- That just looks like that's gonna be a piece of cake.
[snow scraping] [people laughing]
- [Man] Oh no!
- Today we're here at Mammoth Mountain
to teach three surfers how to snowboard for the first time.
Let's see if they can keep up.
[dramatic music]
- My name's Johnny.
I've been surfing for over 15 years,
and I've been an instructor in Huntington Beach
for over seven.
- I'm Vanessa, I've been surfing for 22 years,
I'm an instructor, and I also run the Women Who Surf,
and the Latinx Surf Club.
- I'm Apryl, I've been surfing for over 40 years.
I'm an Los Angeles trainer for Black Girls Surf
and I'm also a marine scientist who specializes in sharks.
- I'm so stoked to learn how to snowboard today.
- I'm Carrie, I've been snowboarding for 20 years
and this is my fourth season
as an instructor at Mammoth Mountain.
- I'm Buckley, I've been snowboarding for seven years
and this is my fifth season as an instructor.
- I'm Scotty, I've been snowboarding for over 20 years,
and I've been teaching for over 10 years.
[match bell rings]
For the first challenge we're gonna have you learn
some skating and gliding.
You have to ride the chair lift with one foot,
and we have to glide with one foot when we get off.
That's why we learn this first.
Skating is a mixture of pushing with your back foot
and gliding on your front foot.
So I slide the board a little bit,
usually don't let my back foot go past
that back binding, step right back, little steps.
Now for gliding, I'm gonna press down on my front foot,
stand up tall on that front foot,
step in the middle of the board and just go straight.
- I never really thought about that you would need
to do that, so I'm anxious to try it.
It looks like, it looks doable, so.
- There is nothing like that in surfing.
You put your leash on and you go.
- Pull back my high back, heel goes in at that high back.
I always do my ankle strap first.
This is your most important strap,
strap it in pretty tight, you'll know if it's too snug,
and then I do my toe strap.
[upbeat drum music]
Skate one and hop.
There you go.
Even more, when you step off just,
all your weight is here.
- Gotcha.
- [Scotty] This saves you, okay?
[match bell dings] Little steps,
keep your eyes up towards me.
Good, awesome.
Eyes up towards me, perfect.
Little steps.
Beautiful, eyes up, keep looking.
Little steps.
That's it! [Scotty chuckling]
Yes! - Yes!
[both laughing]
I was trying to knock you over and I fell.
- [Scotty] Now we're gonna do the same thing, but gliding.
So remember, we're just standing up tall
on that downhill foot, don't push off and just go straight.
Eyes up. [match bell dings]
[snow crunches] [surfer grunts]
- [Scotty] Turn the board.
If you twist your shoulders
it will move the board. - I just noticed that.
- [Scotty] So you wanna stay, you wanna stay square.
Okay?
Good, eyes up, good, and step off.
- Whoo! [snowboarders clapping]
[Vanessa chuckling]
- Put more weight on your front foot, trust it.
- [Apryl] Yeah, just trust it.
- Now just step off. - Whoo!
- [Scotty] There you go, and step off.
- [Apryl] Whoa!
[Apryl laughing]
- Good job. - Are you all right?
- I don't care if I fall, as long as I don't hurt myself.
- It was a lot harder that I expected.
- I felt like I was a little out of control.
- It's water, but it's frozen water,
so it's really different and judging,
and just gliding on it.
- Snow is a really interesting different feel
than surfing or skateboarding.
I'm trying to find the balance spot
because the slight movement makes a lot of difference.
- I feel like it's like actually a lot of core too,
like surfing, so I'm happy that's transitioning to this,
I think.
- I think when I'm strapped in I'll feel more comfortable.
[upbeat jazz music] [match bell dings]
- So for the next challenge we're gonna do
what's called a floating leaf.
Some people call it the falling leaf
but I like to leave the word falling out of it.
When you think about a leaf that falls out of a tree
it kinda floats side to side right?
That's what we're gonna be doing down the hill,
going side to side and controlling our speed
the whole way.
One of the big differences between surfing and snowboarding
is, surfing, you have all your weight
on the back foot mostly.
Snowboarding, you wanna have all your weight forward,
because if you don't, the snowboard kinda wants to shoot out
from under you, so we gotta stay ahead of that.
So this is what a floating leaf is supposed to look like.
