it occurs when a part of your board digs into whatever it is you are riding / sliding on, so suddenly that your whole body is instantly thrust into the floor / rail / air with the consequence of tremendous pain and significant shame following.

a necessary evil and one that haunts the deepest fears of every snowboarders inner mind and self doubt!

 

This might be the best description I've ever heard of catching an edge.

 

k thanx guys

 

Oh yeah. I'm still feeling a front edge catch from 4 days ago. My neck is still stiffer than a board lol. I was going pretty fast through some chopped up pow and caught my front edge and cartwheeled. Catch edge = bad. When you catch your edge going pretty fast it will be something you remember for a long time The upside is after my first really really hard hit, it was a very long time before I let it happen again. I've averaged one a season so far pushing myself to go faster and faster.

 

I've averaged one a season so far pushing myself to go faster and faster.

I wish I only caught one a season

 

so is they any way to prevent to, besides waxing, and letting the board slip?

 

My favorite is when your riding and you feel that something is about to go wrong,but instead you brain fart and then...SMACK!!Ragdoll..Starfish..Scorpion.And then the stares of people laughing at you.

 

My favorite is when your riding and you feel that something is about to go wrong,but instead you brain fart and then...SMACK!!Ragdoll..Starfish..Scorpion.And then the stares of people laughing at you.

exactly...

my lsat run this past saturday was so painful...bad bad...

i went stright down a blue area with very little toe slid.... looked left, saw a guy catching an edge and though "fcuk, that sucks..."

then next thign you know, "SMACK!!Ragdoll..Starfish..Scorpion"

i was on the ground for half an hr trying to catch my breath =[

 

ya i have noticed that if i am just going straight, i tend to catch a few edges, or come close to catching one

 

GOod advice snowolf, especially about the alignment of the shoulders.

 

if your not going really fast.. a way i counter is the second i feel an edge catch i jump.. doesnt always work. but if you do it quick enough youll be safe and straight

 

The best way to prevent edge catching on snow is to limit allowintg the board to slip and always riding on your edge.

Great advice that would have helped me my first time riding.

 

making damn sure the board has no side slip to it when you make the edge change.

side slip brings back painful memories

 

"Catching an edge" is when your downhill edge bites into the snow more or less perpendicular to your direction of motion. The manifesting result is usually a classy face or butt plant, complemented with a few cartwheels or somersaults if done at higher speeds. As a general rule, you tend to try harder and harder to avoid this the more times you've bloodied your nose, cracked your goggles, and have had serious bodily injury as a direct result of..."catching an edge".

 

definitely going to try to keep my shoulders aligned next weekend ...

i have done my share on landing on my behind this year (1st year), and have tried a number of ways to get down flats. some days i am successful, but some days i go home with a HUGE bruise on my tailbone (even with impact shorts!).

so what is the best way to stay on an edge on flats?

my coordination sucks, so if someone can explain all of this in detail for me ... greatly appreciated!

 

so what is the best way to stay on an edge on flats?

don't think. feel!

keep your toes up when heelsiding, and your shin on yer boots when toesiding.

(does this description suck balls or what?)

 

i've caught edges 10+ times on my new board on first day of riding, second day caught twice, the negative reinforcement of getting the wind knocked out of me, lightning shooting pain down my leg made me extra cautious

by the way, does edge catching have anything to do with riding a new board/bindings? i detuned the nose/tail but kept the effective edge the way it was from factory, do i need to detune like 1 deg base / 1 deg side to make it more forgiving? I rode a new neversummer sl with rome bindings.

I caught edges a lot on first few runs, almost exclusively on green slopes and flat straight ways...but on blue i was fine! i think i've de-evolved my skills, its embarassing to flip over on new gear compared to falling on rental gear:dunno:

 

I'm going to keep an eye on this thread...my board keeps catching random edges (or I'm not paying attention...one or the other) and then I always end up doing a flip or something...sometimes its not bad, as I find a way to roll onto my feet during the...rolling, so it doesn't hurt.

Other times, I'm stuck looking up at the sky and wondering why the back of my head hurts so much.

Is detuning a good idea?

come to think of it...dingozlife, I have that same problem on greens vs blue/blacks, but maybe its because we have to pay more attention?

