Freestyle Camp 2006

by Don Meyer

I had been thinking about going to one of these for some time.  I am perhaps getting to be a bit more freestyly over the years, but am mostly a well-grounded kind of a rider, normally trying to keep my edges in the snow as close to 100% of the time as possible.  I jumped a bit four to five years ago and even flew ONCE about 45 foot over the Stevens Pass waterfall jumps and landed OK.  I also blew an ACL,  landing badly off a small bad natural jump the next year.  So,  I have some history, both good and bad with air, which affects my desire and response.  I took the Level I Snowboard Freestyle training and received the Certification a few years ago and have studied and worked the craft a bit more this year.  There is a certain thrill in flying, but I still normally like going fast and carving hard downhill rather than flying.  Is this preference due mostly to lack of confidence and skill? -- Court is out yet on that. 

My mountain over the last four years has no machine groomed freestyle terrain or halfpipe for practice either.  Good excuses perhaps, but?  Over the years, my school has offered freesyle/freeride classes, but very few of our paying customers have wanted freestyle training, so it hasn’t been a big priority for me.  Most of our students are just learning to ride or want to ride more types and steeper terrain, but many also want to be a bit more freestyly (switch, switching ends at will, air & ground 180's, nose and tail rolls, ollies, etcetera).  While teaching more freestyle maneuvers every year, I have observed that more freestyle activity leads to broader ranges of movement which lead to more action-response options and better overall riding in any terrain.

Yet more concerns - the focus on jumping for 3 days.  The idea of riding 3 days with some wacky kids who seem to have no issue with tossing themselves into oblivion just didn’t drive me to putting out the extra effort and expense.  I had avoided this event for a number of years.  I am after all, a software engineer and project manager who likes and is used to order and doing things one step at a time.  That one step would also want to be the right step in the right sequence at the right time.  The ACL incident taught me that I should understand jumps and how each one should be approached, i.e. ATML (approach, take-off, maneuver, landing), the steps and sequence for a successful jump and finally proper mental and physical preparation. 

Even after getting there, my reservations continued to surface.  Saturday evening, someone was handing out Bad Gene Pool tee shirts, which to me just summarized my general feeling about freestyle.  Natural selection should eliminate this aspect of the sport over time, right?  Anyway, to my co-workers, friends and family, three days of jumping with a bunch of young snowboard goofballs indeed sounded like a plan for a disaster rather than a plan for some safety, fun and learning.

Despite all these reservations, along came Chris, Dustin, and the snowboard leadership gang.  They put together an event which really doesn’t include a requirement to break yourself,  but rather a low key learning environment allowing each person the opportunity to learn, grow, try things and push the edges.  But, only as hard as each individual felt they should, could or wanted to.

There was of course, a bunch of young hucksters who in fact were there to push way beyond my current boundaries and comfort zone.  Like me though, they wanted to learn more, to feel more comfortable, more confident, to huck more and bigger and still be reasonably safe.  My end goal was comfortable 360s, not 7’s or even 5’s, just a lowly 3 until they were part of my skill set.  I don’t have much life experience hucking (who does?), so it would be a long haul for me, starting with the jumping basics and working my way up to big air with rotations.  The Mt Hood park crew helped me and the others a lot with a well designed fabulous run that had 14 very nice roll-overs, some with great small and medium wedges to huck off.

So Friday, the event started with some great anticipation, conversation, meeting new and old friends.  Then we separated into 4 groups, wild hucksters this way and wanabe hucksters that way. We (the wanabe huckers) started with some real basics like ATML, ollies, balance and stance, checking out the terrain, the snow, the jumps and getting to know each other.  Everyone in the group started at the level they were comfortable at (maybe small straight air or small 180's or a proper Ollie at takeoff) and with a fundamental movement  focus (building the foundation -- doing one thing at time, right and well before the next thing -- Smart Style), not a maneuver focus (everyone doing the same cool trick).  In the mean time, the wild hucksters, hucked away in the bigger park and pushed and helped each other get to whatever their next levels were. 

Hoo-hah!  We had nice weather, nice snow, nice jumps and supportive but low key instruction.  Maybe better described as coaching.  It was starting to look like my kind of deal.  Maybe it was going to be OK after all!  Having gotten to know these guys over the last couple years made me expect a good safe time, but still I was intimidated by the event.  I maybe should also say that I had just turned 54 a couple weeks earlier, not meant to be an excuse, but rather to say a highly developed self preservation matrix which included concepts like knowing I had a serious amount of work the next couple weeks after the clinic, many other summer activities, plus no desire for another year of serious rehabilitation activities.   I had things to do!  Also having lived 54 years and done a few crazy things over that time, I have an appreciation for all things in their appropriate time - that is, it is no longer a big deal to me if it takes a few years to develop the technique and skill!  Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Cool enough so far.  So here was my plan:
  (remember there were 3 days and I am a project planner and engineer)

Day 1 - Get more comfortable again getting off the jump well, flying straight, adding grabs (remember ATML), landing well and over time getting bigger air.  Big Deal - really seeing, feeling and being able to play back what actually happened.  Uncomfortable jumps are jumps where something happened, but I can’t remember anything and therefore can’t learn from them.

