A sick kid couldn’t keep Linda Hamblin from taking her first snowboarding lesson. A blizzard certainly wasn’t going to stop her.

    The 42-year-old Tustin Ranch resident is a veteran skier who wanted to try snowboarding with son Michael. But when the youngster turned up sick, he stayed behind with Aunt Lucy while Linda kept her scheduled group lesson at Snow Summit. Even as the second of three late February storm systems pelted her and the other six aspiring riders in the group with an onslaught of snow.

    By the time the two-hour lesson was over, several inches of white stuff had piled onto the slopes, making for conditions that challenge even better riders, let alone raw first-timers. Everyone had learned about the falling leaf and goofy versus regular, and some riders, like Linda, were actually fluttering successfully down beginner slopes while all got a taste of sliding on snow.

    Snowboarding for the first timer begins with a trip through the sign up and rental process, and don’t be intimidated by the very thought. “The whole rental process was awesome,” she says. “There were no lines and it was fast (on a Friday). They helped me put on my boots and stuff.” The price was right too; just $59 (*$69 peak rates) for two-hour lesson and beginner lift ticket, with $18 for snowboard rental.

    Out on the snow, instructor Matt Stroud starts each lesson with the very basics. Like safety. Etiquette. Basic board terms, like its bottom (deck) and high-back on the bindings. Speaking of which, how to put them on, which no one in this group of absolute first-timers has ever done before. Even how to spin around, stand on or “skate to glide” across the slopes.

    “There are two ways to fall,” Stroud tells the group. “If you’re falling forward, turn the head left or right. Going backward, tuck the head into your chest. Then there’s the emergency stop, where you kick the board out and spread eagle onto the snow.”

    Fortunately in all this driving snow, emergency stops are never needed. Riders do discover whether they’re goofy or regular...as in footed, which means right or left foot forward on the board, respectively. Before long they’re taking the first tentative slides, with one foot in the binding and the other just resting on the board.

    Linda puts her head down and carefully, slowly, stars to slide across the run, goes a few feet actually, then the board slides out from under her. “Don’t look down,” Stroud tells her. “There’s nothing to see there. Look across the slopes.”

    Now the group is learning how to slide straight down the hill, now with both feet in the bindings. Then its on to sliding across the slope. Stroud instructs the class to assume their athletic positions with weight spread evenly on both feet, then to lean into the direction they want to go.

    “Your weight should be spread between your feet about 60-40% in favor of the direction you’re going,” Stroud says. On her second or third try Linda actually comes to a stop by carving an edge, which is the next step in the progression, eliciting Stroud’s praise.

    Linking these downhill descents consecutively, first right then left and so on, constitutes the famous “falling leaf,” snowboarding’s version of snow plowing. Most in the class manage the initial slide but only Linda and a couple others actually resemble falling leaves. The others mostly just resemble the falling part, though all are at least sliding a few feet by the time it’s 4 p.m. and class is dismissed.

    The class never got on the chairlift (on busy days the moving carpet serves as uphill transportation), not that unusual, Stroud says, since most pupils save for Linda have never ridden a chair. Snow Summit, incidentally, offers the GuaranSki or GuaranRide program, four hours of instruction (two in the morning, two in the afternoon) that assures each participant will ride the beginner chairs by the end of the day, or get free lessons and lifts tickets till they can. Lesson and lifts cost $64, $74 peak periods.

    “I got a really good foundation and the basic skills to work on,” Linda said. “A lesson for the first timer gets you on the board and you learn how to ride the board. It got me off and running. Now it’s up to us to go out and work on our own.”

    To prove the point, she was out on the slopes the next day with her eight-year-old nephew, beginning with a few trips down the beginner area—even the steeper parts—before adventurously heading to the top of the mountain.

    “We went down Summit Run a couple times,” Linda said. Next up, Westridge!

    Call Snow Summit at (909) 866-5766.