A Brief History of Alpine Snowboards

by Jack Michaud

Where did alpine snowboards come from? Well, if you define "alpine" snowboarding as the pursuit of snowboarding mostly on the ground, in the forward direction, with the primary goal of making clean, smooth turns, then alpine snowboards technically came first. However the term alpine has come to be mostly associated with snowboarding in hardboots, since they are the choice for people seeking the purest carve. At the beginning of the alpine spectrum is the all-mountain carver, and at the very end, the race board.

This article will focus primarily on the North American alpine scene. Truth be told, I believe that Burton is the father of alpine. It is not so risky to assume that he started the first organized snowboard races, or if he wasn't the first he did a lot to promote them. Sims was primarily concerned with freestyle and Winterstick was all about powder.

Sims did have a race board early on called the Blade, and they continued to make race boards right up until they discontinued the Burner just a few years ago. Before the Burner they had the MFR model designed by Mark Fawcett, but I don't know what came between the Blade and the MFR, if anything. The Blade moniker was long in the tooth when it was finally retired.

Flite was there with Burton and Sims in the beginning, but they remained a garage brand while Burton and Sims took off. They had some interesting boards, like the Weapon - a race board with a published running length one centimeter shorter than the overall length.

Hooger Booger was an early race board maker in Europe, followed closely by Nidecker. HB made the first asymmetrical raceboard, campaigned by Jose Fernandez. But the concept was premature and was not embraced for a few years. Hooger Booger was later purchased by Scott - maker of ski poles and goggles and miscellaneous sporting goods - and the name was changed to Hooger. Eventually they called the boards Scott.

Avalanche was an interesting story - founder Chris Sanders enlisted a European manufacturer to upgrade their boards with ski technology. During a visit to the factory, Sanders saw the hardboot phenomenon taking hold in Europe, and subsequently "bet the farm" on the US market following suit. It didn't happen like he hoped. (thanks to Bryan Sutherland for that tidbit.)

Other companies that made race boards relatively early in the game included Gnu, Lib-Tech, Kemper, Hot, F2, Funky, Nitro, Summit, Aggression, Crazy Banana, Mistral, Checker Pig, Look, Rossignol, K2, Dynastar, Elan, Lacroix, and probably some others. Lib-Tech actually used cap construction on their double-entendre named "Inner-Course" race board - a full year before Salomon introduced it for skis. For a while Lib-Tech also measured their boards in English units, making them frustratingly incomparable to other boards in buyer’s guides without a calculator. Ride Snowboards made some interesting race boards under the guidance of Mike Kildevaald. Kildy broke away from Ride and formed 24/7. 24/7’s featured the unique "Kildy-flex" bolt-on dampener plate, but the brand eventually fizzled.

Other ski companies who joined the alpine snowboard market later included Volkl, Volant (who bought Aggression), Atomic (Oxygen), maybe a few others. K2 got out of the alpine market relatively early. Their race boards used ski-like retention plates instead of inserts, and had to be drilled to mount bindings. Volkl appears to be the last remaining ski company in alpine snowboarding.

Since Burton did a lot to promote snowboard racing in the US, it is worth going into some of their detail. Burton's first dedicated race board was the Express 175 in I believe 1985 or 86. It had significant taper, little sidecut and somewhat resembled a monoski. The Safari series followed, with very little if any taper and a carvable radial sidecut. The Safari was an important board for Burton and the sport. It was piloted by the likes of Andy Coghlan, Chris Karol, Mark Heingartner, Peter Bauer, Tara Eberhard, and other legends. A custom team Downhill Safari stretched to 205cm. The Safari was replaced in 1990 by the M-series which only looked like a cosmetic face-lift, but they sported quadratic sidecuts. 1990 also saw Burton's first asym, the PJ, which was a 171.5cm slalom board, and was really only asym in the tail - the nose was symmetrical. The PJ, designed by the racing/Eurocarving dynamic duo Peter Bauer and Jean Nerva, was Burton's first and last line of pro-signature race boards. The industry has seen scant few others.

In 91, Burton went totally asym with its alpine boards, as did most of the industry around that time. A conspicuous and curious exception was Rossignol, who never made an asym, but made symmetrical boards that were successfully raced by Shannon Melhuse and Jeremy Jones. Rossi boards borrowed the popular "VAS" technology from their blockbuster ski, the 4S.

In 91 the PJ was expanded to four boards and the "M" badge was relegated to two asym all-mountain carving boards. These were some of the first alpine boards intended for all-mountain use. Around that time Kemper and Aggression went full-bore with the asym concept, and built boards with extreme offsets aligned with steeper binding angles. In fact, their boards looked nearly identical in shape. The Kemper had a graphic of a man’s furrowed brow, stern eyes and nose on the tail of their board. It was creepy.

Alpine riding even influenced some of the freeride market as Burton and a few other companies including Nitro and G&S also made asymmetrical freeride boards. These promised freestyle ability and improved carving. Burton's single 1992 "Asym-Air" became a two-board line called the X-series in 1993 which lived through 1996.