I'm gonna put all my weight on my front foot,
my eyes are looking and I'm gonna press on my heels
till it turns my board sideways to control my speed.
Sets me up to go this way, pressing down on my heels,
keeping my toes up.
[surfers chuckling]
- It just looks like, that's gonna be a piece of cake.
- Who's gonna be the falling leaf?
- Yeah, we'll eat it.
Buckley made that look so graceful.
I'm hoping that I don't fall.
- I'm probably gonna be the falling leaf.
- Little nervous, and I can't wait to give it a shot.
[upbeat jazz music ]
- [Buckley] So who wants to go first?
- I will!
- [Buckley] All right Apryl.
- [Johnny] Get it Apryl!
- Okay.
- [Buckley] Look where we're going.
Pushing on your heels slowly.
Toes up, whoop, nice!
Downhill, and then turn your head,
look over that shoulder a little.
Toes up, good!
- Oh yeah. - See how it slides sideways?
- [Apryl] Yeah, no, you totally look
where you're going, exactly. - Exactly.
Looking with your eyes is really big.
- Yeah. - Try to keep those arms
still, okay?
- Okay, so, my arms should be down?
- Uh huh. - Okay.
- [Buckley] Your steering is coming from your feet.
- Okay.
- Not your upper body. - Okay.
- So keep those still. - Just keep them still.
- [Buckley] And just press through those heels.
- Okay, got it.
- [Buckley] There you go, and then control,
and start going the other way when you're ready.
- [Apryl] Not your arms, Apryl.
I keep using my arms!
[cheerful drum music]
Ooh!
- [Buckley] See, as soon as she moves those arms.
[Apryl laughing] it just catches the toes.
- Alright, I'm good, I'll just wait here.
[Apryl exhales]
- [Buckley] Show us what you got!
So lean on that front foot.
Keep your shoulders in line with your snowboard.
Push in on your heels slowly,
getting your toes to come up and control your speed.
Toes up!
There it is! [match bell rings]
Now go the other way!
- Yeah, dang it.
- [Buckley] Nice job Johnny!
[surfers whooping]
- Whew. - Alright!
- I was trying, I don't know what I was trying to do.
- Good job! - I did a little like,
bunny hop. [Buckley laughing]
- A lot of this is just overcoming the natural reaction.
- To wanna like? - Going like this.
- Or to lean back. - You know what I mean?
- Yeah, especially for me cause I ride huge long boards.
- [Buckley] Uh huh.
- I always lean back 'cause it's like,
how I pause to run to the nose.
- [Buckley] Right.
- [Vanessa] What's the technique to standing up on your own?
- [Buckley] So it's just holding that heel,
so it doesn't slide out from under you.
[Vanessa chuckling] - Okay.
- Getting up on your toe edge is a little easier,
but we'll do that later.
So chin up look where you're going.
Try not to look at your board.
Push in on your heels and then control that speed.
I'm gonna let you do it on your own once, okay?
- [Vanessa] Thank you.
- [Buckley] Very good, Vanessa!
- Whoo! [match bell rings]
- Yeah Vanessa! - Get on with your bad self.
- Ow! [surfers chuckling]
Oh, you jinxed it.
- That was a little challenging,
but it was really cool.
It's not like surfing,
I gotta keep my arms down 'cause I'm pretty expressive
when I surf, so I need to not do that,
'cause a little move makes the board go all over the place.
- It was pretty awesome, I got some momentum going
and I got excited and I felt myself
wanting to turn and go faster.
- Got a lot of confidence right now,
it went better than I thought.
It's nothing like surfing,
just, weight distribution, it's way different.
You gotta stay more back when you stop on your heels.
It's a lot of fun.
- I feel like they did really well.
It's just a matter of gathering that speed
and controlling it.
Usually when it's someone's first time on a snowboard
like that, you don't see them doing the floating leaf
as quickly as I just saw.
- I just can't wait to see what's next.
I wanna do some turns.
[upbeat jazz music] [match bell dings]
- So with snowboarding we have two edges of our board.
Our heel side, and our toe side.
And we want to utilize both of these edges
to slow ourselves down equally across the hill,
so that when you see people
doing these big S turns all the way down,
they're utilizing both edges equally.
So, the more we know how to do toe side and heel side,
the better snowboarder you're gonna be.
The next challenge we have for you today,
is garlands and C turns.
