Quality of instruction on the rise

By Matt Boxler

I remember strapping a K2 Gyrator to my feet at Bromley Mountain in 1989, my official introduction to snowboarding. I wasn’t dumb enough to attempt it alone and thankfully, southern Vermont had been blanketed with a foot of powder the night before.

My memory may still be blurred by the accumulation of jarring falls I took that day, but I seem to recall that back in the day, most resorts didn’t have too many snowboards in their rental shops, let alone snowboard instructors on staff. Being in the undisputed birth-region of the sport that day, I was fortunate to be outfitted with both.

Obviously, times have changed. While I started riding almost two decades ago one thing is certain, the quality and quantity of snowboard instruction available has far outpaced my own progression in the sport.

Take a small, family-oriented resort like Cranmore, for instance, where on-snow instruction is legendary (see Austrian Skimeister Hans Schneider, who arrived at the North Conway, N.H. resort in 1939). Twenty years ago, there simply weren’t any snowboard instructional programs at Cranmore, said Kathy Bennett, marketing director at the resort.

It wasn’t until about a decade ago when things really started to blossom. Some instructors have been with Cranmore throughout this growth spurt and continue to help advance the level of service and instruction available.

“Now, we have a snowboarding instruction supervisor, Matt Burkett, and have added it into our seasonal programs, which is new,” Bennett said. “We’ve dropped the minimum age of instruction for younger children and the development of terrain parks has influenced approaches to freestyle instruction.”

At the start of the 2004-2005 season, Cranmore built a mini-park, “The Other Side,” designed to help newbies acquaint themselves with all the elements found in larger terrain parks without acquainting themselves to all the nasty bumps and bruises typically required in the learning process.

As a Burton partner, Cranmore’s instructors are trained by Burton, and the rental shop is outfitted with the latest in Burton’s lines of instructional boards and boots. “Something else new that we’re doing is we’ve adapted our seasonal Rattlesnakes program, traditionally just for skiing, into a Switch-Snakes program program in which youths can alternate days of instructional skiing and snowboarding. It’s hugely popular,” said Bennett, whose own 9-year-old daughter is enrolled.

Last season (2004-2005), Cranmore saw a 14 percent increase in the number of snowboarders taking lessons and Bennett credits the jump to the resort’s partnership as a Burton Learn-to-Ride Center. This increase, Bennett points out, came during a 2005-2006 season that wasn’t exactly great weather-wise. “We were very pleased with that,” she said.

“Snowboarding has a faster learning curve, which is very appealing,” Bennett said. “You can take a few lessons and can get up and going very quick, especially on this new equipment that is more flexible, more forgiving.”

It’s more of the same at other New England resorts. For more than a decade, the Stowe (Vermont) Snowboard School has been offering progressive lessons. As the home mountain and corporate partner of Burton Snowboards, Stowe was also one of the first resorts to help develop and host the Learn to Ride (LTR) program.

This season marks the sixth consecutive year for Stowe’s Burton Method Center, which is adjacent to its snowboard school. The Method Center is a snowboard rental shop where the world’s best learn-to-snowboard equipment is available.

What’s progressive about this equipment (something that wasn’t available for my inaugural lesson back in 1989) is that it is designed to accelerate the learning curve so students can learn to link turns in the very first day.

In Maine, Sunday River’s Perfect Turn Discovery Center is the centerpiece of its Learn-to-Ride program. Upon entering the Center, guests are greeted by their pro that will stay with them throughout the day to coach, answer questions and create a comfortable relationship. Back in the day, it was more like an hour or two of instruction followed abruptly by a “good luck, you’re on your own now.”

At the Center, rental equipment is hand-delivered to you and coaches meet you to discuss the on-snow learning process. Once outside, learners are separated according to skill and the “Guaranteed Learning Method” kicks in at a pace tailor-made for your abilities. Perfect Turn coaches are trained to work with each individual’s learning style, and each group clinic is typically no more than six guests per coach.

The art of snowboard instruction has come a long way in the last decade and it’s still evolving. Sessions are available for youths, for more experienced riders, for women only, you name it. Pro-riders are hosting camps. There are sessions for freeriding and freestyling, backcountry and racing.

The number of instructors available is also a phenomenal development in the last decade. At Wachusett Mountain (Massachusetts) for instance, there are 250 instructors working in the ski and snowboard school. Back in the day, who would have thought this possible when snowboarders were treated like second-class citizens? Oh, how times have changed.

(Matt Boxler is a member of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association and the Eastern Ski Writers Association.)