I concur with Simon Crump that Snowboarding is more difficult to pick up than Ski at first, but it is an easier journey to intermediate and advanced levels.

Coming from personal experience however, your progression as a newbie is heavily depended on the competence of your coach and your determination.

I tried snowboarding a few times when I was in high school. I made the mistake of not getting any lessons to begin my journey. It was a completely painful and demoralizing experience -- to the extent that I didn't want to go to the snow anymore.

But I did go back to the snow and this time I stayed on the mountain for a few days and spent money on lessons -- and it made a world of difference.

Learning in a beginner group is much more fun than face planting all by yourself. Seeing how other people struggle the same way as I did gave me a lot of confidence and reason to keep trying. A good coach will be able to give you many easy-to-remember rules that can get you on your heel/toe edge for a reasonable duration at the end of a two-hour lesson.

In my case, I was just able to do toe-side C turns at the end of my first lesson. (Snowboarding newbie progression: Grooming -> Falling leaves -> J turn -> C turn -> repeat all of these steps for the other edge -> S turn -> graduation!) Then I spent the remaining day going down the beginner slope for 40-50 times, skipping lunch and toilet entirely because I was so excited of my progression! (lunch time is the best because the slope is not crowded and the lift queue is short). By the end of the day I was able to do S turns and is almost able to go down an entire slope without stacking! (I have never been good at any sports, was quite chubby and never learned to skateboard, just FYI)

Here are a few tips that I have learned:

1. Wear knee pads and tail savers. They cost $20 and they are the best bang for buck for a beginner boarder. You will stack A LOT and these cushions will keep your motivation level up. (I learned this the hard way)

2. Don't sit on the ground and pity yourself after a stack. It will not improve your skill, only eats away your confidence. Get back on your feet right away: don't even wait for the board to stop, punch the ground and stand back up!

3. Pick a favorite edge! You will be better at either Heel side or Toe side at the beginning. Once you found your better edge, keep practicing that edge and switch only when you are tired from those muscle groups. Don't stress if you can go down the entire beginner run with your toe side yet you can't even do falling leaves on your heels. Mastering one edge will significantly boost your confidence because just like most people mentioned, once you got the hang of snowboarding you can progress extremely quickly.

4. Be brave. Snowboarding is something that benefits with a relaxed posture and a forward center of gravity. Most beginners are very nervous and very tense - this will cause you to stack a lot more because you are not leaving any rooms for the board to correct itself once the edge catches an obstacle. Leaning forward will lighten the load on your back (power) leg, which makes turning much easier. However this requires a lot of faith as it conflicts with your natural instinct (staying away from the danger - i.e. lean backward & put most of the weight on your back leg). Once you learned to lean forward on a board, your confidence and skill level will snowball.

5. Ditch your friends. If you are serious about learning snowboarding in the shortest amount of time, I recommend you to train alone and focus on your current skill set - until you have hit a plateau and needs more coaching and encouragement. The reason behind this is that you can rarely find a person with similar skill level as you on a slope - especially during rapid progression at the beginning. Most the time if you are with friends, it's either them waiting for you or vice versa. It either waste a lot of your time and interrupts your flow of progression or it makes you feel frustrated / being a burden when you keep stacking in front of your better skilled friends. A better way is to improve your skills in a short time through dedication and repetition, once your level is up to others you can always join them then.

6. Watch the pros. You may come across decent skilled boarders on the beginner slope. Pay attention to their postures, lines and center of gravity. Although some may have incorrect techniques, the one whose movements are aesthetically pleasing is normally employing the correct techniques. I find it very beneficial and motivating to analyze their movements when you are stuck on a chairlift.

Enjoy the view and have a good time on the mountain! If you stuck on a particular technique, just think that there are a whole mountain of people who have been through this. There are boarders that are fat, thin, tall and short, all of them able to carve beautiful S on the white slope. The pain and frustration is just part of the initiation to join the club. If everyone else can do it, so can you!

As others have said, it typically takes 2–3 days to learn to link turns down a green (easy) or blue (moderate) run. After that, the learning curve is usually quite quick. The first couple days can be frustrating and painful. A lot of people unfortunately give up before they get to linking turns.

I highly recommend wearing a bunch of protective gear while you’re learning, including butt pad, knee pads, elbow pads, and especially, wrist guards like skateboarders use. When you’re learning, you’ll catch an edge and go down fast. The natural inclination is to put out your hands to break the fall. And too often for beginners, that can result in a broken wrist or thumb. Wear wrist guards - you’ll thank me later. And of course wear a helmet.

There are some freaks who pick up snowboarding right away. A friend of mine is one such freak. He is a professional mountain biker. He competes in events like the Red Bull Rampage and urban downhills. He was a gymnast as teenager. He is an excellent skier, who could be a professional free ride skier if he focused on it.

Last winter, after there hadn’t been fresh snow at Whistler for a week, he decided he’d learn to snowboard. He borrowed equipment and went out on the hill by himself. No lessons, no nothing. I told him I’d meet him after a couple hours. When I met him, he said, “This snowboarding is so easy. It’s trivial”. He was carving both heel and toe side. Real carves, not slid turns. Carves like most snowboarders can’t do until they’ve been snowboarding a couple years. He was doing surface 360s and Ollie 180s. He was hitting small jumps and doing grabs. I was impressed. He can be a little cocky, so I took him down a moguled black run, one which reveals flaws in technique very quickly. I thought I’d see him on him on his butt. But no, he did great, no falls. It was his first day on a board. Blown away.

