Burton Learn-to-Ride Snowboarding
Burton and ski resorts to create Learn-to-Ride Method Centers where learning snowboarding is made easy.
Snow fell heavily at Stratton Mountain on that March Sunday. This was good. No, not because epic powder shots would follow. Because the conditions would meet my primary requirement for again attempting to learn to snowboard: soft ground cover to absorb crashes. As a rider, I’d never progressed beyond sprains and bruises to exhilaration.
What did I need snowboarding for, anyway? That’s what my wife had wanted to know. "You can ski anything on the mountain," she’d declared with patient exasperation. "Why kill yourself now?"
Because it was new, different? Uh-uh. Not good enough.
Actually, I itched to answer fresh challenges. To exult in new achievements. To understand what all the damned fuss was about. Still, I’d reluctantly agreed to stop riding.
Until I heard about Burton LTR — Learn to Ride. A simple concept really: use equipment specifically designed to perform harmoniously with the way novices are taught and — voila! — learning becomes easy. Maybe even a lummox like me could LTR with LTR.
Burton LTR gear is an interface system — the board, bindings and boots work together. The "Day One" boards are short, twin-tipped and super flexible. The edges extend well into the tip and tail transition zones and the base is beveled three-degrees, a combination that averts the caught edges that cause body-slamming falls. The boots are soft-flexing, with an instep cross-strap and customized heel-hold to maintain support. The step-in binding has a simple forward lean adjustment; its external high back supplies strong heel leverage. The Cruzer (or Day Two board) is somewhat longer, stiffer and directional, designed to effectively transition to low-intermediate riding.
With the equipment developed and on-snow tested, Burton teamed in 2000-01 with resorts to create learning hubs, called "Method Centers". Resorts commit to: an unintimidating and user-friendly environment; classes with small student-teacher ratios, taught by certified instructors; LTR product training for rental staff and instructors; close coordination between rental shop and ski school; and stocking sufficient LTR equipment.
Currently 59 North American resorts have Method Centers; 34 have Kids Method Centers; 13 have freestyle centers; and four offer Women’s LTR Camps. LTR programs are also offered in Europe, Asia and South America.
Jeff Boliba, Burton’s Resort & LTR Manager for Global Markets, told me that resorts and Burton function as partners in Method Centers. "A resort plugs LTR into their existing program," said Boliba. "We leave specific decisions up to the resort. Each market, snowboarding school and rental shop is different."
I checked my ego at the Stratton rental shop door, and hooked up with instructor Dan Munn on the novice hill. We started with one-foot work on the flats: walking the board, setting an edge, heel- and toe-balancing, and straight gliding with an unbound back foot. This, I could do. Two-footed sliding had always been the problem.
Dan eased me into two-footed-ness. We sideslipped on an ultra-green run called Downtowner. Only then did we begin "riding". Sort of. First, we executed moves called "falling leafs" - traversing on one edge and returning on the same edge. (Look Ma! I’m traversing fakey!) J-shaped turns taught turn-completion; "garlands" linked the J-turns.
I could garland with flair. But, what about actual linked turns?
Slowly, oh-so-slowly, like an overloaded freight train, I moved forward on my toeside. Picking up some speed, I completed the carve to my right, and then — the moment of truth. I bent the knees, shifted my weight and turned heelside. Hey! Now, back to toeside. Cool! I linked ‘em flawlessly until a wobbly heelside turn on Run Two engendered that awful, familiar, edge-catching sensation. I was about to be unceremoniously dumped as if Andre the Giant had body slammed me.
Not!
I glided through and recovered niftily to toeside. Sweet! This extended-edge/bevel-base/soft-flex stuff really worked.
Soon, with the board saving my butt several times, I was a slicing-and-dicing king of the novice hill.
On Day Two, I boarded the Cruzer on a blue run called Lower Standard. Any snowslider who has handled powder understands it requires a straighter line and more speed. Hard to do when your novice-level control - maybe your very life - demands large, slow turns.
The Cruzer was a bit harder to handle, but still forgiving, and I started out tentatively. By second run I was busting through moguls-in-the-making. Then — uh-oh — bam! A bludgeoning face plant sent blurred images of my scolding spouse rifling through my brain. I sat. I recovered. I continued. A few runs and I not only rode without falling, I was feeling it.
Over lunch, Dan pronounced me an LTR success. "You’re linking turns and riding the lift," he said. "Only one body slam in a day and a half. Not bad. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish."
Call me Shredder.
Find Burton Method Centers at Burton.com.
