Snowboarding School

Decided to volunteer for the Snowshoe Raid orienteering race in Collingwood, as many of my friends were in the race - but I have no idea how to use snowshoes, so I was out myself. A bunch of us went up the day before to make a weekend of it, so I signed up for round two of Snowboarding School at Blue Mountain (after round one at Mont Tremblant last winter.)

The way BM Snow School works is you get a package deal with everything, and then you just show up to various ordered stations when you feel like it, and the instructors teach you that level, then advance you further. The first two levels were on the ground, just learning how to balance on the board, how to walk it up and down a hill, how to glide with one foot, how to stop.

Toe Edge!

What is that? Is that One wipe-out?

Levels three and four were atop the bunniest of bunny hills, where we learned sliding down on the heelside and toeside edges and doing turns. The hill was really lame and flat, and I found I'd get stuck in the middle of it. The line for the magic carpet was always like a million people, so I would just run up the "slope" and strap in again. My instructors' total age might have been less than mine, and they didn't seem keen to make explain too much, so I realized that if I hadn't had an intro lesson the year before, I'd be a little screwed. My buddy CK joined me after a morning of xc, but after a while, he suggested a steeper bunny hill on the other side of the resort, so we walked over.

Turns out one of the more mature instructors had moved there for the evening, and he was serious about getting me to do better turns - by leading with my upper body more. It was so much more fun on this hill (the Undergraduate). At the end of the night, CK casually said that the next thing I have to do is try a chair lift. There just happened to be a lift next to us, going up to the top of the biggest green hill. I decided that this is the perfect way to finish off my learnin' with pride. :)

Graduate Hill with Chair Lift!

I conquered a chair lift! I didn't even crash getting off it, although I did give our third liftmate fair warning that he should get the crap out of the way at the top. The Graduate hill was daunting and steep, and people seemed to be riding pretty fast on it, but I managed to get to the bottom without crashing, and I even got one complete turn in!

This hill looks flatter from down here!

Now I felt like a real snowboarder, no more magic carpets for me. I'm a big girl now.