Snowboarding

Southland skiers and snowboarders, lured by the white banner draped invitingly across the local mountains, are enjoying the best conditions in at least two years. By Tuesday morning roads had been plowed and business was as brisk as the weather at Mountain High in Wrightwood and Bear Mountain, Snow Summit and Snow Valley in the Big Bear Lake areas. (Chains were still required on all but four-wheel-drive vehicles with snow tires on most routes leading to Big Bear Lake.

It all happened so fast, and so easily. Oscar R. Gonzales, 24, had snowboarded on this mountain for years. He knew just how to maneuver 20 feet off the trail at Mountain High ski resort in northeast Los Angeles County and go speeding through a familiar grove of trees. This time, in thick powder at about 3 p.m. Friday, his board hit a rock. He plummeted 30 feet off the back side of the ridge, landing on another rock so hard that it carved a dark red welt on the skin of his back.

Though it has not even begun, the Winter Dew Tour seems to have already emerged from the shadow of the Winter X Games, with the competition roster including 24 Olympians. How is this possible? Because the inaugural Winter Dew Tour, a three-event series that begins today at Breckenridge, Colo., has been embraced by the world's top snowboarders and free-skiers, most of them X Games veterans.

My first snowboarding lesson, undertaken just a couple of months ago at Bear Mountain near Big Bear Lake, taught me one thing -- how to fall. That was a good thing, too, because I did that early and often. The seat of my pants saw more snow than the bottom of my board. Later, while nursing my aches and bruises, I heard that a Los Angeles firm had just launched the sale of a padded snowboarding suit.

THE sun sparkled off a 4-inch layer of fresh powder as I lugged my skis and poles to the lifts at Mountain High Ski Resort. The mountain buzzed with snowboarders who launched off boxes and rails, like stones skipping off the surface of a lake. Just as I stepped from the crowded sun deck and felt the fresh snow crunch under my boots, a voice from behind called, "Look honey, a skier!"

The Flying Tomato has dazzled like never before this winter, chasing his Olympic dream, crushing the competition en route to his early berth on the U.S. snowboard team. Finally, the freckle-faced redhead otherwise known as Shaun White will learn who will accompany him to Italy -- or, as noteworthy, who will be left behind. "Shaun has been riding at a level a bit higher than everybody else," said Bud Keene, coach of the halfpipe team.

An agent for one of the halfpipe riders trying to qualify for the Olympics commented recently, "They might as well just give Shaun White the gold medal now and have everybody else compete for the silver and bronze." White, 19, who Sunday concluded an unprecedented sweep of all five U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix events, would seem to be the United States' best hope to strike gold in the Winter Games next month at Turin, Italy.

TODD Richards, who shares with Kevin Jones the distinction of being the most decorated male snowboarder of all time, makes his Olympic broadcast debut as NBC's snowboarding analyst at the Turin Winter Games, which begin with Friday's opening ceremonies. For NBC, he'll provide analysis for the halfpipe, slalom and snowboard-cross events. Richards' partner in the broadcast booth will be Pat Parnell, a veteran of NBC and OLN. Parnell, says Richards, "is more of the setup guy.

A teenage snowboarder has been charged in Jackson with negligent homicide in a fatal collision at high speed with a skier at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort a year ago. Greg Doda, 17, of Crownsville, Md., ran into Heather Donahue, 29, of Shrewsbury, Mass., in the Laramie Bowl, according to court documents. Investigators were able to review a video of the collision.