Noah Teaching skills about Snowboarding

Hi my name is Noah, I just came back from snowboarding. If you read my story there are some skills that will help you for snowboarding if you get to know them for yourself. Have you ever been to Mt Ruapehu? It is not like Mt Wellington or Mt Eden. Mt Ruapehu is a mountain with snow, where people snowboard or ski on.

When we went snowboarding my Dad told me to do S’s (carving), instead of falling off a cliff.

I would rather snowboard down the hill then fly off the mountain! Snowboarding is pretty hard to do but when you know how to do it it’s easy.

I felt like a professional zooming past everyone doing my S’s.

I start by facing my board down the mountain with my left foot forward. You need to keep your knees bent - it’s kinda like riding a skateboard.

When you’re up on the mountain, how you do an S, is to look up the mountain, dig your toes into the snow and lift your heels up. You will end up facing up the mountain. That’s a toe side turn.

When you’re getting to close to the wall, and you’re about to crash and hurt yourself, you can switch to heels by looking down the mountain, digging your heels in and lifting your toes up. That’s called a heel side turn.

It’s easier to C’s before S’s. I went through that and it became much easier to do an S.

A C is half of an S, and instead of switching you stop after doing a turn one way.

After you switch from toes to heels and look back up the mountain, you see an S shape in the fresh powder.

Skiers have different techniques than snowboarders, because if you are a skier you do “pizza” and “chips”. “Pizza” is when you make a shape of a triangle, where the front of your skis are together and the back of your skis are facing outwards. It slows you down.

When you do “chips” your skis face straight and instead of stopping you go faster.

When I saw my brother, Levi, going on a jump, I wanted to go but I felt a bit nervous.

Then I saw my brother Jordan do a jump, and I decided to have a try at going on it too.

So there I was, strapping my bindings in and waiting for my turn.

I snowboarded down the hill toward the jump, doing an S and I lined my board up… and at the right moment, I went up the ramp and jump. I felt terrified when I was in mid-air but I didn’t land it properly so sadly slide down the ramp on my stomach. I was embarrassed a bit and got a little angry so I decided to go on the poma by myself to get back up to the top again (it took ages!)

I was on the poma, made it to the top, I strapped in one foot and pushed my board to the jump again just in time to see Levi go up the ramp but land hurtfully on his shoulder.

On my second chance on the jump, getting a little nervous, strapped both legs in and took off!

Down the hill, I glared at it and thought “line the board up Noah”.

I lined my board up and bent my knees and took the jump - flying through the air like Superman, landed safely after the jump and dug my toes in to turn out of the way of the others coming down.

Me and Levi wanted to go up high so we caught a chairlift and it was called Movenpick up, up we went above the snowy and icy trails. While we were up there, the wind was blowing so hard that our chair rocked from side to side and I was able to touch the pole that was holding the cable to our chairlift. When it was time to get off the chairlift, the Lift guy told us to duck down so that it would be easier to ride off the chairlift. I didn’t make it any other time but good for me my Dad put gripy spikes so that my board will not be slippery, I made it and strapped in once again and went down the mountain doing S’s. Then we got in the car and traveled home.

I hope that when you snowboard you can learn your S’s and I’m not only talking to kids I mean anyone who want’s to snowboard.

If you want to know when the mountain is open to snow board on or get a family pass, click on this Link http://www.mtruapehu.com/winter/turoa-report