This is the classic progression that I would teach, the steps are all in order. What I have left out is equipment terminology which you can ask from whoever you rent your kit off, that said I would advise you to grab a helmet and wrist guards.

Stance
Before strapping on a snowboard figure out if you are regular or goofy stance. There is no easy technique that I can type out for letting you know which one you are, but I used to go behind my students and (with their board off) give them a little shove. In surprise they naturally move a foot forward to support themselves and that is usually the back foot on a board. Obviously now you know this it wont surprise you and takes away from the effectiveness.

Anyhow, now to the stance: without the board on stand in a kind of quarter squat, feet shoulder width apart. Keep both hands slightly out to the side and your shoulders in line with your feet. Look over the the shoulder that is opposite to your back foot. You should kind of feel like a cowboy, that is your riding stance.

Skating
Start by strapping in your front foot, but keep your back foot out. Use your back foot to push off and skate around. Get used to the feeling because this is how you get on and off lifts. Decide whether you like to skate with your free foot in front or behind the board, or if you even have any preference at all.

Sliding
Do not jump straight on a lift, instead you should find a gentle slope to practice on that you will hike back up after each exercise. I like this purity and would recommend hiking over say using the magic carpet, which takes less effort, but is also slower and usually quite crowded.

In any case, to slide you should start with your board perpendicular to the fall of the slope, with your body facing to the bottom of the mountain. Just like a car's gas pedal, the more you push down the faster you will go. So, start with toes up and then gradually drop them until you start sliding. This is called a heel slide and its how you stop a snowboard. as you get more comfortable try varying the speed up. Remember to keep your stance.

Now switch and face up the hill. apply the same principles in reverse. Resist the temptation to lean over and touch the ground - keep your stance. This is a toe slide and it is the other way you will stop the board.

Torsional flex
After being confident with your slides you should have a good feel for how the board moves in response to your feet. Take a seat and strap-in, but do not stand up. Lift your board a little off the ground and, instead of pointing both toes the same direction like in a slide, point one set of toes down and pull the others up. You should feel the board twist in the middle. This is called torsional flex and it is how you eventually engage turns. Turning being important, you should spend a bit of time switching twisting directions and feeling how easy or difficult it is to twist. When you do this actually going down hill the board should naturally turn towards whichever foot you push down.

Falling leaf
Now you know what torsional flex is, it is time to use it. Get into your stance and start slowly sliding on your heal edge just how you were sliding down earlier. When you are balanced and ready give your board a little flex and hold it until you feel the board spin so that it points diagonally down the fall line. Stop flexing well before you point straight down the hill and feel yourself go diagonally across the fall line. Once you have gone a short distance switch the way you flexed the board so that it spins the other way and you start moving in the opposite diagonal direction.

This is called falling leaf because you should be like a leaf when it floats in the air, picking up speed as is drops diagonally and the slowing before changing direction and again picking up speed. Repeat this on your heels until you are comfortable and then switch to toe-side and repeat until you are comfy on your toe-side too.

J turns
First make sure you have a decent amount of space to your heel side, because you may end up travelling a fair bit sideways here. If you are ever running out of room just falling leaf it back to where you have more space.

Now its time to learn how to stop as you would when you eventually go down a run. You are going to start by pointing your nose straight down the hill and after a short while or as soon as you feel yourself getting too fast you are going to engage the torsional flex. With your weight mostly on the front foot engage a heel side turn by lifting your front foot's toes and keeping your back foot flat. The board should turn and you should sit back into the turn a little to help it along. As the board turns you should naturally feel like lifting your back foots toes to remove the torsional flex, go with this feeling.

Eventually the board should be perpendicular to the fall line and you should be back to doing a heel slide. Dig in the heel a bit to completely stop. This is called a J turn because thats the pattern you should make in the snow. Rinse and repeat until you run out of room or reach the bottom. As always once you are comfortable with heel side turns switch up and do toe sides.

C turns
Instead of starting by pointing the nose downhill, you start your turn from your toe-side edge. So with your toe side edge dug into the mountain introduce a little flex by lifting the toes on the lead foot. the nose should start to point down hill and you should lose your toe edge naturally. Now you are in the same spot as the J turn and you can finish it off the same way.Once again when you are comfortable switch up sides and repeat.

Some people can get this naturally and it wont seem like a big deal, others struggle a bit. The reason this exercise can be tough for some is that you are switching edges and this can lead to people switching too early or late in the turn. What happens then is called "catching an edge" and you can find yourself face (or ass) first in the snow.

Linking turns
Now its time to link all this together. Start with a C turn but instead of coming to a stop just reverse your flex and do the opposite side C turn. In other words alternate between heel side and toe side C turns. You may find yourself going a bit fast for your liking, if this happens just remember you can always slow down (or stop) by digging in a bit - just like how you did a J turn.

In actual fact going a bit faster is usually a good thing - provided you are in control. The reason being is that you are not making such complete C's which are technically harder than to do a less complete turn. This is not perfect but hopefully it illustrates what I mean:

The left line is easier and requires less activity than the right.

