Snowboarding VS Skiing: Confessions of a complete beginner
So in high fashion, I bought in 2019 surrounded by people I love, trying to acquire new skills in the Austrian Alps. I literally just got home, and wanted to dump all of this into writing while it is all still fresh in my head. I’m back in the office tomorrow, and I’m certain the shit show of post-holiday madness will set in quickly, so I figured it was good to do this now. This was my first time ever trying snowboarding and skiing, so I think my perspective may help other complete newbies get an idea of what may make more sense for them.
But first, two big points to take into consideration regarding my specific learning circumstances
1. Where was I, and how were the conditions for a beginner?
My first winter sport adventure took place in Lofer, Austria. It’s a small village located about 45 minutes out of Salzburg (provided you’re not driving through a blizzard) that basically caters to various mountain sports as it is located smack dab at the base of a mountain.
It’s good for beginners in the sense that it is extremely convenient, you can get lodging in the village and walk to the main lift in about 5 minutes. There’s an abundance of classes offered, and considering it is the Alps, the prices for rentals are extremely reasonable. If you do find yourself in Lofer, I rented both snowboard and ski gear from Sport Stockklauser which is operated by a super sweet Austrian couple. Super happy with this place.
Regarding the mountain, well that is debatable. I was with a group of friends, mixed skiers and snowboarders — all experienced, and based on their feedback the mountain is quite rough for beginners. Even on the easier trails you can run into a lot of steep drops, treacherous for everyone, or flat areas — which can be a snowboarder’s greatest enemy. In general, I was falling all over my ass everywhere, but yeah, perhaps not the greatest mountain for an absolute beginner.
2. Does skating and surfing help you snowboard?
Well…JEIN (A German mix of the words yes and no). I’ve gotten pretty comfortable doing some dancing lines on my longboard in the last year, and I’m an OK surfer. So when I planned this trip, I didn’t even think about trying skiing to be honest. I just assumed that the third board in the triangle of board sports would come more naturally to me, based on my experience on other boards.
And that is where the JEIN comes in. In my humble opinion, it helps because a surfer and/or skater is not going to feel unfamiliar to the concept of a long object that can move being under their feet, so some principles of balance and sighting are indeed similar. Plus a skater/surfer is going to know if they ride goofy or regular, which alone is going to put you at an advantage over someone who is trying snowboarding for the first time with 0 board experience.
It helps because a surfer and/or skater is not going to feel unfamiliar to the concept of a long object that can move being under their feet, so some principles of balance and sighting are indeed similar.
That’s basically where the advantages end. The techniques in snowboarding are wildly different, and the snow behaves much differently than concrete or water. The BIGGEST difference that threw me off, was the fact that the snowboard is strapped to me. Not being able to bail off the board, especially in the early learning phases, is really fucking weird. This is exactly why I now have a bit of experience on both, because I actually got so frustrated with snowboarding after the first two days of lessons, that I just wanted to try skiing to see if it somehow jived with me a bit more naturally.
Alright, let’s move on to some key concepts here comparing the two.
6 Rounds in the ring: Snowboarding vs Skiing, who will survive?
Round 1: Gear
There’s some trade off here, as ultimately the gear all serves the same purpose -> getting you down a mountain of snow. Here are some things I found annoying and cool from both sides of the coin.
- Overall, snowboard gear is easier to carry around. And there is one crucial reason for this, you’re only carrying one thing. Ski’s are just that, a plural item. Sometimes they’re coming undone, and falling all over the place, and you’ve also gotta carry the sticks.
- Skiers get UP the mountain faster. At least at Lofer. Reason for this when you ride the main lifts (gondolas) up to get to the trails, most gondolas are only equipped to hold 2–3 snowboards outside, whereas 6–10 pairs of skis can go up. This can result in the snowboarders waiting around in the gondola queue a bit longer, especially if it’s a busy day.
- Ski Boots suck ass. This was my main complaint with ski boots, they are basically entirely useless off the skis. They’re big, they’re heavy, they’re ugly, they’re very uncomfortable to walk in, and you sound like the Terminator walking around. Big fail here on the ski side. Snowboard boots, while not defined as comfortable, are much easier to get on/off than ski boots, and are at least usable for walking.
