How do you carve on a snowboard?

Question

I'm somewhat of a beginner on a snowboard, I can heel brake and heel turn fine but I cannot toe brake or toe turn. How do you do it?

Answer 1

You turn on your toe side by pressing on your heel of your front foot when you are on your toe edge. This will release the edge at the front of the board and the nose will swing down the hill. Once you get good at turns on both heel side and toe side, you can start linking turns together - heel side to toe side again and again all the way down the hill.

The way that we first learn to link turns is the "skidded" turn - which is draging the back of the edge while letting the front of the edge slip which allows the board to rotate and turn. In this kind of turn, you must wait for the board to pass the fall line (straight down the hill) before transitioning your weight to the opposite edge. These are skidded linked turns. and they make a wide "skidded" track in the snow.

Carving does not involve any skidding or the board edge sliding down the hill. Carving requires you to put more pressure on the edge which arcs the board so the entire edge is in contact with the snow. This cause the board to track along its natural turn radius and the board will leave a narrow line in the snow - the entire edge will track through this same line without skidding sideways.

As you are traveling on this one edge, the board will make a large radius turn and once you are about 45 degrees across the hill you will transition to the other edge (before the board is pointed down the hill!). Don't try this if you are skidding your turns as your downhill edge will dig in and you will tumble. This works in a carved turn because you are not skidding and you are traveling fast enough that when you transition to the other edge your weight puts enough pressure on the other edge to force it into the snow and arc it in the other direction - which starts your next turn.

The interesting thing about carving is that the turns don't slow you down - each turn carries the speed from the previous turn and without skidding there is very little to slow you down.

Good Luck

Answer 2

It sounds like you can benefit from taking a few lessons. It sounds like you've spent some time learning to ride on your heel edge and now the next step is to do the same on your toes the principle is exactly the same as riding on your heels except that your back is facing down hill. You'll probably want to bend your knees a tiny bit more than when you're riding on your heels but otherwise it's the same.

Before you do anything else you'll want to get comfortable turning on both edges before learning to link them and transition smoothly from one edge to the other. Linking turns is ussually the hardest part of learning to snowboard.

But take lessons first.

Answer 3

Make sure your bindings are positioned in the middle of the board. They're probably too close to the "heel" rail.
Trust me. ;-)

I might add, it's the leverage that's messed up. I'm not talking about the drag of the boot.
Leverage. Try experimenting with the binding position.