Snowboarding - bombing a hill

From ArticleWorld

Bombing a hill is a specialist turn in Snowboarding, and means to go straight down the hill, without turning or carving. Like all extreme sports, snowboarding is skill-based, and learning a trick like this can make the sport more competitive and exciting.

Guidelines

Get comfortable on your board, and strap yourself in. Take a deep breath, and set off down the hill. Keep your eyes on the bottom, and essentially ‘point’ yourself towards it, like a dog with a scent.

Make sure that you are low to the ground, and don’t turn. Keep your knees bent, as they ‘absorb’ the bumps in the surface of the snow, which might otherwise throw you off course.

As you come to the end of the run, try and slow down: if you hit the bottom of the hill straight on, at speed, you are going to land heavily.

Hints

Try to keep a happy medium between being low enough to the ground to keep your momentum, and not so low that you lose your balance.

Clear the way. You must have a free run from bottom to top. Make sure that no-one will step in your path when you are going at speed, as it could be nasty for both of you.

The earlier you get to the hill, the less lumps and bumps there will be in the snow. There will have been fewer ‘paths’ made in the snow, and so less chance of the board sliding to the side. Also, the earlier you are, the fewer people there will be (see previous paragraph for details). Above all, be sure that you know what you are doing. Sounds obvious, but bombing a hill can be dangerous stuff. Boards can quickly gather speed, and unless you have a completely smooth, unpopulated hill, you are going to have to use your skills to prevent a crash. So you’d better be good.