Although the most fun anyone can have... ever... snowboarding is also one of the most potentially painful activities known to man. On a more technical note, there are three types of snowboarding:
Freeriding: This is your basic stand on a board and go down the hill type boarding. Doesn't take much talent... i'd say after 2-3 years you should have it
down pat.
Freestyle: This is the most blissful activity on the face of the earth. It can also be divided into a bunch of subcategories...
-Park- Kickers and cheese wedges, park riding consists of taking air while maintaining a downhillwards (SO not a word) motion. While in the air, it is expected that you spin and / or grab.
-Pipe- Or
half-pipe... this is arguably the most commercialised form of freestyle. It envolves going back and forth taking air on two walls of what is literally a massive half of a pipe made out of snow (but usually frozen as hell, making for some painful fuck-ups). Once again with the spinning and grabbing.
-Jibbing- This is what little kids who don't know how to ride properly spend all day doing. It's rails and boxes, mostly, but can be adapted to anything. Park benches, cars, roofs of barns (
Jason Brown - Transworld's
Technical Difficulties) Which is why it's so fun i suppose... still, those little fucks couldn't do shit in the next section.
Backcountry:
Off trail riding, usually using a snowmobile,
snowcat, or (if you're a rich sponsored son of a bitch) a helicopter to get up to the top of an unsupervised, unmaintained mountain, then riding down, a feat that usually takes about half the morning. The most dangerous type of riding, simply because of the
avalance hazard.
RIP, Craig Kelly.