A new generation of adventure-holics has turned snowboarding into a mainstream sport
Jean Spear
James Bond has to be the greatest skier. From Siberia to Austria, 007 always manages to carve an elegant line while dodging bullets and saving beautiful women from nasty foreign agents at the same time.
But if Bond is going to keep up with the younger generation, he will have to learn how to snowboard. Icy crevasses, moguls, bowls, halfpipes, glades, ice – you name it, he will have to ride it. Skiing just isn’t considered as cool as it once was.
A new generation of adventure-holics has transformed snowboarding into a mainstream sport. These riders wear their gear as fashion – baggy pants and beanies with well known labels. They walk with attitude, they shun traditional skiing and embrace the new culture that is snowboarding. They are hip, hot, healthy and obsessed with defying gravity.
“I definitely got sucked into the vortex of the snowboarding world,” says Elizabeth Devereux, a snowboarding addict. “I saw snowboarders who were doing amazing tricks: 720s, 1080s – three times around spinning in the air.”
During winter, thousands of snowboarding bums head for Colorado in the United States, to carve up the mountains on their single planks.
These mountain characters are willing to beg, barter and tend bar in exchange for a lift ticket which is about $900 a season.
In Telluride, an entire ecosystem of car dwellers developed in the early 1990s. Snowboarding bums lived in old school buses on the mesas around the town, others parked strategically near the ski lifts and showers at the health club.
Before it became an Olympic sport in 1998, snowboarding was considered a dirtbag activity. Those who rode instead of skied were called knuckle-draggers or brown-baggers. Restaurants on ski slopes were closed to these young rebels until a few years ago.
Now snowboarding has developed into a sophisticated and professional sport. Boards and boots are highly technical and expensive.
“A few years ago riders selected a board because of its graphics – the more radical, the better,” says an American snowboarding trade association. “Now it’s all about performance.”
There is real money to be made in winning snowboarding competitions. Gaining a reputation is the key to signing cash- paying sponsors and modelling jobs. A top- ranked competitor spends about $3 000 a season to enter 10 competitions. Some women snowboarders make $100 000 a season and travel internationally. But to get there you must enter and win.
Despite the growth in snowboarding as a winter sport, there are some skiers who are resistant to the invasion of ski slopes by this new generation.
Ski companies keep some of the best mountain terrain closed to snowboarders. Taos in New Mexico, Alta and Deer Valley in Utah and Ajax, Aspen’s most famous mountain, are all closed to boarders.
Snowboarders have launched a “Free The Snow” campaign to get authorities to open the slopes to them. Free Ajax stickers have been distributed in Aspen. Nike’s All Conditions Gear is a sponsor of the campaign.
According to Skico management, which holds the permits to operate the slopes like Ajax, keeping the mountains exclusively for skiers is strictly the result of a business decision. “It’s not a safety issue, it’s not a behavioural issue,” says Skico president Pat O’Donnell.
“But,” say Free the Snow campaigners, “15 years of integrating ski areas have seen no significant problems or resistance from skiers.” Areas that keep their slopes open to boarders attract families, so the parents can ski while the children snowboard.
Supporters of the Free the Snow campaign say that the glitter and fur brigade that rule Ajax are older than the snowboarders, whose average age is 24. “The fight for fresh tracks has gotten easier over the past several years for skiers because so many young strong legs are now attached to snowboards and are carving it up outside of town,” says Free the Snow. “The energy level on Ajax has dropped. It’s a shame.”
It is pure adrenalin and energy at the Drop Zone on Buttermilk, one of Aspen’s mountains. Those who make the landing on the jumps are no novices. While resting skiers and snowboarders look on, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows, riders test their courage on the jumps. This is not for scaredy-pants.
“Mean powder-bite, dude,” says one onlooker as a snowboarder arcs into the air and hits the ground with such force that most of his gear falls off. Medics carry off the unfortunate victim. Broken bones are a regular occurrence.
Serious world-class gravity must be respected,” says snowboarder Bernie Lincicome. “The moment you take gravity for granted, it will slap you in the face with a cold, wet kiss.”
James Bond is no stranger to wet kisses, so he should enjoy the cold smooch of a snowboarding slope.
Better still, his next mission should be to Free Ajax. Now there’s a plot worth considering.