Learning to snowboard can be a tough go. It looks so cool on TV, but once people get out on the snow, it ends up being harder than they imagined. It's a persistent problem that greatly affects conversion statistics. But last year, Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort teamed up with Burton Snowboards on an innovative new program to help solve that very problem. The results were so good they're going at it again this year, with an expanded mandate and tons of enthusiasm.

The Burton Snowboard Academy is a joint venture between the two companies. Officially launched in 2008, it’s a specialized, daylong program based on two key principles: small or private groups, and terrain-based teaching methods. The goal is twofold: to introduce people to snowboarding in a fear-free environment, and to immerse them in the culture of the sport from the moment they arrive.

Reducing the fear of learning is the program’s key mandate. Snowboarding, unfortunately, has always suffered from the slam factor: catching edges while attempting first turns is a frustrating, even defeating, process. Combined with cold weather, not-so-hot rental gear and crowded group lessons, the results are often so-so at best. The Academy seeks, basically, to eliminate all those negatives and give people a more exciting, feel-good experience, hopefully turning them into lifelong converts.


POSITIVE EXPERIENCES

Students start the day in the Burton Academy “lounge,” a tent set up separately from the snow school headquarters and filled with posters, videos, couches, coffee, new demo gear, carpets and the like. Thus immersed in the culture of snowboarding, students are fitted for their gear by their instructor, who goes over how and why the gear works and how it’s supposed to fit. Then they hit the snow.

There are five main terrain-oriented steps in an Academy beginner (never-ever) lesson, explains Chris Hargrave, Burton Snowboard Academy Manager. Students start out on flat ground, where they go over basic balance and movement skills. Soon after, they go to the “mini pipe,” an area of two ridges in the snow parallel to one another. Students—with both feet strapped in—then slide down one gentle slope to the other. They don’t turn, and because of the opposing incline, they don’t have to worry about stopping. In the mini pipe, they practice “pumping” the transitions, which, Hargrave says, serves up the pleasure of snowboarding without bringing in the all-consuming fear of speeding up, or adding the complications of slowing or stopping without falling.

Once they get the hang of the mini-pipe, students move on to a series of rollers to practice going up and back down a transition zone in a straight line, feeling the acceleration and deceleration and how that affects their board and their balance. The terrain is gentle, and at the end of the 20- to 30-foot zone, a small quarterpipe-shaped bank brings students naturally to a halt.

The next step is a banked-turn zone, shaped like a gentle banked-slalom course. This eases students into the turning process, with the terrain’s shape assisting them, providing the sensation of changing edges and of initiating turns without the fear of hard slams. The series of small banks culminates in a banked “catcher’s mitt” area where the student’s momentum is once again naturally brought to a halt.

Once that zone is mastered, the students move out of the snow module area and into the greater beginner area, where they work on their skills on a system of “traverse zones” of different grades and have the opportunity to experience authentic snowboarding within a controlled environment.


NO FEAR

From the resort’s point of view, the focus is on taking the fear completely out of the experience, says Chris Ryman, president and CEO of Booth Creek Resorts and a former PSIA Demo Team member and coach. When you put people in an intimidating environment and their attention is distracted by a fear of falling or getting hurt, you’re not creating an ideal experience for that guest, he says. It’s no wonder that more than three-quarters of those who try the sport don’t return.

“We believe that, industry-wide, we’ve got to be so sensitive to the environment that we’re putting people in. We want them to start to enjoy the beauty of the sport and the thrill of the sport in a positive way, and keep them 100 percent free from feeling any anxiety, fear or tension,” he explains. “You really have to make a big effort and a big commitment. But as an industry, we have to make that effort if we’re going to turn this retention issue around. It’s not easy, it is a financial commitment and a commitment to quality, but we absolutely have to do it. We’re seeing the results of [what happens] if we don’t do it, and I think the results will stay the same in our sport forever unless we commit to efforts like this.”

The commitment, both financial and to quality, measures how far a resort wants to take a program like the Academy, says Ryman. He calls it “the gap,” the extra effort it takes when you regard something like the Academy as an investment in the future of the sport. The gap costs money, he admits; Northstar has installed a new quad chair and two extra carpet lifts to service the beginner area, plus the snowmaking and grooming time and the cost to build and run the lounge—but the resort feels the return on the investment for the program is long-term cultivation of clientele.

Essentially, any resort can run a program like the Academy if it wishes to, he says. But they don’t, and by going the extra mile and covering the gap, he hopes Northstar will create a customer that stays with the resort, brings friends, buys hotel rooms and eats in local restaurants for decades to come.

The results in the program’s first year support his long-term view. Northstar put more than 800 people through the program last year, and in participant surveys 98 percent said they would try snowboarding again. That’s more than double the usual intend-to-return rate. As a result, the program’s terrain-based fundamentals are now being expanded to a ski version as well, and elements of it will be included in the regular snow-school curriculum.


RELEVANT TEACHING

There’s a fairly obvious link between the program’s terrain-based strategy and the techniques of freestyle (a.k.a. park riding), another always-hot topic in snow­sport learning circles. While the Academy is not a freestyle learning program per se, the program will help students achieve basic freestyle skills if that’s one of their goals, says Hargrave. Freestyle skills are part of any good snowboard instruction program anyway, he says. Plus, he adds, freestyle snowboarding is one of the sport’s greatest attractions, and the Academy is all about promoting snowboarding.

“Some of the most exciting things in snowboarding are ollies, rails, jumps and the halfpipe,” he says. “Just playing around on your snowboard is something that’s really important to the culture of snowboarding. So we absolutely want to support that. Obviously our main focus is to give someone a great learning experience regardless of what it is they want to do, but we also want to expose them to all the different aspects of the sport.”

It’s the type of initiative that the insurance industry is squarely behind, says Jimmy Lawrence, VP of loss control for the MountainGuard Insurance Program. Anything that can help prepare users for the types of terrain they’ll encounter and make informed decisions about it is a good thing, he says.

“The overwhelming thing that we’ve all been preaching in the last few years is education of the user,” he says. “We expect the user of freestyle terrain to have a certain behavior, but where are they supposed to learn that? How are they supposed to get that? Osmosis? Where do they get their nerve? Or their ability?”

In many instances, they get their nerve and inspiration through peer pressure, watching videos and reading snowboard magazines. The result is that, as Lawrence says, “we find that kids attack stuff before they’re ready.” The Academy helps make them ready. But beyond that, he says, “they’re capitalizing on the way that people learn today.” There’s a real drive with the Academy to reach people in ways that are relevant to them.

And that now includes media. New to the program this year is a website that allows students to set up a profile on their first day, log their gear specification and lesson tips, and communicate with their instructor. It’s an open-ended profile, one that students can continue to access long after their lesson has ended. The goal of the site is to continue to support each student’s interest in the sport no matter where they choose to take it after they leave Northstar, Hargrave says.

The Academy represents the kind of guest experience that Ryman believes is critical to the future of both skiing and snowboarding. “We always have to stand back and, like any business, be very guest-driven and look from the guests’ eyes and say, ‘What is our experience here? What is the experience that we are providing?’ The learn-to and the intermediate skier and rider—I just think that more time and more effort and more sensitivity needs to be paid to those particular guests, and that’s why we’re creating the environment that’s conducive to keeping them coming back.”