What is it that makes people want to ride rails???

skip11 - 10 September 2012 06:05 AM

I have tons of respect for people who ride rails, but for myself I don’t see why I wanna ride rails. It hurts when you bail and it’s not really SNOWboarding (in my opinion), and to be honest it’s just not interesting for me. To me snowboarding is riding down a mountain, making turns be it on fresh pow or not, doing side hits, jumps or whatever is on the way down. That’s why I don’t really like watching clips/video parts with just rails (especially street rails) or just big jumps in the park or backcountry. I prefer watching people actually snowboard down the mountain.

-1

Turns are boring IMO, unless you’re in AK or JP, or somewhere exotic…

I like rails because they are hard and dangerous.

cords - 10 September 2012 07:42 AM

Yeah, I’m more saying that 95% of the time, you’re just riding slopes and not powder, and riding slopes gets boring to me as soon as everything is chopped and moguled up and it takes all the fun out of it.
To be honest, I didn’t really like TC for that reason. I went there one day, realised it would be great on a powder day and then didn’t go back. I know they normally get some kind of park going but not sure what its like and it sure ain’t better than snow park! Plus, only having 2 lifts means lines get crazy pretty easily. When we were there, saddle was closed for more than half the day, it was a 45min wait to ride some crappy chopped up slopes and I wished I’d never agreed to go there.

Sounds like you hit a bad day, I rarely wait in a line here. But powder days get busy and super aggressive - literally punches are thrown along the track to the saddle. The park is nothing, there is one 8ft kicker which is actually well done but the boxes take bits out of your board - Cardies is the only place that can compete with snow park. I got bored of this hill pretty fast, I only ride the Chutes on powder days (tomorrow and Wednesday yeeewww) and on slushy days if I can find a good rider I will ride under the six seater chair down the “jib run”. Not much comes close to Whakapapa for me.

Just make the park with a really long jump line and I’m stoked.

I agree with most of you that when the pow is all chopped up it gets kinda tiring just to ride moguls. I guess that’s why it’s good to have park skills so on bad days you can still go and have some fun. I’m not a park guy at all but small jumps and boxes are fine.

@AJ2TheC: I’m the opposite, I find rails boring. I mean rails as in you just do rails all day (e.g. on the streets, do 1 rail and hiking back up again, etc.) instead of going through the park top to bottom. But yeah, I don’t find turns boring and I don’t see a lot of guys making beautiful turns be it carving or in the pow (Terje, Blauvelt comes to mind).

Another thing, I guess I see rails as a skateboarding thing and I don’t associate it with snowboarding. But I do have some pros I like to watch doing rails such as Scott Stevens and a few others, but those are a rarity.

skip11 - 10 September 2012 06:05 AM

I have tons of respect for people who ride rails, but for myself I don’t see why I wanna ride rails. It hurts when you bail and it’s not really SNOWboarding (in my opinion), and to be honest it’s just not interesting for me. To me snowboarding is riding down a mountain, making turns be it on fresh pow or not, doing side hits, jumps or whatever is on the way down. That’s why I don’t really like watching clips/video parts with just rails (especially street rails) or just big jumps in the park or backcountry. I prefer watching people actually snowboard down the mountain.

Sorry Skip, I’ve gotta disagree with your logic on this one mate.

You said you don’t like rails but you like jumps.
You also said it hurts when you bail and it’s not really SNOWboarding.

Well big jumps (park or back country) will usually break you in a way more permanent way then rails can.

Also the whole SNOWboarding thing - Jumps go: Up ramp, air, down ramp.
                                    Rails go:  Up ramp, rail, down ramp.
There’s no more snow involed in jumps then there is in rail riding.

Of course I can see people being attracted more to one side of boarding than another.
But to say rails aren’t Snowboarding is just untrue. Personally I love all aspects of boarding

@Andy: That’s why I said I don’t like watching video clips of just rails or just jumps (Art of Flight jackson hole segment is my least favorite out of the whole movie). Regarding the hurt if you bail. Rail will hurt if you hit on it, doesn’t matter if the rail is small big, if you’re goin slow or fast, flat or down rail. I agree with you that jumps can break you worse than rails but that’s usually happen on big jumps. Jumps are made out of snow, rails are made out of steel so in that way jumps is still snowboarding hahah. But yep you’re right each person has a different taste and for me personally rails are out of the picture. But as stated before I do like some guys hitting rails e.g. Scott Stevens, Halldor.

Agreed most people have a favourite side of boarding and sometimes a less favourite side and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But I will never say hitting rails isn’t SNOWboarding. Yes jumps are made of snow, but almost all rails have jumps onto them. So whether your jumping or grinding, you go off the jump and onto a rail or into the air. Same amount of “on snow time”.
Not that I think it matters at all how much time u spend literally touching snow. Words are failing me right now, attempting to draw it lol:

Jump:                /    air   \

Rails:                / TTTTTTTT\

It’s totally the same thing.

Thats like saying hitting rails isn’t Skateboarding, or wakeboarding…

That’s why I said in my opinion . Just to clear things up, what I meant is not that rails is not part of snowboarding (it is, no doubt) but to ME personally, it’s not really snowboarding.

I ride rails because it sorts the men from the boys! jk. But seriously, mainly because there’s not always much snow in Aus, especially at places like Baw Baw which are awesome if you need your day trip fix. Not a very big mountain but they make the most of what they have by setting up a good park.

Like some of the other guys have said, it’s awesome just to ride rails with your mates, even if it’s just the same one over and over, seeing who can get the best trick, games of ‘skate’ etc. And I’ve always skated, so I guess skating had a bit of an impact on the way I ride a snowboard.

quite the debate, we should really have a poll question: Do you like rails? 

I’m with andy on liking all aspects of snowboarding (except carving cos i’m poo at it) but It’d be interesting to have a eurovision style contest for which wins out of; pow, jumps, rails, trees, carving, hard conditions, jibbing etc…for those of you lucky enough not to know what eurovision is it’s a painful international song contest where you get 12 points for first, 10 for second and so on….

my twelve points goes to…..dropping cliffs….

Hard conditions hahaha, I think only the hard booters will be voting for that one.
I don’t know if I can choose one thing to vote above the rest.

This season it’s been jumps for me. But today it was so slow that the jump line was just frustrating so I switched to hitting the jib line instead and it saved my sanity a little bit.

The only thing I can say for sure is: Pow comes first for me when it’s fresh, any other time you will likely find me in the park. Since I get enough freeriding time just teaching boarding. But I still enjoy a good carve or steep section when I can.

12 points for pow
10 points for carving
8 points for trees (nicely spaced trees, I hate tight trees)
6 points for jumps
4 points hard conditions
2 points for jibbing
0 point for rails

Is this how eurovision works? Hahah not really sure

EDIT: 8 for trees,6 for jumps

By jibbing I mean, doing boxes, rails, or just riding on other stuff.

skip11 - 12 September 2012 07:32 AM

2 points for jibbing
0 point for rails

wut.