Snowboarding and Safety
Posted: 18 September 2010 12:27 PM
You’ve obviously grown up riding Powder and not hiking Dendex, we used to cut camping mats to size and stuff them down our pants before they invented impact shorts. Better than picking bristles out of your ass.
There’s nothing like smashing you knee caps into tiny little pieces or breaking a vertibrae on an icy day. If your not mentally tough enough to handle being layed up in traction for 4 months it’s probably best to look at protection.
I don’t like riding with a helmet but it definitely makes sense. Wearing one, definitely saved Kevin Pierce’s life.
Posted: 19 September 2010 04:39 AM
The only reason I wear a helmet is because it’s required to get in to the park on my local mountain. I’ve never considered any body protection and imo if your not tough enough to take the slams then maybe try a different sport…... ballet anyone?
Best thing I take out of your post is that you are forced to wear a helmet.
There is nothing about being tough to survive some of the falls that are possible on the mountain. Gravity wins all the time, throw in some ice / rocks / trees and you have a recipe for one hell of an injury.
Also, stuff catches up as you age. Arthritis, stress fractures, degenerative disk disease… all can be made worse if you subject yourself to a lot of physical abuse when you’re younger.
I hope you land all the stuff you try, and I hope when you fail you ride away from it… but I personally don’t like to gamble that much with my body versus a steel rail so I’ll keep my safety gear. :)
Posted: 19 September 2010 04:52 AM
Eero, I loved your response when I read it. It make me smile because I just got back from a day long hockey coaching clinic after which I watched my son play. I wonder if you would consider it wimpy to dodge shots from 8 year old hockey players like my son. Because that’s what all us creaky old dads do when we don’t have on shin pads. We get out of the way! And we don’t have any ego issues doing it because pucks hurt, even at only 40mph. Heck, they hurt at 20mph.
It sounds like snowboarding without pads is important to you, and while I don’t feel that way, I can understand it. I was like that when I was younger and survived without any really bad injuries. I do hold myself responsible for the plate in my best friends head. See, he was on my skateboarding, doing the same thing I’d just done, and obviously wearing my non-existant helmet. His IQ is still over 150 and he never held it against me, but if I’d had a helmet that day, he would have been wearing it, and he probably would have avoided a long hospital stay.
I hope, that if you ever need to minimize your risk of injury, you buy some safety equipment and stick with snowboarding, rather than just quiting and finding something else to do. But if you switch to ballet and manage to gain the increased flexibility and arm strength it requires compared to snowboarding, some of those female dancers are pretty hot.
At this point in my life, I’ll wear my helmet and wrist guards boarding, and I think I’ll even invest in a pair of those skeletools impact shorts. I need both my brain and my hands to do my job, and it doesn’t bother me that I hate bruising body parts. Since pads and guards aren’t for you, at least at this point in your life, I’ll wish you a fun and injury free season, and many many more after that. I don’t want to read about you in transworld for something bad, ok? There have been too many of those stories already this year.
Posted: 19 September 2010 06:57 AM
I’ll probably consider wearing safety gear when I’m old and frail like all of you grandpas but right now I’m 16 and my body can take a bit of a beating. But I can definitely see where all you old dudes are coming from, ur body can take a lot more at 16 than it can at 40, so for you guys safety gear probably saves ur old bones quite a bit. Another reason i would never consider safety gear right now is because having style when I snowboard is very important to me, I don’t care if it sounds vain because snowboarding is about fun and when I feel I look good I have about 100X more fun. I don’t think i’d feel very cool with a big chest protector or something wrapped around me.
Posted: 19 September 2010 07:16 AM
I’m 32. I’ve taken MMA for the past several years and have trained with a current UFC fighter. I have been choked out, had my elbow popped and my brain rattled a few times. Still, I wear safety gear when I train. Still, accidents happen.
I think when we age it’s not we get old and frail but we understand that we want to do the things we like when we are older.
Out of all the gear I mentioned in my first post the only thing you can spot is a helmet. Unless your friends frisk you before you ride (which would be weird unto itself) nobody will know.
I just finished watching “They Came From…” this evening. I was impressed that probably 20% of the riders sported a helmet. I didn’t look at those riders any differently and neither did the others who weren’t wearing helmets. Everyone was just sending it and stoked when they nailed their tricks.
Style doesn’t have to come at the expense of safety.
Posted: 19 September 2010 08:27 AM
Yea it’s all personal preference for sure, I personally don’t wanna wear safety gear but I definitely won’t hate on anyone who does. For me I think style does come at the expense of safety a bit, just because I’d feel awkward wearing safety gear and it would probably hinder my riding but if you wanna wear that stuff and it doesn’t affect your riding then go for it.
Posted: 19 September 2010 01:08 PM
I’m not sure at 27 I qualify as a Grandad, but I’m certainly starting to take care of myself more these days.
My safety gear deffinitely doesn’t sacrifice my style… I’ve always been a sucker for style over function. Although, I’m still riding XL… I really don’t dig tight pants and fitted jackets, it’s a bit metrosexual for my liking. I reckon if you’re wearing bootfit pants then it might be a bit of a struggle to fit some impact shorts and knee pads, but you can get d3o stuff which is super slim and you wouldn’t notice it.
