Snowboarding
There are two 300g tools that could make your freeriding adventures significantly safer, so why not use them? Here’s the how.
It’s always been a huge frustration for me that not more snowboarders and freeriders use ice axes, and that they feel it’s only for mountaineering, says freeride icon Xavier De Le Rue.
In episode four of Shred Hacks, De Le Rue demonstrates the correct use of ice axes: the 'classic way', hacking the blade point into hard pack or ice, or the 'powder way', burrowing the handle into deeper snow as an anchor.
Your ice axe is your seatbelt, your buoy, your margin of safety and really, without a margin of safety, there is no exploration
The ice axe can be your lifesaver in a whole list of sticky situations: as an option to back out from an impossible cliff or a dangerous face, securing yourself on sketchy traverses ( especially on the heel side for snowboarders), or getting in and out of your bindings when it’s too firm or too steep to do so without anything to hold on to and anchor yourself to.
Watch Shred Hacks Ep 4 to learn how to use ice axes while riding:
However, the main added safety net is provided by the use of ice axes when things turn out too icy or too steep in the middle of a face and you only have a split second before losing control and potentially rag-dolling hundreds of metres to an unpredictable fate.
Convinced by the added safety value provided by ice axes? So now the big questions are: 'How do you ride with two of those sharp, pokey, dangerous looking and feeling things?' and 'What happens in the event of a crash – won’t you get injured?' Watch the video in the player above to get Xavier De Le Rue’s answer to those questions.
See Xavier De Le Rue in some serious steeps making use of his ice axes:
If you liked this episode of Shred Hacks, watch this space every Wednesday for new episodes. So far, Xavier De Le Rue has taught us how to straight line, how to scope a line and how to splitboard, and there are 16 more freeride episodes on their way, followed by urban jibbing tips from the award-winning Pirate Movie Productions.
Watch the previous episodes of Shred Hacks here:
Shred Hacks Ep 1: How to straight line
Shred Hacks Ep 2: How to scope a line
Shred Hacks Ep 3: How to splitboard
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