When inexperienced snowboarders try to use a ski lift it’s pretty awesome…for those watching at least. It kind of sucks if you’re the mook that’s trying to hold on for dear life and can’t seem to understand just how the lift works. If they’d watch people who are going up before doing it they might get the hint that the part they’re hanging onto is supposed to go between their legs in order to give them a smoother ride. But for some reason they just can’t maintain their balance and as a result keep falling over and allowing the lift to drag them for a ways. It’s not like a chair lift fellas, you have to actually pay attention to what you’re doing.
The main issue seems to be that the guys involved are highly inexperienced on their boards and just can’t begin to get their balance. It’s hilarious because in truth they shouldn’t even be on the mountain. Having snowboarded in the past and finally gotten out of it due to my own reasons I can still tell anyone that snowboarding is something you don’t just jump into. It wouldn’t matter if you were a surfer or a skateboarder with talent coming out of your ears. Snowboarding is just different enough that you need to know what you’re doing before you hit the mountain. And if you can’t make it up the ski lift then you don’t belong on the slopes to start with.
The cameraman is getting a rise out of this as well. And why not? It’s funny as heck to watch noobs take to the slopes expecting to be awesome. When you tell some folks that it’s all a matter of balance they might think that they can do it so long as they maintain that balance. They don’t seem to realize that balancing on a board is harder than balancing on their own two feet. Listening to the cameraman laughing is just about as good as watching the guys fall over on their attempts to make it up the slope. Even better, one of them decides not to let go as it flops him on his back and continues to drag him upward. You can hear the cameraman yelling at him to let go in between the laughter but the guy stubbornly refuses and is slowly being dragged out of sight while his buddies continue their spectacular failure of trying to do what so many others in line are accomplishing easily.
It might be just a little easier to work this kind of lift on skis since you’re facing forward and there’s no real challenge to it. But even on a snowboard it should be easy to figure out that the cable is going to pull you forward whether you resist or not. You have one foot strapped to the board and the other loose to help you stop. It’s best to grab on tight and go with the pull of the cable while still maintaining your balance. If you can’t do either of those then it’s time to step away from the whole thing and find something else to do.
