How long has "alpine" been an entity in snowboarding?

[WinterGold]

From Burton´s history (Back in the Day) -

The first World Championships were also held that year (1986!), in Breckenridge, Colorado. José Fernandès was the only European rider to take part in that competition, and he destroyed the Americans on their home turf, claiming victory. José rode the first asymmetrical board, the Hooger Booger, with hiking boots mounted on plate bindings. It was a more effective setup than what the Americans were using at the time.

That´s probably the moment when the snowboarding world realized that the "hard" setup was more effective on slopes :D ...

[Rob Stevens]

That´s probably the moment when the snowboarding world realized that the "hard" setup was more effective on slopes :D ...

That same year, I beat Jose in the moguls, but got beat by him in the race at the North American Snowboard Champs in Banff. Soft v. hard, times don't seem to have changed much!

JF rode a pretty flat rear angle, too... Nothing "alpine" about his stance in those days from what I remember.

It was still a couple of years before I saw anyone with a high angle rear binding.

[softbootsurfer]

From Burton´s history (Back in the Day) -

The first World Championships were also held that year (1986!), in Breckenridge, Colorado. José Fernandès was the only European rider to take part in that competition, and he destroyed the Americans on their home turf, claiming victory. José rode the first asymmetrical board, the Hooger Booger, with hiking boots mounted on plate bindings. It was a more effective setup than what the Americans were using at the time.

That´s probably the moment when the snowboarding world realized that the "hard" setup was more effective on slopes :D ...

Actual results printed in TW fall 1987...:D

[softbootsurfer]

That same year, I beat Jose in the moguls, but got beat by him in the race at the North American Snowboard Champs in Banff. Soft v. hard, times don't seem to have changed much!

JF rode a pretty flat rear angle, too... Nothing "alpine" about his stance in those days from what I remember.

It was still a couple of years before I saw anyone with a high angle rear binding.

There is no Alpine stance in any pictures from that era...

The Cover of Peters book Copyright 1988 shows you are right...

Modern Alpine started later than 1988 according to all the Pics from that era...

Both US and Euro riders had flat back foot angles...

[tahoetrencher]

was at least 45o as required. (1989-1990 season)

[b0ardski]

With all this nostalgia, I just watched "Don't Pat the Dog". It's an instruction video by Chris Karol from 88 or 89. The old recording was cut off before the credits so I can't be sure. He's on a Gnu Kinetic, looks to be 170+. I couldn't see what plates, but he's on Kastinger boots with angles about 10/45. He had 2 key phrases that were on the gnu graphics, "don't pat the dog" & "stay low, be powerful". He had good modern style, but was pretty "slarvey" on that set-up.

I watched a bit of video of the '86 worlds at breck from a tom sims video too but didn't see any plate bindings.

As far as the original question I'm stickin' with '89-'90 for when a differentiation started, when the asyms showed up higher back foot angles were a requirement.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

What is? "Nymphenburger" . It sounds good enough to eat?

I would guess it is a place, however , no capital letter?

[tahoetrencher]

than a beerenburger.

[WinterGold]

I already posted about the Hot Revolution - it was from 1988 and it had a recommended back foot angle of 40°!!!

But is that really such an important criteria? Would you not call Jörg Egli from Pureboarding a modern alpine rider? He uses 25° on his back foot!

Edit: Nymphenburger is the publishing house ... no capital letter - I guess this was supposed to be cool in 88 ;-)

Edit2: Here is a picture from the first snowboard test in Austria/Germany in 1988. The Hot Revolution had the highest angle on the back foot.

[Rob Stevens]

That Barfoot I was talking about is in that picture.

The season of 88 - 89 sounds about right.

Oh yeah... I would consider 25 degrees on the back alpine, but I ride duck most of the time so my opinion is questionable.

[Neil Gendzwill]

That same year, I beat Jose in the moguls, but got beat by him in the race at the North American Snowboard Champs in Banff.

I was at those North Americans as a spectator. I remember thinking the coolest boards there were the black Sims freestyle models like Kidwell was riding in the half-pipe, which was really more like a ditch at the time.

[Jack M]

A fun little summer question..

When was alpine snowboarding widely recognized as a completely different discipline from freestyle/freeride?

There was a period when everyone on pointy squaretails with the front foot at 45 and the rear straight, and then some years later, boards like PJs started showing up.