Lift etiquette
Now you are ready to go your first beginner run. Before you get on the lift though go back to skating for just a bit. This time see if you can get a bit of speed up and then use the momentum to slide by placing your free foot just inside of its binding. Try to turn a bit to see what it feels like with your foot out of the binding. This is effectively what you will experience coming off the lift.

When you get to the lift, skate up to the hop on point and let the lifty know its your first time. Let the chair come to you and take a seat when it does. If you are riding solo remember to drop the bar down. Enjoy the view from the lift and maybe have a chat with whoever is riding with you, but also take the time to check out other riders. Do they have their stance right or is their weight on the back foot? Is their body twisted to look down hill or are they doing the right thing and looking over their shoulder instead?

When you get near the top prepare yourself for getting off. Lift the bar when you are about five seconds away from disembarking or let someone else handle it for you if they are riding with you. Give your body a little twist so the nose of your board is pointing the right way. Feel the ground take to your board and get your free foot in position, just inside its binding. Now make sure you keep a good stance and do not look down or else you could over balance and your board might fling out. Let the momentum of the lift and slope carry you away. If that does not happen do not panic and just use the lift to push yourself off a little. Try to point your board to a nice flat bit to naturally take the speed off.

Thats about it!
I am happy to go into more detail if you wanted to learn about say carving or anything else, but this is the basics to get you making turns.

Enjoy!

For context, I've taught full-time for one season and part-time for five. Many other instructors will have worked with more students than I have, but my several hundred beginners over the years provide enough of a sample that I think most instructors would generally agree with the below.

I'm not sure how one measures how hard it is to learn to snowboard. Is it harder than learning to use an iPhone? Yes. Is it easier than learning organic chemistry? Yes (for most people, anyway). Since "hard" is vague, I'll address time to learn and factors that influence learning.

Time

• I've seen 2-3 people out of several hundred who strapped the board on and intuitively knew how to snowboard immediately
  
• On the flip side, I've seen another 2-3 who just did not ever "get it," even if I worked with them, hands-on, for three days. Never got up off the ground on their own, never slid on their heel edge for more than a few feet without falling/sitting down.
• There is, of course, a bell curve between the really speedy learners and the ones who never get it. The majority of new snowboarders will feel fairly comfortable turning on easier runs within 2-3 days. People who just go out and ride without a lesson will immediately start trying to turn on a real run, but I'd wager that it actually takes them an additional day or two to get to the "comfortable" stage. There's something to be said for learning the basic movements first.
• Once you get past the initial 'learning to turn' stage, there's also a pretty wide variation on how long it takes to be able to ride most of the mountain. Some folks might stay on greens forever, and others might be comfortable on black runs within 5 days.

The next section is what drives the differences in the above time variations.

Key factors that influence learning

• Internal vs. external motivation: this is probably at least 50% of the equation. If you really want to learn to snowboard, it will be easier to do. If, on the other hand, you've signed up for a lesson because your boyfriend really wanted you to try it or because that's what your friend wanted to do, but deep down you're not really sure you want to learn, then it will be much harder.
• Fitness level: Some people are in better shape than others, and this matters. Both cardiovascular fitness and strength are important.
• Experience with relevant sports: There are no hard and fast rules here, but I've noticed that gymnasts and people with strong experience in board sports seem to pick up snowboarding faster than others. All of my exceptionally fast learners had been gymnasts growing up. There's something to be said for having strong body awareness and control, and also for understanding the basic movements of riding any kind of board (skateboard, wakeboard, etc).

There are certainly other factors, but I've found these to have the greatest effect on pace of learning. And I suspect they're also closely tied to whether these individuals would say learning to snowboard is "hard."

Assuming you're not attached to either one as being more cool than the other, and having taught both, the biggest factor is your attitude, fitness and age.

Snowboarders fall a lot when learning, and will have a lot of severe falls over their involvement in the sport. Statistically, snowboarding results in more frequent and more severe injuries than skiing.

You have to be physically and mentally ok with crashing. If you're over 35, and/or have previous back, neck, shoulder, or wrist injuries, you may prefer skiing.

Snowboarding also requires greater overall fitness and range of motion. If you're significantly overweight and/or have difficulty getting up from lying on your back, forget it.

If you have knee issues, but are ok with the greater physicality of snowboarding, it may be a better choice than skiing, as you get two feet on one slippery thing, instead of one each.

As to which is easier to learn or master, I don't agree that it's one or the other. The basics of either can be learned in a day, but mastery takes time and/or lots of lessons. Most practitioners of either sport are masters only in their minds.

If you're still not sure, there's nothing against trying and doing both. I ski, snowboard and telemark ski. Each sport helps you get better at the others.

What I've noticed more than anything is that a lot of beginners don't learn to use the board's sidecut to turn for far too long (i.e., they learn to slide through a turn rather than carve). It's a lot easier to slide, but you can develop bad habits that take a long time to correct - bad things like keeping your weight on your back foot, twisting your body away from your direction of travel, holding your arms like \ _ / as opposed to /_\. You can't do these things when you carve your turns, so, while it's a bit more painful, I recommend learning to carve as soon as you're comfortable on the board.

The reason that snowboards (and skis) have a curved sidecut is to help you turn. In fact, when you get it right, the board will do almost all of the work of turning by itself...you just shift your weight to initiate the process. It's one of the scariest things to do when you're learning because it will feel like the board has a mind of its own. Your challenge is to learn how to work with that as opposed to fighting it.

So, prepare yourself for bumps, bruises, exhaustion etc., and find a wide, nicely groomed green/blue without too much traffic. You'll need to have some speed, so don't pick a flat green. Start one turn at a time. Get going straight, let a bit of speed build up and then literally just lean onto your toe edge while lifting your heels. The board will grip the snow and snap you into a turn. It will feel like you're supposed to fall, and you probably will. Get up and try the same thing on your heel edge, this time leaning onto your heel edge while lifting your toes (a bit harder to get the same angle/feeling, but the concept is the same). Do this over and over until you can link your turns. Do it for a whole day, and it's probably best to be by yourself.

The important thing to understand is that the g-forces you're feeling are exactly what carving a turn should feel like. When the board flexes into the turn, it grips the snow on the edge and the sidecut makes you turn - really fast. The learning process is all about teaching your body to understand how to position itself to handle those forces and eventually use them to your advantage.

Pay attention to the sound your board makes when you turn like this. It should be a deeper and crisper sound than when you slide your turns. And notice how it's impossible to complete carved turns successfully without keeping your weight evenly distributed, keeping your arms in and aligning your shoulders with your board. By learning to carve right away, you'll prevent yourself from learning a lot of bad habits, and you'll be faster.

This answer is based solely on my experience/preference, and although is disagrees with the only other posted answer, I might be wrong. However, I have skied for 6-7 years reaching pre-instructor level and then switched to snowboarding and did the same.

In my opinion, snowboarding is easier to learn as the basics of stopping and curving are fairly easy to grasp. With skiing, you first start by doing the "snow plow" for turning and stopping, and then switch to parallel.

That being said, once you learn how to properly turn and stop, mastering skiing is fairly easy as it involves mainly practicing to keep your knees together and doing everything at greater speeds. Mastering snowboarding, however, requires you to learn advanced riding techniques such as park and powder, and this takes a lot of trial-and-error, especially park.

Skiing allows you to attain greater speeds, but snowboarding allows you more freedom as everything is based on switching your weight at the right time. For me, there is no better feeling than setting some music to ride to, and then switch weight and do curves in the rhythm of the music. That's something that's much more difficult to do in skiing.

As far as potential injuries are concerned, you are probably more likely to get injured snowboarding by landing on your wrist and spraining it, or falling hard and hurting your back if the snowboard stops the rotation of your body. However, ski injuries are probably more dangerous, especially torn knee ligaments (which rarely ever happens snlwboarding).

Finally, the comfort feeling. When snowboarding, you will most likely be sitting or kneeling on snow for quite some time, while that doesn't happen on skis. Also, going on various ski lifts requires you to detach your snowboard, which is something skiers don't need to do. Also, if you get stuck on a flat part, you don't have sticks to help you move forward, and good luck jumping with your board for an extended period of time :)

Summing up, skiing definitely seems like the better alternative for a newcomer, but I'd still go with snowboarding as I'm the type of person that doesn't care about extra comfort when comparing the amount of freedom riding a board gives you over skiing. Then again, you might be different and might want to pick skiing :)

Whatever you choose, good luck and have fun! :)

Unlikely.

As Simon and Sibylle have said, the two are very different movements. Sure, you’ll know about fall line and snow, and that will help you once you learn to link turns. But otherwise, there is disappointingly little crossover.

I highly advise taking lessons. The first day or two can be very tough. You will fall a lot as you learn. I also recommend a helmet (obviously) and wrist guards, as the most common injury in snowboarding is breaking a hand or wrist from sticking out your hands as you fall, particularly beginners.

I skied for 20 years and was a black diamond skier, and it took me 2 days to learn to link turns. After that, you will progress quickly.

Of course, there are exceptions. A good friend of mine who lives in Whistler is a professional mountain biker. He competes in the Red Bull Rampage and other extreme, freeride events. He is a very strong skier, and could be professional at that if he committed to it. He was a gymnast as a kid, and goes to the gym nearly every day.

At the start of this season, during a period when there wasn’t a lot of fresh snow and the skiing was mostly groomers, he decided he would learn to snowboard. He was a never ever (what we call those who are first time beginners).

He borrowed a board and boots and went out on the hill without any lessons. I met up with him a couple hours after he started. He was already carving both heelside and toeside — real carving, not sliding his turn, carving like few snowboarders can do even after a year or two. He was riding both regular and switch. He was doing ollie 180s and surface 360s. He was hitting little jumps and lips, and even doing grabs.

I took him down a decent intermediate run and it didn’t faze him at all. So I led him to Jimmy’s Joker, a moguled expert run, figuring, ok, this one will get him. But it didn’t. He made it through just fine and no falls. Mind blown.

He is an athletic prodigy. It was impressive and humbling — some people are just at a completely different level athletically than the rest of us.

1. be ready to fall
2. fall on your elbows, not hands
3. when you do fall, just keep getting back up, i promise you’ll fall less in the future
4. WEAR A HELMET. IM SERIOUS. THE FASHIONABLE HAT IS NOT WORTH THE BRAIN DAMAGE.
5. wear a small backpack with water, a small first aid kit, snacks (granola bar, fruit ect.), and other personal items. Not necessary but it sucks when you feel light-headed or thirsty on the mountain. Put electronics and money in plastic bags to prevent it getting wet
6. keep an extra pair of warm and comfy clothes in the car for when you're done. nobody likes driving back home with cold wet toes.
7. i dont suggest wearing headphones on the mountain (although i do. do as i say not as i do). if you do, have only one earbud in, or make sure you can hear things outside the headphones. being able to hear an out of control skier or boarder scream “WATCH OUT” can save your skin.
8. be verbal if you have to. if someone is gonna cut you off or you don't have time to turn, should left or right, depending upon the side of them you're on. this can prevent soo many collisions.
9. in terms of a face guard, make sure yours is breathable. a thick thermal one isnt always necesary, and can make it harder to breathe. I personally use a bandana but they get wet and freeze because of moisture from your breath, but theyre cheap and breathable. If its not too cold go with that.
10. sunscreen on your cheeks is probably a good idea. uv rays reflect off the snow, even if its not sunny.
11. Go with a friend! Buddy system is very helpful in case one of you gets hurt. If they’re experienced they can help you with form as well.

These are just small tips from my experience. have fun!

Snowboarders hate ice and hard pack. The softer the better. With a base elevation of 8000 ft, it snows in Kirkwood when its raining at most other resorts. Of all Tahoe resorts, Kirkwood gets the most and deepest powder. I'd vote Kirkwood. It has the lowest skier/snowboarders per acre, the most varied terrain and never, never any lines. However, if you want to go to a doggie boutique and eat sushi apre ski, then Kirkwood is not the place for you. Dining choices are limited to "Bub's" and Monte Wolf's - indifferent ski-mountain fare. Kirkwood is the easiest drive from the south bay - up 580, 10 miles 5 North and then backcountry on 88. Avoids the I80 madness.

Mt. Rose and Diamond Peak- both on the Northeast shore of the lake, and Homewood- on the West shore.

If you are a developing rider, you want a sequestered, non-congested area wherein you can experiment, learn, and have fun without being intimidated by expert riders that are sharing space with you and riding significantly faster and more aggressively. All three of these resorts have great areas and lifts specifically for inexperienced riders.

These are also likely to be the most inexpensive tickets in Tahoe. That way, if you decide at 11a that perhaps this really isnt your calling and you'd like to retire to the lodge for cocktails and football for the rest of the day, you're not out $120.

These three resorts also represent the last of the "local/family" type resorts in Tahoe. The bigger ones have all undergone significant development to attain a more luxury resort feel.

If it's worth the extra expense to have direct access to great sushi, a Ritz-Carlton, or a village full of high-end shopping- consider Squaw, Northstar, or Heavenly. If you are looking for a "purists" experience- to get aggressive with your development as a rider and go all day, consider Alpine or Kirkwood.

Boreal would be another mountain that fits your criteria on the surface, but its location right off of I-80 and aggressive marketing means that they get absolutely overwhelmed by tourists, in terms of capacity- most of them beginners. It's like watching one million baby giraffes learn to walk- all at once.

If you are a beginner/approaching intermediate rider looking to have fun, but also develop your skills- Mt. Rose, Diamond Peak, and Homewood would be your best bet(s).

There is no fixed length of time that it takes to learn how to snowboard. Some people get it in a day or two and some people never get it, no matter how long they try. In between, there is a normal distribution of people with an average probably in the region of three to five days.

There are a large number of factors which impact how easy it is likely to be for you to pick up snowboarding, including:

• Age. There's no point denying it, young people pick up new skills faster.
• Strength and fitness. Snowboarding requires good core strength and stability and you will be spending the first few days constantly picking your sorry ass up out of the snow. You need to be quite fit to do this, or you will become exhausted before you make significant progress.
• Weight. Snowboarding requires good balance and quick reactions and the more weight you have to shift around the tougher it's going to be. There are more fat skiers than fat snowboarders because snowboarding is more difficult for people who are overweight, even if they are quite fit.
• Attitude to risk and fear. If you are timid and scared it's going to take you a lot longer to learn how to snowboard. If you are able to go for it, things will come much quicker. You will almost certainly be learning on a groomed slope and, as with skiing, on a groomed slope you need to commit your weight further downhill than seems intuitive. When going downhill on a mountain bike you get your weight over the back wheel to stay in control - replicate this on a board or skis and you'll be hopelessly out of control. Committing yourself downhill in this way requires confidence.
• Attitude to pain. Falling over all the time hurts and you will collect some bruises while learning. If you can smile through this you have an advantage because, if the fear of falling over again leads you to be over-cautious, you can be sure the next fall will be sooner rather than later.
• Familiarity with snow and/or board sports. Being able to ski gives you something of an advantage because you will understand about the different types of snow and the amount of grip on offer, but the mechanics of skiing and snowboarding are very different. Likewise, previous aptitude in the sphere of skateboarding or surfing will set you up well for snowboarding, but the difference here is that you are firmly fastened to your board in a way that surfers and skateboarders are not.

You must also define what it means to be able to snowboard. Most people can learn how to slipslide down the hill on their first day but stylish snowboarding is all about linking together nice, elegant, carved turns. You should be linking together a decent series of scruffy turns after a few days but an effortless rhythm is going to take longer to achieve. And then you want to learn how to ride switch (with your least favored foot forward) and make neat transitions between switch and regular. Very few adults are going to get that far in their first week.

There aren’t many skiers who used to snowboard, but there are plenty of snowboarders who used to ski.

This is the one arguement I always use to shut my skier friends down. I used to say “There aren’t any skiers who used to snowboard, but there are plenty of snowboarders who used to be skiers.” Over the years, I’ve had to modify it by adding a qualifier since there are very few absolutes in life.

Ultimately, It depends on who you ask.

I would argue that snowboarding is far superior, but several of my skier friends will enthusiastically disagree.

To be totally honest, if you tally-up the pluses for each, it’s a wash. They each excell at different things.

• Skiers can more easily slide across flat ground, but snowboarders can more easily walk down stairs in their (more comfortable) boots.
• Skiers can go faster on groomers, but snowboarders float better in pow.
• Skiers have more grip on groomers, but snowboarders can do some basic rail tricks and butters that skiers can’t.

In the end, it’s really an exercise in futility. They’re both fun. Try each one to see which you like better. Or do both. It’s really up to you to decide.

Note: I have edited this answer based on the comment below this. good points made and there are nuances I blew over that deserve to be mentioned :).

Original answer: They certainly can. [ETA: however, there are reasons why you may want to start with a “gentler” board].

Original Comment: Generally speaking, beginner boards are made to be affordable so that new devotees can pick it up without spending a lot.

[ETA: we also probably want to explain what we mean by a “beginner” board. They do also have a bit of a softer flex so that as you are developing skills, that extra flex will be a little more forgiving than a stiffer and more pronounced flex of a more advanced leaning board.]

Original comment: Getting on a pro board doesn’t affect that at all… actually, I’ll add a caveat to that. Pro boards have a bit of a different flex pattern that for intermediate and better riders will be sheer pleasure but may feel a little more stop and go with a brand new rider. Still, three or four days in and a pro board is going to feel great :).

[ETA: I should probably say that this was *my* experience. To be more specific, my first board was a Burton Air 6.1, which was not a “beginner” board but was also not considered a pro model. It was a comfortable board to learn on at the time for me (1993). When I later rode a Burton Kelly Air, I was expecting more from it and I didn’t really notice much difference. As Jeremy commented below, there’s a variation and had I rode a Kelly Air first and then rode the general Air 6.1 or Air 6.6, I probably would have noticed the difference.

Original comment: Also, generally speaking, you are paying for brand name and marketing of someone’s name with a pro board [ETA: I still believe this but it’s an overstatement]. That may appeal to you or not but I promise, for most riders the same grade of board without the custom graphics and famous rider's name is going to be as awesome to ride and you will save some money by bypassing the prestige premium.

ETA: see my comment above about the Air 6.1 / 6.6 vs. the Kelly Air. It’s a good bet had I tried them in a different order, I would have noticed the different flex pattern earlier in my learning curve. The Kelly Air didn’t feel different to me later in my progression because I’d already developed the skill to better utilize it. Point being, my initial answer was a little flip. I still think that a pro board for a beginner is not a deal-breaker but my answer was colored by my own experience. As in all things, YMMV :).

At Heavenly, I really like:

• Ski Ways Glades
• Dipper Woods

They both offer a traverse above so you can drop in from many different spots to choose your own adventure. With Ski Ways Glades you can veer right and stay in the woods along the run for quite a long time.

I do work for Northstar (I don't board), however the key things to think about are not just the resort but the instructor as well.

Establish your goals - You've done a good job of setting your expectation, but you do have a split goal at the top. Being able to board the whole mountain is a great objective. I really enjoy watching boarders rip it up, rather than hit the steeps and just scrape (e.g. falling leaf) their way down.

If you're interested in shredding the park, that's also good the skills you develop in working the whole mountain will be useful as well. There are a host of skills that are park specific that you will need to learn and develop.

Connect with your instructor - One you have your goals, really be an active part in finding a qualified instructor who understands what you want and how to bring that to a lesson. To get the best lesson get a recommendation from a friend if they've had a lesson, or when you talk with the ski school make sure that the instructor is a certified instructor ideally level 2 or ideally a level 3.

Mountains -
Northstar is really my favorite teaching resort, not just as an employee but also it has a great variety of terrain to learn on. From the progression parks, to a lot of pitches with consistent pitch to learn and reinforce your skills on as you advance your expertise. The Burton Academy at Northstar has some really talented instructors who love the sport and sharing their love with others.

Thanks for the A2A.

There aren’t really many places that have snow that are actually closer to drive to than Kirkwood or Sierra-at-Tahoe or Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe (Dodge Ridge is roughly 15 mins closer). There are a lot a couple of snowmobile area and trailheads that might have enough steepness… but you would get like make 5 second of sliding and then you will have to hike back up. Now I have spent entire days hiking up… either during the summer at Mt. Hood

or backcountry

and I can tell you that “earning your turns” by hiking take a fair amount of fitness and stamina to do.

Personally, I highly recommend you take a learn-to-ride snowboard lesson at say Kirkwood or Northstar. There are a LOT of bad habits you can pick up teaching yourself to snowboard - ideally you never learn the crutch of falling leaf and instead learn how to do garlands (everyone who I know how learned via falling leaf has a tendency to be held back by it, even at the expert level. It is their safety blanket/thumb sucking that they fall back to… and at very steep terrain, it is the third worse way to go down a slope - the second worse being sliding down on your butt and the worse is sliding head first on your face).

I hope this helps.

I was an avid freestyle skier as a teen but it was when I was a young adult in my early 20,s that I first saw a snowboarder. I was riding the t-bar lift at Sunshine Village on a heavy snow day litter powder when I see someone duck under a rope to hit a stash of virgin powder alongside the lift track ,behaviour that was not quite inline with the rules but not something g I hadn't done myself in search of the elusive (untracked powder). As the guy got closer I could see he wasnt skiing but yet his almost effortless carved had me awestruck I strained my neck 180° so I could watch his entire run.
What was this new thing I thought and it was only by staying g on that run was I able to catch up to a gentleman by the name of Niel Daffern R.I.P we went on to become good friends and we road tripped all over Western Canada and the Upper West United states on our snowboard adventures .
Ok to date thT period of my life it would have been about 1985 snowboards had convex base with a metal skegg(fin) at the back in the middle it had two metal fins at the back outside edges a swallow tail with a rope handle from.the nose ,some people might recognize it as the original Burton Backhill ,and to make that board worse ult had no high back bindings just a plastic base with click in straps that you could kind of tighten and I quickly learned old sorrel snowboits with a ski boot liner in them were much better than high king boots with snow gaiters.
That's the board I learned on at the mountain in BC that was almost 5 hours away (Fernie) the other mountains either didnt allow it or had a separate liscence you had to buy after competing a paid test ( I know I'm off topic a bit so I wont even touch that bias).
The first lift up that mountain was a very long t-bar lift and those lifts can be tricky when you k om what.your doing but learning to ride thT lift as we taught ourselves to snowboard was the definition of determination as we fell,got dragged,wouldn't let go over and.over .......But in the end we accomplished riding that lift and linking turns and stopping ,yes bruised posteriors were more commen than not but every Friday I would be at the Achenbachs garage which was the start of The snowboard Shop ,they literally had a dozen boards that they would rent out of their parents garage which led to board sales and eventually a few strong retail establishments .
Some 20 years later I found myself being g a snowboard instructor on evenings and weekends more to have a pass in expensive flatland Ontario s newest hill called Lakeridge ,they even made a curved (first of it's kind in Canada) curved halfpipe blade for a snow cat.
Now we.get to were I will answer the original question I think .....I had helped write the.original manuals for the Snowboard instructors manuals ,I guess helped edit would be more accurate and it became very evident to me that I could take very young or very old (as old as in his 70,s) individuals and.in most cases one day would have them carving linked turns and be able to stop and start unassisted on med level blue runs. My experience with watching my fellow ski instructors was that snowboarders progressed faster , it was easier to teach people that hadn't skied and the comparative level of advancement would be snowboarders learned faster and.progressed faster than skiers ....
I hope you didnt mind my melancholy (look back at a bit of my life) and that I eventually ...lol answered your question.

Well, I taught many. many Skiers to ride a Snowboard, including some who were on PSIA’s Board-of-Directors, and Ski-School Managers. The ability to adjust to snow conditions by ‘feel’ helped the most, imho. Those that did not have that sense of snow-texture did not fare as well. Balance, well, it’s “different” in both sports, but is Crucial to performance. Those that had either Surfing, Skateboarding, or Windsurfing experiences fared much better than those who stuck to Skiing/Roller Skating/Ice Skating, as those ‘sideways’ Sports clued them into the toe/heel balance act. Also, boot-fit among Skiers was always easier to solve. They ‘knew’ that a snug fit mattered, and I could usually fix an issue pretty quickly, and/or describe such a fix. My teaching focuses on basic moves, based upon the Uphill-Edge, either Toes, or Heels. But, it’s the ‘in-between’ the Edges that really Matters, that moment you ‘let-go’ of an Edge, and create a Turn and edge-change. Here, Skiers had a problem, as the ‘Wedge’ is their Savior in it provides a ‘slowed turn’. There isn’t quite such in Snowboarding. You can do high-speed sideslips on one edge, but to Engage into a Committed Turn, the board has to go ‘flat’, and then pivot into the New Edge. It Releases, it gains speed, it Flows! Skiers don’t like that so much, but Surfers Do! So, what I came up with, was foot-pressure points, to help Skiers figure the sequence out, in a Linked turn. The Pressure Point moves to the Little-Toe. Heel-to little-toe to All toes. Or Toes to Little-toe, and back to Heels. So, there, that’s my ‘beginner’ best-advice. So few AASI teachers know… “PSR”

Is this question geared for an adult or child beginner? Every ski resort in Tahoe has quality ski school instructors. Wherever you end up, plan to take lessons from a pro; you will have a much better experience than trying to learn on your own or from a well-intentioned friend but unqualified friend!

There is a smaller resort in Incline Village, NV (on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe). It is called Diamond Peak. They have a good ski school and nice gentle terrain for new skiers. It will be a more intimate atmosphere than what you will find at the larger resorts like Northstar, Heavenly, or Squaw Valley.

Have fun!

I'm not sure where your riding is right now, and your sub-question is actually pretty different from your main question, so I'll answer both and be as general as possible.

Mountain Riding
To learn how to be a better snowboarder outside of the park, the biggest tip is to keep your weight on the front foot whenever possible. The natural instinct is to shy away from the hill, but you should always have a nice bend in your front knee in order to maintain control through a turn.

One you get that down, start working on carving. Get up on your edges more and more through each turn until you're comfortable enough to really dig in when you turn. This is hard to teach on the internet, you just have to practice until you find the sweet spot and eventually you'll pick up the muscle memory to do it in your sleep.

360s
To address your sub-question, here are some tips for learning a 360. First, start with an ollie. To perform an ollie, load up weight in the back of your board and then "pop" off, shifting your weight forward and using the natural spring of the board to propel yourself in the air. This is different from just hopping straight up and down. You will feel a distinct "loading" and "pop" of pressure on your board as you perform it, and you'll also get substantially more air.

Learn the ollie while standing on flat ground, then try it while moving forward on flat ground, then graduate to rollers, and finally large jumps. This will teach you how to take off and land flat on your board (or on a VERY slight toe edge) and to set up for jumps. Once you add spins, these things have to be automatic or you'll be eating snow, so really get that muscle memory down.

After that, work on your 180. Like before, start on flat snow out of everyone's way. Load up for an ollie while slightly twisted, then unwind as you take off.

Once you can do that on flat ground, practice traversal 180s. Start by looking uphill so you don't crash into anyone. Then, ride across the mountain, putting all of your pressure on your uphill edge to cut into the snow. Get low and twisted, and spring into a 180 so that you land with your opposite edge cutting into the mountain, but you'll be traveling in the same direction. This is easy because you can control your speed, you're always steadying yourself on the mountain, and if you over-rotate you have an easy fall to recover from.

Once you learn that move, add a little downhill into your traversal 180s until you're doing it while heading straight down the mountain. Practice off of a jump (more air = less rotation, so this actually gets tricky) and you'll be gold.

When your 180s are solid off of jumps, 360s should be a piece of cake. Get lots of speed, get your ollie down so you get solid air, and practice your spins so you have fast rotation in the air. Combine those three things and you'll be rocking out in the park.

I’m going to recommend you read — How do I pick a ski or snowboard instructor?

All of the resorts in Tahoe have good ski instructors. “Best” is a hard thing to qualify since what works for me isn’t going to work for you.

If you want a simple rule for finding the “Best Technical Ski Instructor” - at any resort. When you’re making the reservation and speaking with the person on the phone at the resort ask for the following, in descending importance.

1. PSIA National Team
2. PSIA West technical team
3. A resort trainer (If they’re a Level 3 cert)
4. PSIA Level 3 cert instructor

Remember that these folks have dedicated years of their lives to getting these skills and they’re not making the big bucks, don’t forget to help them out a bit extra at the end of the day.

Completely depends on your athletic level, and pre-existing experience on snow or ice sports, and quality of or instruction in general. Also, depends on what your definition of good is.

Snowboarding typically has a brutal learning curve, the first few days can be punishing. Until you get the understanding of maintaining an edge, and transferring from one to the other, you will fall down and you will fall down hard. Compared to skiing, the initial falls are incomparable, snowboarding is substantially more difficult the first few days, basically until the rider gets the fundamentals down. Also, if you skateboard or surf or another sport where you aren’t facing downhill, it makes a big difference. It’s really unnatural for many people to figure this out who haven’t done a sport where they aren’t facing forward.

After the basics, progression is fairly linear, snowboarders get better much quicker. This is where skiing diverges, it takes much more time to get good at skiing, progression is slow and incremental.

As far as timelines go, with good instruction, a week to get on blue slopes wouldn’t be rare at all. Personally, I was a competitive skier and recreational skateboarder and I was on easy double blacks after about a week. That’s probably not typical but for athletic persons with good balance who have a good understanding of how to move on snow, it’s not impossible.

Speaking generally, I think most reasonable athletic people can get into blues in a week or two and probably get into blacks in a month or two. Good instruction, especially in the beginning will drastically improve the speed that someone learns.

This is going to sound like awful advice...But figure it out yourself. The two people that I have seen progressive in snowboarding the fastest were two of my friends. I am an awful teacher and they just started snowboarding. We got to the top of the mountain and I said lets go and we went down. I had to wait for them at the bottom and I just kept saying guys go fast you go too slow and they would just say they were just learning. They both learned how to backflip off of jumps by the end of the season. I never really gave them advice expect go faster. They learned on their own. Most people I talk to benefit more from learning themselves then a lesson.

If you literally mean at the same time, no. If you mean during the same day at a resort, then yes! You can rent skis or a board from a rental shop, and most will allow you to swap out mid-day. You could also try a split board!

This is a snowboard that has been cut in half, letting the user switch from skiing to boarding fairly seamlessly. They are very popular for back country use, as one can use the skis to skin up a mountain, and then snowboard down.

Be warned though, your first day riding you’ll take a lot of hits, and you may not want to swap and keep going that day feeling that sore.