 

I find that myself, the slower I am going the more likely I am to catch and edge, especially when trying to flat base a cat-walk with decent speed and slowing down. Still doesn't happen to often and is only painful when really moving (ie: not a green usually) but I feel your pain. I actually took the time yesterday to round off the edges hard on my beater board at the end of the effective edges to just see what happens. I'll get back to ya! Oh and don't be like me and bash your shoulder flat into the earth, a month rolling and it still hurts like a bitch. A week it took to get my hand above my shoulder and now I have full movement but learn from me, your shoulder is a precious piece of equipment.....

 

You will catch an edge when you are just starting to learn and then every once in a while as you get better, usually when you are not paying attention. However I do think a lot of people are starting off on advanced boards that are harder to ride. This will just extend the learning curve and increase how often you catch an edge...High-end boards are harder to ride at first...

 

yeah i was thinking that perhaps upgrading from rental to ns sl all-mountain type board was a big jump and i had to fine-tune some skills before adapting to the responsiveness, i had the board detuned nose/tail before my runs, then i went back after the first day to have my effective edges detuned, the shop person laughed at me and called me stupid, well not really but he said that i would want to keep the edges very sharp for carving and the reason i was catching was cuz i wasnt paying attention or im not keeping an edge pressed most of the time..

i've been browsing the other thread: www.snowboardingforum.com/tips-tricks-instructors/3575-edge-not-edge.html

im gonna try keeping toe-edge and counter-rotate my shoulders a bit to off-set going to the right (regular) on flat tracks..

but the positive note is that on steep hills u kinda have to keep on ur edges most of the time so catching is less frequent, but when it does occur, its gonna hurt! i hit my head on the ice!

 

Last season, my second time out, I caught a toe edge on the flats of a green run and proceeded to do my imitation of Superman. I did not land well. I researched on here what I did wrong and on my third time out I kept remembering all the good advice offered to others and had the best time. Everytime I got "too" copmfortable I remembered the tips offered here. Heed the advice offered here and enjoy your time on the mountain.

 

Here is a great depiction of the thread title.

YouTube - My famous snowboard crash

Looks like it was a pretty decent hit too.

 

ive done the same thing snowolf. i heard someone fall about 10 feet behind me, so i turned around to check it out, and sure enough i joined that nice young man with my own faceplant in the snow.

 

im glad to hear these stories, it gives me reassurance that even experienced riders slip up sometimes..

 

When you are experienced it happens less frequently but is usually much more painful. I haven't been riding that long but I pretty much smoke almost everyone on the mountain where I ride when it comes to going fast. When I catch an edge it lays me out for a few really hard . It will probably always happen to me as I progress and even as I get better and better. I just hope nobody is looking and I don't land on ice

 

An excercise in training yourself to really feel what the board is doing and learning very precise edge control is the 360 flat spin or "helicopter" this is where you ride down a gentle slope doing 360 spins and constantly making edge changes through the spin. Get to where you can do these well in both directions, and you will really develope a good feel for your board.

Does this exercise somewhat resemble "butters" or "Buttercups"?

 

Butters are when you apply a majority of your weight to one foot or the other while lifting the unweighted foot. This causes one end of your board to come off the ground while you ride on the other end.

When I fall I usually just laugh it off, it helps if you have friends with you to joke around with. I've recently been working on buttering on my nose. The most difficult part is knowing how high your tail is off the snow. When I do it, I'm looking forward to see where I'm going, so I really can't see if my tail is high off the ground, so I always think I can make it look better by leaning farther forward to bring the tail up higher. Needless to say, there was a bunch of times last night when I just tumbled over the tip of my board into a painless (fortunately), hands first slide.

 

If you are pushing yourself you will fall.

If you don't fall, on a regular basis, your staying way too far inside your comfort zone. Fredrick Douglas said it best, "No stuggle, no progress." If short, if you don't fall, your doing something wrong.

 

And then there is this kind of catching an edge (of a rail).

 

ouch, i feel his pain just watching that video

 

Im happy to be a live ! all SB seasson was fine till last week, exact like you just said ! i was doing rails and boxes ! and catch the edge and crack several ribs and wipeplash neck so (everything go and circles around me )i know now at we can do the edges little more rounded ... my question is from where to where so I can be able to ride all over the resort and rails and boxes too...??? becouse if i rounded the all board edges i can not turn ... thanks .

 

Detuning the tip and tail and proper edge beveling will reduce your chances of catching an edge. Way too many people with their default factory tune.