I have been snowboarding for somewhere around 10 or so years. I started out in the state of Washington at Stephen's Pass, Whistler Blackcomb, and a variety of other off the trail hills. Through that time I have gone through a large number of boards, generally 2-3 per season, in an attempt to find the perfect board for each riding style.
I generally run each season with three active boards and two passive boards. This means that I have three boards always ready to go and I have another two that I have sitting just in case, I need to do a swap out. I know this sounds ridiculous to anyone that does any boarding, but it's practical in my mind for a few reasons:
1. I have a different board for each type of riding that I do, which is why I have three boards. I have one board for each style, one for big air, one for trick/style, and one for all mountain. I don't really have a speed board, but that's because I just can't get the feel for the larger boards.
2. Another reason that I have multiple boards setup at all times and two passive boards, is because I change up my stance from standard to goofy depending upon how I feel that day. For example if I went huge the day before and my lead leg is feeling a little bit tender, which it often is, then I will swap leads. A lot of people can't do this all that easily, but I've been doing it for so long, that this has become normal practice.
I generally go boarding five days a week during the season, sometimes upwards of seven in the beginning and at the very end of the season. I generally ride away from slopes, because I don't particularly like the predictability of the slopes. I want something that I have to react to at a moment's notice as it truly makes the ride and keeps you from becoming complacent.
GIRO G10 MX About 2-3 years ago, I found myself going down Valdez in Alaska. It is a truly demanding mountain that has a lot of 'death pockets' as we would call them. These pockets would be areas where the snow was packed down and hard to see, areas where the snow was iced over, and of course rock walls that would seem to appear out of nowhwere. And none of this would be all that big of a deal if it wasn't for the likelihood of avalanche. While they were typically small and survivable, it is difficult to predict this while you are running from it, so a lot of times you duck off to the side and try to find shelter in the rock faces. However, if a rock face comes up on you without realizing it, you could find yourself injured considerably. This is what happened to me a couple of years back. I don't have the best color vision so I have been wearing helmets while doing back country boarding in order to absorb the impacts from jumps that I didn't notice, rails that I missed, etc. This particular day would prove why it is so important to have a quality helmet.
On this day I was wearing a Giro G10 MX helmet. Like all of my gear, it is somewhat expensive and definitely of professional quality. I never really thought that I would have to use it, nor did I think it would possibly save my life. However, while avoiding what I would later discover was a very small avalanche, I smacked face first into a rock wall. Since it was cold, I didn't immediately know the damage that had been done, but later I realized that I had broken a tooth, ravaged my jaw (which still clicks to this day), but of course bloodied my face quite a bit. My head hurt pretty bad and I was taking a lot of Advil over the next several days. After closer inspection of my helmet, I realized that it had been cracked slightly. I had hit the rock face hard enough to crack my helmet, my board was cracked as well, and my left boot was torn. So, I began to realize just how lucky I had been. If I had hit the wall without the helmet, I would probably be very damaged today or wouldn't be here at all.
AESTHETICS I know that a lot of those that I go boarding with, hate wearing helmets, because they hate the way that the helmets look. First, they hate that it looks like they are inexperienced and also because they just don't like the way that they feel on their head. While I had similar thoughts at first, after nailing my head a few times, I realized that I would rather be safe than sorry. It took one good bell ringer to make me realize this when I completely missed a jump in front of me. I hurt for a long time and had ringing in my head for a good week. That was my wakeup call.
The helmet actually looks very aggressive, especially in black. It has a visor that comes down which is rather pointless, but it does kinda look cool. It is functional and fashionable at the same time.
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