These are two basics maneuvers
to feel more balanced on your board.
So our garlands are to take us across the hill.
So we utilize this tool by traveling
flat base on our board, and edging so slightly
onto your heels to slow yourself down.
Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and demonstrate a garland!
Release onto the front foot,
relaxing flat base,
slowing to the heels.
To initiate our C turns, I'm gonna sit down again,
roll over, stand up to our toe side,
look downhill, flatten that base, get rolling a little.
Then come to your turn.
That's a C turn.
- I hope I can do it half as gracefully as she did.
She looked so light on her feet and perfect.
- She was so in control, so it was cool to watch.
- Being connected to my board and having my feet locked in
and going back side and turning
and not knowing what's behind me is really different.
That's gonna be really interesting.
- I'm excited, I really wanna turn.
- Are you ready?
- Ready! - Let's do it!
[upbeat drum music]
- Alright guys, let's go ahead
and get both of our feet strapped in here,
so we can get going on our garlands.
I want you to kinda reach out to me,
flat base traveling across the hill,
keep reaching to me.
Nice!
Feeling flat base, then slowing.
- Whoa! [Apryl laughing]
Hey, I stopped!
- [Carrie] You got it, you're doing it!
- You're so right. - You're doing it!
- [Johnny] Yeah!
[match bell dings] - You did it!
Slow, to your heels.
Oh, so close.
- [Apryl] Oh!
- [Carrie] Nice, there it is!
- I gotta get my legs working, ah!
Now they're not, okay.
- Yeah.
- Uh oh, turning. - You got it!
[match bell dings]
Nice!
- So, go? - Ready?
- Yeah.
- [Carrie] Nice, let's see how you can
go a little bit more flat base.
- Whew! - Let that right foot
lead again!
Let that right foot lead again!
[match bell dings]
This is your first step to going fast.
For the rollover, we pick one foot to point down the hill.
Use the nose of your board as that pivot point to roll over.
Whoever is ready to go first.
- Reach! - Stand on that leading foot!
More more more!
[match bell dings] Yeah!
Nice job.
So again, super important,
we wanna really notch our body to the slope.
So we're gonna stand on our front foot, our leading foot.
- [Johnny] And let it guide us down.
- Let it guide you down,
then come to your heels starting with the front foot,
the back foot comes to match.
- [Johnny] Oh [beep]!
- Keep that transition, keep that flat base
until you gain some speed.
[upbeat drum music]
[match bell dings]
All right, you ready Apryl?
- [Apryl] Yeah!
- Bend into that right knee,
really feeling the pinky toe side of your foot,
travel flat base.
[match bell dings]
Yeah!
- I fell, I think, once or twice there,
but the most challenging aspect was getting back up.
For me that's a little hard,
doing it from a sitting position standing up.
But the way she taught us where you can roll over
and get up on your knees is much easier for me.
- I really have to concentrate on not surfing.
- I've noticed it's more putting your weight
into your front leg instead of trying to bend,
which I do a lot in surfing.
- It is really odd getting used to the board
staying on your feet and you can't ditch it,
so it's like a whole extension of yourself
you have to think about.
- I found it really fun, it was amazing.
- Let's go.
- It went really well, they super surprised me,
because what little I know about surfing
is that they were gonna be back foot heavy,
and they really rise to the occasion
and went with the gravity of the sport
and riding their board down the hill.
I mean that's are main thing, down a slope,
we gotta have gravity as our friend, not our enemy.
[upbeat jazz music] [match bell dings]
- All right guys, so for our fourth challenge,
we're gonna be doing some ollies.
[surfers applaud] - Whoo hoo!
- So an ollie is just a freestyle move
where basically I'm gonna shift my weight
onto my back foot and I use this leg like a spring
to pop me up and land flat.
- So I've done an ollie on a skateboard,
but that was quite some time ago.
I always just surf on the sidewalk now,
so it'll be interesting to try it
with the board attached to my feet.
- I think the ollie looks really hard,
but I'm gonna give it my best shot.
[upbeat jazz music]
- That is so weird with the board attached.
It is like, not a natural motion.
Oh! - That's all right.
- This is not a skateboard, okay.
Spring, load.
[match bell dings]
I didn't fall!
- [Scotty] Yes!
- You wanna try this?
- [Scotty] Spring release, then flat,
back straight. [match bell dings]
- And we're going down.