There is a large gray area where you had guys like Sanders hitting the pipe in plates, and movies like One Track Mind with softboot racing.

It seems like the Safari was the first alpine board, but was that nomenclature around?

Technically alpine came first. There were races before there were freestyle events. It was only after the invention of the half-pipe (Kidwell/Sims? '85? '86?) and the kick-tail (Sims?) that there needed to be any designation.

Burton's first true alpine board was the Express, before the Safari.

I've blabbed about this more here:

http://www.bomberonline.com/articles/brief_history.cfm

[piusthedrcarve]

I've blabbed about this more here:

http://www.bomberonline.com/articles/brief_history.cfm

Thanks!. Great Info it is. It's great to know the history of alpine snowboards.

I was introduced to alpine snowboarding by a european rider who had been alpine boarding for 10 years (it was year 1996/97 so he must be started riding around 1985 at age of 10 ) His style was Euro style riding and the riding he only knew was carving. I taught him to ride in freestyle and doing some air tricks and hitting half pipe. Impressive thing was he could just do that easily on his Oxygen F-57 by afternoon. :)

[b0ardski]

I was digging through the articles(thanks Jack) and thought this bit from an Oct. '00 interview with Mark Fawcett was pretty relevant.

BOL: Think back to before you were competing on a world class level, was there one piece of advice somebody gave you, or one skill that you learned that sticks in your mind as making a major breakthrough in your technique?

MF: To tell the truth, I didn't learn a whole lot from anyone before I started training with Jerry. Coaches just didn't know what the hell they were talking about, they didn't know how to get inside your brain and make you go faster from A to B. But I had a major breakthrough in the gates with Jerry. Back in '89-'90 I was still switching back and forth between softboots and hard snowboard boots, and then by the end of that year I was in ski boots. Kildevaald was really the first guy in New England to start throwing some really extreme (binding) angles on there; I really used to listen to Kildy quite a bit, he's another one of my good friends on the tour. He was the first guy to go above like forty degrees, I think he was up around fifty-two, fifty five degrees on both feet before anyone else. And that's on a wide board; that's in '89 with hardboots. So that helped me a lot, he kinda just explained it to me that it would get me squared up forward further. I would ask him, god, why do you have both feet at the same angle? He would say that you can only be as far forward as your back hip, and angling the bindings like that would help, so he definitely had some influence, that set me on that track early, rather than maybe figuring it out two years later on my own or something. And then Jerry just really brought it all together for me. He pointed out that most of us can freeride like a bandit and you're like "man I'm ready for the world cup!", but throw a course in front of most people and they don't ride anything like they were just freeriding one run before. It's all in the timing. Jerry had some key instructions in the timing that I can't actually share, but those really help apply more of how you freeride into the course.

I have to agree that the more forward facing shoulders & hips are alpine style, not sideways.

Putting a local park rat on HB this year, he rocked on a wide board with low angles and sideways style, but couldn't handle 40*+ angles on a 21cm board.

I've always considered "fakie" to be "backwards" not sideways since I started learning to do it 20 years ago. Duck feels wrong to my skeleton, so my back foot has been pointing forward from the beginning. "Alpine' was snowboarding down hill on any terrain, "Freestyle" branched off of that and took over the world.

[tahoetrencher]

That Jake is the father of alpine, which isn't at all true.

What is true is that both Jake and Tom (Simms) were both fierce competitors trying to put a sport before a product and doing anything they could to win events and therefore market share. You're probably referring to the first World's where the first 1/2 pipe competition was held by the Simms (Tahoe boys) team in 1983 in Soda Springs, Ca. Jake saw Tom in the 1/2, realized his boards could not compete and then boycotted the event. He wasn't putting alpine first, he was putting Burton first, as always.

You're right about the Tahoe boys (Kidwell and Morrow,then Palmer, Kelly) inventing the halfpipe but earlier than you suggest. Mark Anolik "discovered" the Tahoe City halfpipe in 1979. Jake boycotted the 1/2 to try and eliminate the Simms advantage. This was an ongoing war, but Simms is much more the father of alpine, if you must.

