Snowboarding 101

Snowboarders divide themselves into two broad camps, although you'll find all sorts of overlap between the two. Freestyle snowboarders are the tricksters and contortionists of the winter world. They're happy on an open slope but most at home in a half-pipe, a wide, sloping ditch carved out of the slope that is something like the bottom portion of a giant conduit. Like skateboarders on a ramp, the freestylers shoot up the side of the tube and launch upward to catch air, flipping and spiraling in configurations with names like "alley-oop," "shiftie," and "720."

Freestylers can perform maneuvers on a regular open slope, too,doing "wheelies," "fakies," and "ollies." These are some of the basic maneuvers on which to build the fancier tricks. A wheelie resembles the same maneuver on a bike, but in this case you rock back and rear the front of your board off the snow. A fakie simply means riding backward. To perform an ollie, you jump the board into the air. You can then advance to aerial tricks: for example, a toe-edged grab (gripping one side of the board as you fly) or, with enough experience,a "180-to-fakie," where you launch into the air, spin around, and landbackward.

But we weren't much worried about learning new tricks. We began with the more straightforward style of snowboarding known as alpine.

Alpine snowboarding is the boarder's equivalent of alpine skiing. At its most basic, it involves cutting turns down a slope—whether it's a basic ski slope, a mogul field, a backcountry powder run, or a race course. Here the turns resemble more closely the carvedturn of a skier.