Ever since I could barely walk I’ve been skiing. My mom used to carry me up the small hill leading up to the Southern Comfort lift at Massanutten and let me slide down when my family took trips up to the mountain. After a couple years of developing I began to compete in ski races, and continued with that for several years before becoming an instructor this year. If I’ve learned anything from all that time, it is this: snowboarding is undoubtedly inferior to skiing.

In my opinion, the only reason most kids take up snowboarding is the cool factor involved. The snowboard culture seems to mooch off the skating culture, so much that when skaters look for a winter activity, snowboarding seems like the only viable option. The stereotype of the brain-dead, overconfident boarder barreling down the mountain and destroying everything in his path is much more common than one might think. Skiers, on the other hand, tend to be more mild.

Snowboarding is a weak attempt to transfer skating to the snow, and it doesn’t work. There is a reason that everything at a ski resort is named after skiing and not snowboarding, i.e. Ski Lift, Ski Lodge, etc.