In 1981 at the first ever SB competition at ski Cooper Jake saw Tom rippin the Nastar course and convinced the judges to move the race course down onto the flats where team Burton had a chance. Burton and Milocivich still had powder skegs and couldn't turn on the firm. This year Tom had made a special race board out of solid fiberglass that he filed the edges on until "sharp". The east coast SB school (snurfer influenced) was to just bomb in a straight line. Simms was completing turns around gates on packed snow- Jake still had holes on the nose for a rope! The next year 1982 saw the first metal edges in a competition, again Tom Simms. He won the Downhill at the National Snowsurfing Championships in Vermont hitting over 50 mph. Team Burton won overall though (Doug Bouton?) even though the Burton rider bombed the sl, fell, got up, bombed again, he beat Tom by 1/2 second. Tom was into showing controlled turns so that Snowboards would be welcomed at resorts and he could start selling boards( he was already the world's #1 skateboard producer).

The first roundtail board was the Simms Kidwell produced in '85 after Terry won the Worlds in '83. If anyone is, Terry has got to be the father of freestyle. Remember this is still 6 years before the earliest picture of an alpine stance, HB rider like Damian in the halfpipe in 1989.

Although certainly a pioneer if Jake is the father of something it's more like apparel marketing. The reason everyone has to be in Burton duds dates back to everyone wanting to be Jeff Brushie and Damian Sanders.

And there is certainly nothing wrong with that!

[Chris Karol]

Sorry guys but this thread was brought to my attention and I feel compelled to respond to the last post for the sake of preserving the history of snowboarding.

I was at the 1983 Sims World Championships in Soda Springs, CA. I won the DH event which still goes down as one of my most memorable runs ever. I rode for Burton at the time. I am one of the "east coast SB school" riders referred to in that last post. Back then there were only a handful of riders in the world (east, west or otherwise) and we were all good friends. We rode together, partied together, and competed together. Everybody competed in everything.

The story about Jake boycotting the 1/2 event is entirely false. The only thing that anyone considered boycotting at that event was the Slalom. Reason being, was that Tom Sims set the Slalom course by first taking a run in fresh groomed fluff, then going back and sticking gates in the snow at the apex of each of his turns. Not the fairest way to set a course if you think about it from a competitors point of view. We the riders (aka; Toms competitors) let it go,. but as it turned out Tom won the slalom event and people rightfully bitched about it. Tom was a talented rider but he should've known better than to leave the door open for that kind of controversy.

The "east coast SB school" was not all about bombing in a straight line. Granted that's about all you could do if you ever tried riding a snurfer on hardpack, but if you're talking snurfers, you're talking about the original Michigan crew. Burton may have gone on to take some early cues from guys like Paul Graves, Bill & Tom Pushaw, Bob Novak and Kevin Workman but things evolved quickly from there. Other east coast guys like Stevie D and the Rhode Island Flight crew were surfers and skaters. As far as the early Burton team goes, Mark Heingartner was a surfer, I was a skater, and Andy Coghlan came from a ski racing background. I used to session the TC and Soda Springs pipes with Keith Kimmel, Bob Klein, Terry Kidwell, Palmer, Arnbruster and Chantry. Speedruns were cool but as an "east coast" rider, my main skateboarding influences were things like boardslides, grinds, air & slashing.

Let's back up a bit now to 1982 at the Suicide Six Nationals. People who were there will remember that "east coast" Burton rider, Doug Bouton was the only person to make the slalom course WITHOUT crashing or spinning out. He won by a large margin. I spun out on both toeside turns but recovered on my heel edge quick enough in both cases to finish in 2nd place. (for those paying attention, that's right, there were only 4 gates!) Louis Fournier also used the "spin out on the toe-edge & catch it on the heel" technique and finished 3rd. I don't remember what happened to Tom Sims in the slalom. For the record Tom did win the DH at the 1982 Suicide Six event which was a straight line "bomb" speedrun at speeds over 60mph in under 10 seconds.

(edit = Looks like I stand corrected on the suicide six facts. It still doesn't line up with Toms story but according to Paul Graves who put this event on, Sims won the Slalom and Bouton won the DH. guess were all gettin' old 'eh?)

By the way Morrow and Kelly where never "Tahoe boys" Rob Morrow is from Salem, Oregon and Craig Kelly was from Mt. Vernon, Washington.

A few more inaccuracies...

