulties, but life is just generally harder from every direction in ski towns. Could this be a way that people are dealing with anxiety, undiagnosed or otherwise? Does the relief from anxiety seem like happiness? It’s been shown that we don’t always know how to interpret the physical phenomenon we call emotions, because they are not innately understood. So what does a lack of anxiety feel like to the person who doesn’t even realize they’re living with it?

All this is exacerbated by the Roommate Russian Roulette or being harassed by the police for living in the parking lot. But you can’t afford to live on your own in an apartment, let alone dream of buying property in the place you want to work. So do you choose privacy, having roommates in your thirties, or leaving town? How much are you willing to pay for your medication, especially when it feels natural? 

But suddenly, when you can’t house 6 people in a two bedroom apartment, when you can’t even spend $600/mo to share a bed with some stranger you probably met online, lifts don’t run and kitchens aren’t staffed. And even the people who live here can’t seem to figure out why you see “help wanted” signs all over town. I blame COVID on helping people realize we don’t have to live such an unpleasant life grinding away at something in the future instead of dedicating time to our current selves as well. Life is balance, after all. And before, these were the conditions many lived in.

You may have to leave the playground you love as your office, but eventually your home life and a healthy community become more important than living in your playground. But what happens when you feel like you’re giving up on your dreams just as you can touch them, and you’re just waiting for that next break for things to get easier?

People who are looking at the ratio of employee to free market housing are missing the broader picture. They don’t look at who owns those properties and that they lack permanent residents, or that renting a house for thousands a night means it’s easier to spend millions on it. Many houses also sit empty as third and fourth holiday houses. All of this driving up the prices of housing even more and pushing the employees further away from work.

And if you can’t make it in the valley, it’s because you’re lazy and didn’t save up enough money to buy three houses to rent out so you don’t have to work. You shouldn’t forget vacation rentals through VRBO, AirBNB, and other real-estate management and rental companies in town, because they too are keeping workers from being able to live near employment.

I once saw an AirBNB host claim that we should be thankful to have them as neighbors, because the property is professionally maintained and always looks pretty. But you know who my preferred neighbor is over a bunch of rotating people? Friends that have had to leave town because they can’t afford housing anymore, or all the employees living in vans and cars in the parking lot. No wonder we party to escape.

With people doing everything they can just to scrape by, town councils want to spend millions on things that will draw in more tourists instead of investing in employees and community assistance. The problem isn’t too many tourists though, without them, most of our jobs wouldn’t exist. It’s that the town is making it so that tourists can buy their way in but the employees can’t really labor their way in through the blood, sweat, and tears they’re spending to stay there. It’s fine that a night in the Little Nell is two thousand dollars a night, but what isn’t okay are deed restricted houses that cost $800,000.

But now that the entertainment of the guests is being hampered by a lack of employees, the general public has decided it cares about the staff. Until now it has always been “You should be thankful you live in the mountains because I have to spend thousands of dollars to go snowboard!”, and usually said to someone who can’t afford to participate in the sport they’ve chosen to work in. Now, for the first time ever, the general public is seeing the side of these mountain ski towns that is absolutely disgusting. And it’s still not as many as anyone would hope.

Sure, some of you who are reading this have made it. You’ve worked your shitty jobs and long hours, sacrificing years of quality of life to get there. But that doesn’t make it right. You’re making the same argument made by mysogynists and racists who wonder what everyone’s problem is when “that one person that one time didn’t have a problem making it in this culture.” And it’s because they want to keep their toxic ways instead of improving themselves and their community.

“Chew them up, spit them out, and it’s okay because they chose to do it.” That’s an arrogant way to live your life. Thinking that because you suffered to get where you are, that others should have to as well.

And you might want to blame Vail for this, even Alterra, but it’s the entire tourism industry. Whether it’s ski resorts or theme parks, they rely on staff that only wants to be there for one season or one year because they’re cheaper. So they pay poorly, have college-like housing for grown adults, and they want it that way. They want it that way so you’re miserable enough to leave so someone else can “be thankful enough to live in this vacation destination.” It’s more profitable that way, and profit comes before people. Usually under the guise of “we want to make sure we keep everyone employed, regardless of their quality of life here.”

You can be as financially exclusive as you want in order to draw in the clientele you want to collect money from if that’s your profit motive. If you only want your patrons to see the working class when someone bumps their chair or serves their drink, at least have the decency to pay that working class enough to live there.

When you do this, you’ll also deliver a better customer experience because their hosts truly know, love, and live in the mountains you’re profiting from. While this sort of passion and knowledge doesn’t fit into a spreadsheet, it will absolutely pay dividends as employees who are mentally healthy are capable of performing a better quality of work. Employee retention matters, even more so when the busiest time of year is less than a month after opening day.

Just because someone “returns transformed” from their holiday, doesn’t mean the staff who enabled that experience aren’t broken and hurting; transformed in a different way. Stop looking for scientific answers and explanations alone. Data are without emotion, so looking to science alone to solve the ski town suicide problem means you’re probably asking the wrong questions. But I promise you the employees can tell you which questions to ask of those data. That is at least, when people in the office are actually willing to have engaging conversation with the very same working class that’s keeping you afloat, that you claim to be trying to find solutions for.

Capitalism that doesn’t consciously put community first will destroy everyone around, and this country has the history to prove it. Many of us are living it right now. So at minimum, be kind to your bartender and lift operator. There’s a reason the burnout is real, and it’s far worse than you could imagine.

Authors Note: This article has been four years in the making. Four years to feel like I could do this justice, and like I was emotionally sound enough to write this. I’ve also been waiting for an opportunity where the general public might listen. I’ve been on the edge myself, made my own dieing space before, expecting to take my own life. But no one ever listened when I discussed the problems I was dealing with, because the response was “but you’re living in the mountains!” and “you have the best job in the world.” Since I began chasing my dreams of doing the one job that made me feel truly happy while at work, I’ve met more people who have the physical scars of suicide attempts than I could have imagined. Just because someone is bringing joy to your life and is feeding off of your happiness doesn’t mean they aren’t broken inside and deeply suffering when the chairs stop spinning and the parties end.

I don’t think the suicide will end just because the residents have a better income and a safe place to call home, where they don’t have to play roommate Russian Roulette or move twice a year. Science should continue to do it’s thing and look into the entirety of the problem with the Suicide Belt of America, which includes the social sciences. But when the ski resort employs most of the town and allows the tertiary businesses to exist that employs everyone else, then it has a social responsibility to it’s staff and it’s community beyond any other business. A company town by any other name is still a company town.

And as residents of these towns, it’s time we stop looking for the obvious answers. They aren’t working. Complain as you need, but make sure you’re engaging in the task of coming up with new solutions to these industry old problems.

Sources:

How Emotions Are Made

The Company Town

Suicide Belt of America

Extreme Sports Athletes and Anxiety (Sources are in article)

Affordable Housing

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What Zeb Powell did under the lights Friday night, was nothing short of incredible. That was some gourmet shit. His ability to control the edges of his board, his body separation, and all the other instructor nerd component’s I think about every day is absolutely amazing. You could easily spend hours talking about everything that went into all of those tricks, and how each component is an expression of a man who can put his snowboard wherever he wants, whenever he wants. When Marcus Kleveland can’t close his mouth out of admiration, take that as a sign of something special.

Then there is the other side of the spectrum with something like that beautiful underflip from Dillon Henricksen. It’s clean, it’s smooth, and might make some people go learn to underflip next weekend. Different things inspire different people and make them want to go ride the next day. Seeing it in person brings a whole new level of awe to the show and everyone should experience, but let’s add some new events for the “everyperson”.

First, what if you made the creativity award the highest paying medal in the knuckle huck? Make it worth the same amount as all three podium medals combined and see how the riders change their approach. You want to add some style to the event and do something to combat the over saturation that is insta clips, this is it. Sometimes beautiful flow will win, other times creativity and technicality will win. But for every single conversation we have about how badly the judges wronged someone is one more conversation that puts snowboarding in front of more people. And eventually, the technical wizardry that is Zeb Powell will blend with the clean, eloquent style of the Henricksens. That is a snowboarding future to get excited about, and one that would make me go watch the XGames in person.

While we are at it with encouraging style, let’s occasionally turn the half pipe into an old school hand shoveled stunt ditch. Throw in some rails, reduce the vert, and even add some transition features on the deck. Get creative. There’s a reason everyone looks forward to Holy Bowly in the spring, and it’s because it’s inspiring to watch. And bowl parks are some of the most fun riding you can do at any skill level. So why not let the professionals play in a stunt ditch on big time television. Use the banked turns and mini pipe on Midway Avenue and Baby Doe at Buttermilk. It’s close enough to the XGames venus that it wouldn’t be hard to set up and we’d get to see the professionals goof off like it’s 1999.

One more idea for the road? Let’s add a 720 or 540 contest. Use any feature in the venue you want, spin it or cork it any way you want, but you can’t go over 540 or 720. Let’s see what tweaked out grabs, Superman Flips with delayed spins, and anything else the pros can show. These are the best riders in the world, and I want to see them ride and flow in the way that makes them feel happy and inspired.

Not only might this bring back people to the sport, it would also bring back stunt ditches and parks that rad dad’s and badass mom’s can ride with their kids when they no longer want to take the risk of big features. Pine Knob in Michigan is a brilliant example of this, as is the bowl park at Timberline. Let’s get people thinking “I want to learn that trick” instead of “if I try that imma die”.

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