Day 2 - 180’s frontside, backside, regular and switch, 180 most jumps, both over the rollover and off the wedge, land every jump, no crashes.  Do whole runs, 14 rollovers with different 180's off each and add grabs when comfortable.
Big Deal - changing ends in the air, managing the body, being compact.  Be flexible and soft so that however badly the preparation, takeoff and maneuver go, it will be a non-crash landing.

Day 3 - 360’s frontside, backside, regular and switch, 360 most jumps both over the rollover and off the wedge, land every jump, no crashes.  Do whole runs, 14 rollovers with different 360's off each and add grabs when comfortable.
Big Deal - having enough air with good timing, pop and snap to actually be able to do consistent and smooth 360's.

Ah, so how did the plan go and how did the clinic fit into the plan?  The pace was good, the support was good and the plan was going well until the third day when the mountain didn’t open due to weather conditions.  So goes a great plan.  However, getting two complete days in the park is very difficult for those of us who work off-mountain full time and are part time instructors.  I believe that much time is needed, both full days and multiple runs on many days, weeks and months to gain the confidence and skill unless you are one of the 2% that are naturals at this stuff.  There is no substitute for hard work.

How did it go overall?  My confidence and skill, as well as everyone that I observed in the 4 clinic groups, improved significantly during the 2 days of riding.  I did indeed do 180's over every rollover on multiple runs.  I landed boardslide to switch once after an unexpected high and long air without crashing. Yahoo!  I did a couple 360's the second day, poorly, but without crashing.  So, I did indeed, per my plan, push myself a bit, scare myself occasionally, even fully freak myself out a few times, but consistently got air, sometimes including a grab, landed and never crashed.

The second day also included work in the half-pipe which was in great condition.  It was fun and significant improvement was made in there as well by all participants.  There again, we were taken back to the basics and then through a number of small steps linked together until we did multiple complete pipe runs.  Sometimes walking the pipe, sometimes riding the pipe and then working the jumps again for the rest of the run.  Paced to continually improve, but not be so tired that we hurt ourselves.

Adding to the fun and helping us get to know each other more were several evening events.  Friday night back at a Hood summer camp facility, the gang set up some rails on a patch of snow.  Short steep ramp, shorter entry and then a double rail.  Madness I would call it, but fun and challenging for the young hucksters.  A few of us just watched and enjoyed an evening rail scene such as one often sees in snowboard flicks.  Saturday, we finished our day near the lodge at a small half and quarter pipe.  This was time for some fun with a number of hucksters fully hucking themselves.  Brothers insane, Dustin and Shawn repeatedly flew up the quarter pipe and flipped forward for a landing flat on their backs- on purpose I think.  Again fully crazy, but lots-o-fun, coolish and mad.  Saturday evening, we went again to the Hood summer camp facility to hang out, eat pizza, imbibe and relax.  Did I say relax?  This included a triathlon of pool, ping pong and foosball which was enjoyed by all. 

Then,  Sunday morning when we were weathered out, Dustin and Chris talked about this event’s history, its craziest participants and the sport.  They gave out goofy prizes to the most improved, craziest hucking, hardest working and other wild huckster categories.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and will definitely do more Freestyle clinics in the coming season.  Freestyle is definitely here to stay and the industry needs instructors who feel comfortable at some level with escape velocity and re-entry technique.  We as instructors, should be able to do some cool tricks with solid technique as it builds our grab bag of actions and reactions, enlarges our movement potential and increases the wow factor a bit to help us engage and inspire our students.

This experience has not turned me into a park rat yet, causing me to make every lift ride a park ride, but it definitely did increase my confidence and skill level and causes me to want to put more effort into this part of our sport each time that I am on the mountain.  There are so many AASI-NW instructors and yet such a small percentage of them make it to these events.  I really encourage everyone to think about stretching your concepts and capabilities by going to these clinics.  You should not be intimidated by the perceived danger or your lack of skill or your age or whatever.  This is not a competition with others.  There are others involved of course, but this training is all about you, your plan, your growth path, your skills and then also about your students and ultimately the sport.

The fun and learning are there to be had with a wee bit of effort.  The freestyle events really are fun.  Be safer by being more skilled!  Have more fun by being safer!  Have yet more fun by being more skilled!  Learn more by having more fun! 

!!!!! Don’t think about it -- JUST DO IT !!!!!