Sessions make d3o thermals with super slim knee pads:-
They also make Beanies which protect your noggin from smaller impacts… I borrowed one from a mate and took a tumble and it gave me more protection than a normal had, can’t really be compared with a helmet though.
Then there’s a company called Forcefield that make some really low profile body armour, it’s designed to fit under Biking Leathers so it’ll fit under fitted snowboard gear.
Then helmet wise there’s the new Amplid VACO fit helmets. They look amazing, and the way the helmet fits to your head is revolutionary, it’s like a custom fit helmet.
So I definitely see the style before protection argument, but if you want to minimise the risk of nailing yourself and not being able to ride again, there are solutions that are low profile and look awsome… perhaps they’re a bit expensive, but when your 16 you can play the guilt trip card with your folks.
Posted: 19 September 2010 04:33 PM
Eero,
You’re giving my 8 year old way too much credit, I’m not a grandpa yet, just a dad. And I agree with you, big bulky pads just aren’t cool at 16.
By 20 they may be ok.
By 30 people start to think you’re stupid if you don’t wear any and play in the park.
And at my age, well, at 42, with a family, it really is stupid not to wear something because my wife and kids need me healthy. Besides, I’m a physician who’s seen too much in the ER not to completely understand the risks.
If you can afford them and there’s too much shame to buy them pre-injury, maybe you can just wait until someone else gets really crushed, and then get them. You’ll be able to honestly say, “After watching you suffer, dude, I figured these weren’t a bad idea.” Then you’ll discover that if you have D3O or Deflexion pads and they don’t show, you’ll be the envy of all your friends every time you or they take a tumble.
You’ll clearly heal faster in your teens than you will when you’re in your 40’s like me, but faster doesn’t help that much if you crush your spine, sever nerves, or have a closed head injury like Kevin Pearce did.
So stay cool, and healthy,
Todd
Posted: 19 September 2010 04:58 PM
Speaking from experiance you only need to crack your coxcyx once to convince yourself that impact shorts are a good idea - painful and sitting at the office desk on a rubber ring for 2-3 weeks loses a lot of style points!
Rich - your so right about Dendex - I won’t even use my local dry slope anymore - I’v seen to many people hurt themselves - the last time I went, a girl that was boarding managed to get caught up on it and dislocate her leg at the hip, she had to be scraped up by some paramedics - not nice!
Posted: 19 September 2010 10:50 PM
Isn’t the rubber ring for piles?
There’s only one word for Dendex. Evil Evil Evil!
Posted: 20 September 2010 06:15 AM
Basically we don’t want to see people get seriously hurt… that’s what I take from all this.
We all eat shit from time to time on the mountain. Out of the 30 plus days I rode last season I consider myself lucky to have only a sore wrist once and a dinged shin. I saw my friend on a snowboard for the first time have a close encounter of the third kind with an evergreen that made me almost poop my pants. Hell, once I got adventurous in Lake Louise and found myself practically out of bounds on the edge of a small cliff. I hit a technical tree run that was so freakin narrow I need to take off my board and use it as a sled to get out (I even got stuck in a tree well, that was scary ass shit).
I don’t like to read about people or know people around me are getting seriously injured doing something I enjoy… kinda takes the fun out of it. Those of us that do wear safety gear encourage others to do so not for some material gain but for a moral one.
Posted: 20 September 2010 12:59 PM
Only takes one big fall!
I normally bounce pretty well too, can’t say I’m any more delicate than I was when I was 16. I’m no heavier and I’m just as fit as I was, probably stronger than I was in the muscles which I use for riding…....but I’ve been walking around with a cast on my arm for the past three months, falling 60ft tends to damage your body.
Gotta say you sound a little ignorant if you think you’re not going to hurt yourself because it only takes one awkward fall….....might be that you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. Nothing I say is gonna make you change your mind but when you do have a big crash and ruin yourself then you’ll definitely start wearing safety kit, that’s if you’re able to ride again.
Good luck Eero hope you never smash yourself up.
Posted: 20 September 2010 04:38 PM
Isn’t the rubber ring for piles?
I haven’t heard anyone use the word “piles” since a history prof in college said they weren’t actually why Napoleon lost at Waterloo, although they may have contributed.
Tom,
Hope your arm is healing well!
I don’t think Eero’s unaware. But do you know any 16 year old snowboarders who wouldn’t prefer to appear brave and reckless over smart?
Todd
Posted: 20 September 2010 08:56 PM
Ah yes but I come from the old land, where people spell colour with ‘u’.
And that little Corsican… was just a thorn in the side of our grand empire.
Posted: 25 December 2010 06:26 PM
I wear helmet and back protector. That´s standard.
In the backcountry I take ABS avalance Airbag, tranciver, probe and showel. Ice axe in one hand if i descend very steep runs.
The best protection is allways judgement. If I don´t know about a jump and there is flat light I usally skip the jump. Missjudged landings calls for a lot of shit. The same goes for avalance awearnes. If you start to mess around whit the factors you know about - you will very soon find out a lot about the dangers you missed…..
Search the Forum:
