^^ i can agree with alot of things you say except the edge catching and backseat landings. first off, its impossible for them to catch doing a 50-50 and its assorted variations. as for boardslides, its much easier to hook an edge on one of two small planks than just a single flat one. although ive never snowboarded, all of my friends do and they back me up on that.
secondly, their range of acceptable landings extends as far as ours, if your backseat with your ass riding the ground in skiing or snowboarding your pretty fucked, in the park your gone, in powder your probably going to bombhole or just not come out of it. up until that point we can both hold low to the ground positions. ever seen andrew renolds land stairsets on his skateboard? hes so far out on his ass he can almost touch. if skaters can extend that far with just griptape holding them on, snowboarders can do much better.
yes they can still fall straight back, but it doesnt happen that often, and they can still hold positions like that. besdides, if you examined a big mountain skiers thoughts before he lands backseat off a big cliff, hes probably not doing it because hes slightly off axis and cant right himself. subconcious or not, his mind has evaluated has either evaluated it and partially chickened out, finding a ass down landing better to absorb the compression and survive, or just the sheer force drove his ass down. boarders compress sideways with their asses down for the exact same reason.
snowboarding and skiing both have their share of challenges independent of the other, and their very difficult to compare because their so different. its fine just to leave it at that, except in the case of the 50-50, which, contrary to my snowboarding friends beliefs, gets no where near to competing with a normal ski slide in terms of steeze.
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-Chris
'but think if i fall in love with a super model and she only gets wet in the pants by kids who no calc shit i wanta be READYYYYYYYYY!!!!!' - (0)jarjar(0)
'Hey, check out those chicks up there'
'dude, they have child lift tickets'
'uhhhhhhh'