Design flaw #1: Heelside chatter
Your ability to keep your heelside edge in contact with the snow runs through your dorsal flexors - the muscles that raise your toes up. These are very weak muscles in comparison to the big muscles in your thigh. The outcome is a poor ability to maintain edge contact with the snow and hence chatter. What ultimately brought me back to skiing was that my cheap 10 year old pair of ski swap skis that I bought to teach my family gave me way better edge hold than my top of the line snowboard.
Design flaw #2: Board width
It's taken me a long time to wrap my head around mid fat skis - the tradeoffs for edge hold and turn quickness are smaller than I would have guessed. But there is no getting around the fact that a 65mm carving ski is quicker to turn and has better edge hold than a 95 mm ski. And while 115 mm powder skis are quite remarkable on groomed surfaces, they are slower to turn and have weaker edges still. But snowboards are 250mm underfoot. The edge hold and turn speed is weaker still.
Design flaw #3: Sideways Stance and Knee Direction
I'm sure you've all heard the adage that sideways is the natural way to slide: "if you want to slid on a patch of ice what do you do? Turn sideways." But when people slide on ice they are actually decelerating. Guess who turns sideways to decelerate? Skiers. The sideways position is a strong well-balanced and well-braced position and you want to use it when turning and stopping, not when going straight. Setting aside the cute talking points, the sideways stance raises big problems.
When a snowboarder is turning, the direction of their travel is down the length of the board, but the direction their knees bend is towards the side of their board. They are perpendicular to each other. This "knee travel direction" vs. "board travel direction" point can't be emphasized strongly enough. Take a snowboarder riding down a trail. He's holding a 17 degree heelside edge but the trail has a series of ridges. He can lift his knees up but now he has to (A) maintain consistent pressure through his dorsal flexors on his heelside edge even as his knees raise, (2) maintain the 17 degree angle even as his knees raise and get out "in front" of his body. That is very hard to do and if you've got a lot of experience snowboarding and watch good snowboards the answer is that even good riders don't really try to do this. When a snowboarder is holding an edge, absorption is something that is only done through a small range of knee bend. By contrast, a skier can easily hold the same level of edge articulation even as their knees bend quite a lot.
This is why snowboarders struggle in moguls, this is why snowboarders struggle in choppy crud after a wet powder day. This is why snowboarders do do pretty well on corduroy and untracked powder - smooth surfaces.
Design flaw #4: Sideways Stance Width
The second concrete problem is that snowboards are locked into a shoulder width stance. Mogul skiers keep their feet together because they otherwise one foot will be on the downslope of one mogul and the upslope of the next, and this will keep them out of sync. How do you absorb with one leg while extending with the other? You can't. When snowboarders are going through "whoops" (is there an actual ski term for the repeated ridges in snow?) they can use an independently move their legs and seesaw their board (provided they don't have to hold an edge, see the earlier point), but when things get choppy they are forced into the equivalent of feet apart skiing.
Another problem is that the wide stance slows down turn speed. I've seen riders on rockered boards pivoting like you would not believe, so athleticism can at least partially overcome this, but an equally athletic skier is going to pivot faster in a narrow feet-together stance. That is important in the bumps or the trees.
Design flaw #5: Boots
It is very difficult to land a jump in hard boots. They are very responsive and can cause you to catch an edge, and point #3 about knee travel direction also applies. It's very hard to land a jump in hardboots with having some impact on your edging and that makes it easy to fall. Soft boots let you flex at the ankle and stay on top of your board without having much of an impact on how much you're digging in your edges. But now you have to decide - do you want substandard support and energy transference from your leg to to the board (by pushing through soft boots) or good support and energy transference by wearing hard boots but largely giving up on jumping as well as bumpy variable terrain?
The end result of this confirms what we already know - snowboarders are pretty good in powder and on soft cordury. But their edges don't have the power to really grip ice, and they struggle in bumpy or choppy conditions because they can't really absorb well.