- Yes! - Whoo!
- Oh!
[match bell dings] - Yes, yes.
That was great looking over that shoulder.
- Clearly I don't like small movements.
[surfers laughing]
- It's a lot of core.
- I'm going the other way.
- Okay.
- Hi Scott. - Hi.
- Scotty. - Hi.
- [Vanessa] Okay.
- Lay it flat. [match bell rings]
Yes, awesome! - Boom.
- Yes!
- Whew!
- I was surprised at how easily I could do that,
that was really fun.
- I felt that once I gained speed
I was actually able to ollie with more momentum
and get a little higher than I was standing on flat land.
- It was fun, it was fun to catch a little air.
Maybe I can do that on my run down the slope,
try and add a little hop in there.
[Vanessa chuckles]
- I think that freestyle is important
in every teaching technique,
because it makes all students more comfortable
on their snowboard.
A+ all around.
[upbeat jazz music] [match bell dings]
- So the chair lifts are about to close
and we've got one chance to do this run.
Let's make it happen.
If you wanna take a look at the chair lift here,
there's those "wait here" signs.
We're gonna go all the way to the front of the line there,
and we're gonna wait right at those yellow signs
until the chair passes us
and we're all gonna follow that chair all the way up
to the line that's in the snow.
And while we do this you always wanna keep your snowboard
aimed straight in the direction the chair lift is moving,
so when we sit down on the chair,
you kinda have to sit sideways for a minute
to let it slide straight.
Once it picks us up off the ground,
then we can dangle our snowboard however we like.
I like to share the load between my feet.
I put my other, my back toe underneath the board,
so it's not pulling on your ankle funny,
and we can put the bar down for safety as well.
When we get to the top, we're gonna stand up on our board.
I'll count to three, there's two more yellow signs there,
we're all gonna put our feet right on our snowboard
right next to the back binding, stand up nice and tall
and do that straight glide right down the little ramp.
- [Apryl] Okay.
- And if you want tom you can press on your heels to turn
a little bit to slow down, but you should just be able
to slide straight until you stop.
- Okay.
- Sweet.
- Cool, any questions before we hop on?
- Let's do it. - Alright.
- Let's do it. - Let's rock and roll.
[match bell dings] [playful music]
[match bell dings]
[snow scraping] - Oh no!
- We collided.
- We had a little, had a little issue.
We had a little incident. - We wanted to be in close.
- It was kinda like a blur. - We missed each other.
- Alright, so for the final challenge today
we're gonna put all the skills that we learned
all together into one run.
- I'm super excited to go down the hill, I've been waiting.
I feel like it's my moment to put it all together.
- Showtime, I've been waiting for this all day.
Let's do it.
- [Buckley] You guys ready to rock?
- [All] One, two, three, snowboarding!
[upbeat music] [match bell dings]
[match bell dings]
- Oh! [Apryl laughing]
[match bell dings]
[Johnny laughing]
[match bell dings] - Belly forward,
push on your toes.
Control, then left flat, yeah, perfect!
[match bell dings] All right, nice.
[Johnny laughing]
- That's probably the most ollies I've ever done
in my life.
- That was really fun, I just have to not surf.
- Snowboarding is awesome.
It's super fun and it's challenging,
but I like a good challenge.
- My favorite part of the experience
was how patient the instructors were, they were all so rad,
and really, really tried to make sure we understood
what was going on and really wanted us to succeed.
- Favorite part of the day by far
was the last part when we got to run
all the way down the mountain and show what we did today
and put everything that we learned
from our great instructors and put it all together.
That was definitely the best part.
It was harder than I expected,
I don't like my feet strapped in,
I love moving my feet on my surfboard
so getting used to having my feet strapped in is a big deal.
- The last run was super fun.
I got to go down with one of the instructors
and she was amazing, she said just go for it, you know,
just follow me and let's do this.
I felt like I was surfing, like once I started to go
I felt like I could do the S turns and kind of flow.
I will for sure will be back.
- I'm impressed with everyone.
We even saw some S turns up there, which, on the first day,
you don't see that very often,
so I think everyone did really well, I'm impressed.
- Definitely it's harder on your first day.
You're gonna fall, you're gonna crash, you're gonna tumble,
but these guys did it in stride.
They kept a smile on their face and crushed it.
[salsa music]