- Let’s face it, snowboards look cooler. Like their concrete and water counterparts, snowboards can have really beautiful and unique designs on them, which just look badass. In my limited experience, all skis basically look exactly the same to me.
WINNER — SNOWBOARDERS
Round 2: Falling Down
I don’t mean to take away from either sport, as in the end, at their core, are both inherently dangerous. You’re combining speed, with snow, and other variables, and that can be a mixture for bad times. But from the perspective of a beginner learning basic skills and falling a lot, here is my synopsis.
- I’ve never hated edges more in my life, until I met snowboarding. I mean, who has a problem with edges, right? I mean normally they’re just there being edges and shit, but man oh man, when you meet them on a snowboard, you will very quickly begin loathing your existence. More on turning later, but for this section all you need to know, is that when you turn on a snowboard, you’ve gotta either use your heel side or toe side of the board to maneuver into these turns, and if you fuck up your balance, the edge of the board (which are quite sharp) will promptly dig itself into the snow, abruptly stopping your momentum, either sending your face or ass slamming into the snow. It’s not cool, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of cool. You’ve also gotta be careful here as a beginner, because even when you don’t fall hard on your ass, you’re still going to be breaking your falls with your hands, and wrists ain’t met to do that shit. I’ve had two surgeries on my right wrist, and on the 2nd day I definitely tweaked it a bit. It’s fine now, but that was enough for me to back off from it for a day.
- Skiing in the beginning is a bit more gentle, but you’ve gotta greater risk of impaling yourself and/or twisting some shit. The nice thing about skiing is that you’re consistently putting pressure on the leg that is facing down the mountain. You don’t really have to understand what that means at this point, but basically when you’re first starting out, you’re mostly going to fall on your turns. Because you’re already leaning towards the mountain, when you fall, you usually just kind of slide down the mountain a bit until you stop. In the early phases, it’s much less painful than the beginner snowboarding falls. On the flip side, your legs can still fully rotate in and out with skis, so if you do fall too fast and are rolling down the mountain and the skis don’t detach, you’ve got a serious chance of twisting your ankles and/or knees. This happened to me once, luckily I was only falling at about 5 km/h so it didn’t really hurt, but it was enough to get me to realize that if I was going faster, that could have ended much worse. The impaling part, I gotta say as a beginner, you’ve already got 500 things going on in your head when you’re going down these hills, and I would also lose track of what was happening with my sticks when I was falling. But I mean, one wrong angle and one of those could easily get thrusted into my stomach or face. Stick in the face would definitely suck.
But again, we’re talking about beginner experiences here, and overall skiing was just more pleasurable in this respect. Snowboarding had me falling, and sometimes falling quite hard, basically every 3 minutes.
WINNER — SKIERS
Round 3: Turning
I believe this is self-explanatory, but turning is an essential part of either activity. Because I mean. If you can’t turn, that’s just not cool…
Snowboarding requires you to turn using a combination of shifting bodyweight, controlling your center of gravity, and either leaning into your toes or your heels. Said lift accomplishes a couple of things:
- It slows you down so you can actually get into the turn with control.
- It lifts up the side of the board going down the mountain, so that your edge doesn’t bite into the snow causing you to eat shit.
This is a lot happening at once, and after a group course and a private session, I was still not able to reliably turn right, which for me is a toe side turn as I ride regular. Heel side turns worked much better for me to get to the left, but that really only helps me if I am going to ride down a trail that only turns left…who makes trails with only one direction of turn?
In contrast skiing was much easier to learn how to turn, and within the first hour of my first group lesson, I was able to turn right AND left (#booyah). The concept of turning with skiing is much simpler for a beginner, put your weight on your right leg to turn left, put your weight on your left leg to turn right. It’s a bit of a mental game at first, as the logic is reversed, but if you shift your weight, you’re guaranteed to turn. You can refine as you progress, but the main thing is that you will be turning.
WINNER — SKIERS
Round 4: Stopping
In any activity requiring speed, it’s very important to learn how to stop. In my opinion it is actually the most important thing to learn.
Stopping on a snowboard is linked with turning, which can get complicated. Basically put yourself into a turn to get the mountain side edge of the board to dig into the snow until you stop. This can also be tricky as a beginner, because if your angle is off just a bit, you’ll just stay in your turn and then probably panic and fall down because instead of stopping, which your mind intended, you sped up.
