Snowboarding: socks, snogs and snow

The most important rule when trying to ingratiate yourself with a bunch of über-cool snowboarders is avoid the question: "Did you go skiing today?".

Confusing skiing and snowboarding is like asking a garage DJ what house tunes he's played recently. Boarders ride, they do not ski; they hate skiers. I offer this advice with hindsight, as this was my little icebreaker to a group of pros on my first night in Mayrhofen, in the Austrian Alps. It was met with silence. I just managed to keep them talking by offering to pay for dinner - snowboarders might be cool but they're also usually skint.

Rule two: know your snowboarding gear. My offer during dinner to lend a pair of Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses for a photo-shoot the next day was met with more hostility (should have studied those snowboarding mags more closely). Boarders don't wear sunglasses. Just goggles. And plain wool hats - these are worn at all times, even in bed. Also forget jeans (except in the evening when they are baggy and slung low on the hips), one-piece ski suits, comedy hats, Puffa jackets or gaiters. Think baggy trousers and jackets by Blond, Convert or O'Neill, logoed sweatshirts and snowboards by K2, Burton and Ride. Plus a healthy measure of disdain for everyone else on the slope. Knowing your half-pipe from your quarter-pipe will also help you through.

If all else fails and conversation grinds to a halt, ask about injuries. Snowboarding involves a lot of macho posturing, even from the women. Take 17-year-old Gemma Holmes. During dinner, she tells me she's from County Durham and started snowboarding at her local ski park when she was 10. "I used to be a skier," she says, looking in mock shame at the table. "Then, seven years ago, a guy called Ian Taylor brought snowboarding to the North-East and I got hooked." She can't remember all thats she's broken: "My feet, both my knees, my coccyx, both

wrists, most of my fingers and toes," she says, "and a few dislocated joints, including my shoulder."

Also around the table are Tim Hoad, Jane Birch and Ollie Cotton - the lucky few who receive sponsorship from the snowboarding companies. It's not a cheap sport. The board costs £200, a ski pass for the season is another £300, other equipment, £250 - and then there's insurance, rent, and travel.

Gemma is supported by K2 boards and Voo Doo Dolls clothing. Like the others, she has a die-hard boarding obsession. It's her first season in Mayrhofen and when she's 18, she hopes to get into the Olympic Squad. "Before the sponsorship, I was going to college, holding down three jobs and competing. Now I can be on the slopes all day and chill out with my mates," she says.

Her first few weeks in Mayrhofen were not so pleasant. Her sponsors provide only £100 a month, free clothes and boards, so to make ends meet she took a job as a chambermaid at a hotel. "All I did was clean loos. I had to live with seven Austrian women who didn't speak a word of English. I missed my mum," she laughs, "I didn't even know how to make my bed." Now she's given up the job, moved in with five other Brit boarders and is living off the £1,500 she earned in the summer.

It's still a male-orientated sport. She and the two other girls at dinner, Jane Birch, 24, and Sara Phillips, 20, make up half the British female boarders in Mayrhofen. They're a no-nonsense lot. When a male ski instructor said something that wasn't to Gemma's liking, she threw her pint over him.

The average age of the 30 or so snowboarders camped in Mayrhofen is 18. Half of them are from London and some are trying to avoid further education. The older boarders, such as Chris Carr, keep a vague eye on the younger ones. As a teenager's first home from home, the small resort should not cause too many parental nightmares. Its sprawl of dark, mock-traditional chalets is mainly filled with pissed-up Dutch, German and Austrian tourists. After cavorting down the slopes singing Austrian drinking anthems, they pile into the huge Ice Bar to knock back more schnapps and dance around to the Blue Danube.

The boarders steer well clear. They go to Scotland Yard, Mayrhofen's British pub (complete with red telephone box outside). Those who can't afford the beer wait until punters leave, then finish off the dregs, often mixing three or four drinks in one pint glass. Nice. Occasionally they'll go on to the Arena, a dodgy basement nightclub, for more beer and a few snogs. On the slopes, snowboarders may be cool, but off the slopes, especially blind drunk at 5am in Arena, they're no more hip than Eddie the Eagle.

During the day, weather permitting, the boarders hang out at the Fun Park practising their half-pipes, listening to their mini-disc players or bombing through the trees with their mates. There are similar pockets of British boarders all over Europe. It's the fastest-growing youth sport and the clothes industry is now worth £20 million in Britain, If you're one of those who have missed the snowboard revolution, fear not. In the US, youth has returned to two skis. It's called Free skiing - the skis are now shorter and thicker, so they can perform tricks like boards.

Mayrhofen is popular because the British Snowboarding Championships are held here and it's host to Europe's biggest summer snowboarding camp.

Sara Phillips lives opposite the pub Scotland Yard. She has one small room to herself while six boys are in the other. It stinks of stale socks, clothes are everywhere, rubbish is piled in the corner and some are sleeping on wooden slats. During holiday periods, the number camped there rises to 20. "Over Christmas I'd wake up and not recognise half the people in the house, especially all the girls they'd bring back for the night," she explains. She arrived in Mayrhofen during the summer and has deferred her graphic-design placement in Brighton to stay on. "I want to study but I don't like the English. Here, you really live."

One of her flatmates is 17-year-old "gangsta" Tom Kingsnorth; shaved head, baggy clothes and equipped with stories of gangs of youths stalking the streets of Lewisham, plus a fake gold chain hung round his neck. Last May, after "a bad day" at school, he quit. He rang Chris Carr, whom he knew from their local dry slope, to ask if he could come to stay. A few days later he was on a plane, and has been here ever since. He has no plans to return.

Chris lives in the apartment below. At 27 he's not really part of the yoof market any more and comes over all sensitive when I bring his age up. He's the Convert team manager and Tim Hoad, 25, and Andy Irving, 21, both mates from home in London, are also in the team. They've been coming to Mayrhofen for four years. He's been snowboarding for 10. "I learned at the local ski slope in Beckton. There was this whole dry-slope culture in the Nineties," he explains. "It was the equivalent of skateboarding - cheap and urban, there wasn't much else to do. We'd go there every weekend, get so sore we couldn't sit down in school come Monday. Eventually we decided we wanted to see the snow, same as everyone else out here.

"It's a good life," he continues, "except for being really skint all year."

The British Snowboarding Championships are from 28 March to 27 April. A week's package holiday with Thomson to Mayrhofen costs from £269.

To book, call 0870 606 1470.