The 93 PJ tried a dual asym offset less asym in the nose, more in the tail, with a rotated quadratic sidecut and reverse taper. They are to this day among the most geometrically complex snowboards ever built.

In 94 Burton offered two symmetrical race boards called the Stat series, alongside the four PJs. The Stats were dubbed "5" and "6" for their 153 and 167cm lengths. A third Stat, the 7, was never released for public consumption, because as one shop owner once speculated, "they thought it was too fast, they were scared of it". All the while, Burton offered recreational alpine boards like the M, the Amp, and the Alp.

The PJ was retired in 1995 when Burton embraced the rebirth of symmetrical race boards and the new-school of carving technique, and Rossignol issued a big "I told you so". The new flagship race boards were the Factory Primes and they used radial sidecuts again. A single asym FP soldiered on until 1998 for slalom.

The FPs were offered as the no-holds-barred race boards and Burton offered other friendlier recreational alpine boards to round out the selection. The Ultra Prime was the freecarver, and the E-deck was the all-mountain carver. The E became the Wire, then Coil. This continued until 2002 when Burton's entire alpine side was boiled down to one model, the Speed. It wasn't clear whether these were race boards or freecarve boards, but it was clear that Burton was on the way out. The Speed was killed after the 2003 season. One Burton rep was heard bemoaning the relative lack of brand competition in alpine.

1989 was an important year for Burton, because that was the year they abandoned the swallow-tail design of their recreational boards, and hopped on the round kicktail bandwagon pioneered by Sims. In 87 or 88, Burton had introduced the "Air" model which was a single freestyle board with a round kicktail. But until 89, Burton had been effectively an alpine-only company, by the loose definition above.

1990 saw the birth of Prior Snowboards, which represented the start (or perhaps rebirth) of the "microbrew" boutique snowboard cottage industry which would later include Coiler, Donek, BS, 24/7, and others. Prior offered full customs and race-room construction to anybody patient enough to wait in line. Many pro racers, notably Mark Fawcett, sought him out for custom race decks for use on the World Cup.

The early to mid 90s saw the birth of Bomber bindings and Catek (first "Rhino", then "CAT" - Caron Alpine Technologies) bindings, and Madd Snowboards. Bombers and Cateks were expensive but effective alternatives to what was available, and have survived, obviously. They both addressed the fact that existing plate bindings had a not insignificant probability of catastrophic failure.

Madd were the first to pioneer the spare no expense manufacturing process and marketed ultra-premium boards for twice the price of an average board of the day. The snowboarding populace in general was not yet mature enough to see the need, appreciate the benefit, or even be able to afford such luxury. Madd developed a small devout following, but otherwise drifted into obscurity. They are now attempting a comeback, we'll see if the super-premium snowboards will float this time.

The late 90s saw the refinement of the all-mountain carving board into something truly all-mountain, and truly carvable. These are wider for use with more versatile lower stance angles, and for better float over powder and crud. They feature a fuller nose for all-terrain, and an abbreviated round kicktail. All-mountain carvers provide strong carving ability on-piste, without holding you back from off-piste adventures. They are the SUV of alpine snowboards.

Although with Gnu, all-mountain carvers actually came much earlier. Late 80s Gnus were shaped very similarly to modern all-mountains. Gnu founder Mike Olson didn’t call his boards "snowboards", he called them "slope tools" because they were designed to carve, first and foremost. His carvey shapes weren’t limited to only high end race boards like Burton and Sims, etc. In that sense, Olson could and probably should be considered the father of freecarve.

Snowboard racing became an Olympic sport in 1998 at Nagano, Japan, along with halfpipe. Veteran Canadian Ross Rebagliati took GS gold but had his parade quickly rained on by a marijuana scandal. It was rather embarrassing for Snowboarding's first Olympics. In 2002 the format was changed to parallel GS which was deemed more spectator friendly, and it was. 2002 Olympic Gold was won on a European boutique board, Kessler. Chris Klug became the first American racer to win Olympic hardware in 2002 by taking the bronze in front of a "home" crowd at Park City.

Near the turn of the century, we witnessed the birth of another new class of snowboard - the Boardercross board. These are wide enough for use with softboots, but have longer running lengths like an all-mountain carver for speed in a boardercross race. They are the formerly-missing link between hardboot and softboot snowboarding.

The only large-scale manufacturers that I know of that will be making alpine boards for the 2005 season are F2, Volkl, Nidecker, and Hot (not that Hot is that large, but they're old). The active North American boutique companies primarily include Prior, Donek, Coiler, Madd, and BS is also making a comeback under the name Liberation. Mark Fawcett has a line of privately labeled boards of his design made by Prior, called Fozzboards.

And of course, no history of Alpine Snowboards would be complete without mentioning BomberOnline! The internet is largely what allows alpine to continue to exist, and BomberOnline plays a key role there. The inspiration for an online hardbooters community came from the usenet newsgroup rec.skiing.snowboard, which was started in the mid 90s by a guy named Crispin Cowan. BOL was founded in 1999.

photos courtesy of www.oldsnowboards.com