Skiing has a couple options, as a beginner the most commonly used method is the “pizza shape” which basically requires you to use all the strength in your upper/outer ass muscles and form a triangle with the skis to mimic the shape of a plow. The move is fairly easy to master within 10 minutes, even for an absolute beginner, and definitely does slow you down. When you’re too fast on a trail, the pizza might not be so effective anymore, but all you’ve gotta do is point your skis towards the top of the mountain on your next turn. This will stop you, and will get you in a nice little stationary position, where you can recollect yourself, and carry on.
WINNER — SKIERS
Round 6: Speed
This is a matter of perspective here, depending on what type of beginner you are. I do not enjoy gravity hurling me down a mountain under any circumstances, but maybe some people do. I had the general feeling that as soon as I pointed the nose of my snowboard down the mountain, I would startup picking up speed insanely fast. (I probably wasn’t, but as a beginner, it sure as fuck felt like it).
Skis can also get very fast, but I always felt like I had more control over the speed than I did with the snowboard. So depending on what you are looking for, I’d say:
WINNER — TIE
Round 5: What to do when not moving
WTF does not moving have to do with two sports that involve going down a mountain? Well…a lot. With four hours on a mountain, you’ll probably spend 2.5 of it actually riding. The other 90 minutes will be in lines waiting for shit, like lifts, or food, or trying to regroup your friends, etc.
Skis have a gigantic advantage here, because while not graceful, skiers can still kinda of maneuver around with all the gear on, even if we need to walk up small inclines.
Snowboarders are absolutely fucked if they lose motion on a flatter piece of land. They’ll either have to hope a skier will come by and give them a tow with the ski sticks, or they’ll have to unstrap and walk a bit. But that alone is a big benefit, snowboarders can unstrap and still walk. You’ll never see a skier unstrap and walk anywhere on a trail, because as already mentioned the boots = Terminator noises. Don’t make terminator noises.
WINNER — TIE
Round 6: The chair lift
Everyone knows the iconic chair lift in the mountains, and yep you gotta get up there with all your gear so you can ride down with them. Now I’ve only been to one mountain in my life, but it seems as if this mountain was basically built for skiers, and snowboarders were just kinda tacked on as an afterthought. I’ve never gone down a trail on a snowboard (remember I can only turn left on a snowboard) so I never had to perform this impressive feat of getting a snowboard up on a chair lift. You basically need to awkwardly walk with your leading foot still strapped in and your back foot unstrapped through the chair lift line, then ride up the mountain in this configuration, and somehow get off the chairlift like this at the top, and then strap both feet in. It looks demonic to me, and I am kind of happy I haven’t dealt with it yet. Because of this snowboarders are on their asses a lot, because they need to strap in/out depending on what’s going on.
Skiers just kind of stand in front of the chair lift, and it scoops you up and all you have to do is not drop anything on the way up. Oh and as a side note, with either, you should not wait too long at the top to get off. If you do, you’ll start to go up again and then you’ll have to jump off the chair lift with your gear like an idiot and you’ll fall on your ass in front of every who just get off the lift…not that I did that or anything… I’m just saying…
WINNER — SKIERS
Wrapping it all up
There’s an old cliche on the mountain, and a lot of people have told me that skiing is easier to learn, but harder to master, whilst snowboarding is harder to learn, but easier to master. In my experience that held true, skiing just made sense much faster for me, and it just jived much better with my body. I wouldn’t say I am going to totally give up on snowboarding, as it still does look extremely fun and rewarding, and most importantly it looks cooler haha.
I guess my main takeaway is, even though skiing worked out this trip better for me, if you’re a complete beginner, plan to go up there and try both. Don’t be a dumbass like me and mentally and emotionally invest in only one before you even ride a gondola for the first time, who knows, maybe you might jive with snowboarding better on your first runs.
Plan to go up there and try both.
I am glad I switched 1/2 way through my trip, as it enabled me to get my own perspective on both winter sports. Will I become a die hard winter sport person? Probably not, I’ve got other passions and hobbies that take priority, but I am glad I gave it a shot. I can definitely see myself getting into it more recreationally, especially when going up with awesome people as I did this round.