Your ability to keep your heelside edge in contact with the snow runs through your dorsal flexors - the muscles that raise your toes up. These are very weak muscles in comparison to the big muscles in your thigh. The outcome is a poor ability to maintain edge contact with the snow and hence chatter. What ultimately brought me back to skiing was that my cheap 10 year old pair of ski swap skis that I bought to teach my family gave me way better edge hold than my top of the line snowboard.
Design flaw #2: Board width
It's taken me a long time to wrap my head around mid fat skis - the tradeoffs for edge hold and turn quickness are smaller than I would have guessed. But there is no getting around the fact that a 65mm carving ski is quicker to turn and has better edge hold than a 95 mm ski. And while 115 mm powder skis are quite remarkable on groomed surfaces, they are slower to turn and have weaker edges still. But snowboards are 250mm underfoot. The edge hold and turn speed is weaker still.
Design flaw #3: Sideways Stance and Knee Direction
I'm sure you've all heard the adage that sideways is the natural way to slide: "if you want to slid on a patch of ice what do you do? Turn sideways." But when people slide on ice they are actually decelerating. Guess who turns sideways to decelerate? Skiers. The sideways position is a strong well-balanced and well-braced position and you want to use it when turning and stopping, not when going straight. Setting aside the cute talking points, the sideways stance raises big problems.
When a snowboarder is turning, the direction of their travel is down the length of the board, but the direction their knees bend is towards the side of their board. They are perpendicular to each other. This "knee travel direction" vs. "board travel direction" point can't be emphasized strongly enough. Take a snowboarder riding down a trail. He's holding a 17 degree heelside edge but the trail has a series of ridges. He can lift his knees up but now he has to (A) maintain consistent pressure through his dorsal flexors on his heelside edge even as his knees raise, (2) maintain the 17 degree angle even as his knees raise and get out "in front" of his body. That is very hard to do and if you've got a lot of experience snowboarding and watch good snowboards the answer is that even good riders don't really try to do this. When a snowboarder is holding an edge, absorption is something that is only done through a small range of knee bend. By contrast, a skier can easily hold the same level of edge articulation even as their knees bend quite a lot.
This is why snowboarders struggle in moguls, this is why snowboarders struggle in choppy crud after a wet powder day. This is why snowboarders do do pretty well on corduroy and untracked powder - smooth surfaces.
Design flaw #4: Sideways Stance Width
The second concrete problem is that snowboards are locked into a shoulder width stance. Mogul skiers keep their feet together because they otherwise one foot will be on the downslope of one mogul and the upslope of the next, and this will keep them out of sync. How do you absorb with one leg while extending with the other? You can't. When snowboarders are going through "whoops" (is there an actual ski term for the repeated ridges in snow?) they can use an independently move their legs and seesaw their board (provided they don't have to hold an edge, see the earlier point), but when things get choppy they are forced into the equivalent of feet apart skiing.
Another problem is that the wide stance slows down turn speed. I've seen riders on rockered boards pivoting like you would not believe, so athleticism can at least partially overcome this, but an equally athletic skier is going to pivot faster in a narrow feet-together stance. That is important in the bumps or the trees.
Design flaw #5: Boots
It is very difficult to land a jump in hard boots. They are very responsive and can cause you to catch an edge, and point #3 about knee travel direction also applies. It's very hard to land a jump in hardboots with having some impact on your edging and that makes it easy to fall. Soft boots let you flex at the ankle and stay on top of your board without having much of an impact on how much you're digging in your edges. But now you have to decide - do you want substandard support and energy transference from your leg to to the board (by pushing through soft boots) or good support and energy transference by wearing hard boots but largely giving up on jumping as well as bumpy variable terrain?
The end result of this confirms what we already know - snowboarders are pretty good in powder and on soft cordury. But their edges don't have the power to really grip ice, and they struggle in bumpy or choppy conditions because they can't really absorb well.