Since when did Nastar have judges? Racing is a timed event not judged. I wasn't at that 1981 event but If the Ski Cooper race got moved anywhere I'd guess it got moved to wherever Ski Cooper had their timing set up.

I'm pretty sure Damian Sanders never wore "Burton duds".

... and last but not least; Sims is spelled with one "m".

... regarding the original topic of this thread, one of the first "Alpine" set-ups I remember seeing was around '85 or '86 when Jeff Caron showed up in my snowboard shop at Loon Mountain with Salomon SX91 rear entry ski boots and a custom plate setup on a Dynastar Monoski. The monoski was very narrow which required steep binding angles. This was quite unlike the Avalanche plate binding set-ups of the time which generally had the back foot at around 90deg to the tip/tail axis.

[tahoetrencher]

Although I don't just "wing it", I do tend to rely a little heavily on my SB history library. Most of the inaccuracies you have so kindly taken the time to correct I got from a Sim's interview in a book called "The way of the snowboarder" (Rob Reed 2005, Harry N Abrams publisher).

p. 35( referring to the 1982 Graves Suicide Six National Snowsurfing Championships)

"Sims won the downhill...The slalom and overall went to Burton...Sims explains, 'I went down the sl course as fast as I could go without falling. So (Doug Bouton) goes down, bombs the top part, crashes in a spectacular crash, gets back up, bombs the last part, and wins by a quarter of a second.'"

When you say "people who were there (1982) will remember" that Doug was the only rider not to crash I've got to believe you over Rob Reed( Editor, "Powder" mag). Since Tom was there he must be confused, misquoted or just self-serving. I won't even make my first backcountry descent of Tallac on my Sims 1710 blade for another 4 years. (I'd toss the book out except the pictures are pretty cool.)

Sims said "contest organizers" were coerced by Jake at Ski Cooper, not "Judges". My mistake.

Do you mean Andy Coughlin?

I don't know where I got all those extra "m's" from :o

Look what I did to Demetrije's name!

I wish I had been aware of the competitive side of the sport in the mid 80's but I was only concerned with bagging all the peaks in my backyard over 9000 feet on my new backcountry sled. I never dreamed that I would retire my RC4's and never ski again when Kirkwood and the Heave welcomed us on piste in 1989.

Thanks again Chris.

[John Gilmour]

I of course.. lived this- talked with Jeff Grell, Tom Sims, and Paul Sims (his dad) on a regular basis. I was the first Rep for Sims and Winterstick on the East coast. Paul Sims used to flow me Turner Summer Ski boards made by Bob Turner for Tom Sims- in exchange I would listen to his lengthy war stories over the phone.

Tom Sims set the World Championship course and Burton answered back by holding the Nationals. Tom would offer a Sims snowboard as a prize at the World Championships and typically never lost.

As a Skateboarder I was pro Sims and felt the Burton baords were very clunky by comparison.

So lets talk about snowboard evolution. To be fair.... at first there were no Alpine boards.

What they really were....were POWDER BOARDS. Most had split tails with the exception of the Avalanche boards and the Prop Snowplane (the worlds first asym board).

Frankly speaking... Alpine is carving on firmer snow typically in hard boots....though many people rode PJs and other boards in softboots with success..notably Andy Coughlin did well in Softies for a long time, and later Petra Mussig from Germany actually won the Nationals in the late 1980's when many women were competing against her in hard boots.

So in terms of the evolution of the boards.. in terms of Alpine... lets not include ANY boards without metal edges... That would eliminate the Burton Backhill for instance as well as the Sims FE (non Pro) series.

The Sims FE model had fins and no edges, also it did not have camber as it was rockered from tip to tail (ha... early reverse camber... not quite ...lol as there was no camber to be found anywhere- perhaps you could call it banana) also the boards were by design very edge high which resulted in a less catchy board on hard granular, but slow edge engagement. This did not result in a well carved turn, and I was one of the better snowboarders on the East coast at that time and one of the faster ones.

I say one of the better ones.... but there we not many of us. If we ever saw anyone with snowboards on the roof racks we might flag the others down. Every powder storm was a Mecca for snowboards as the early snowboards performed horribly on frozen granular and the east coast had the old gap snowmaking guns (they made ultra crappy hammer proof scratchy snow) .... a few inches of fresh brought out most of use tracking storms. We really needed about 4-6 of fresh for our boards to perform well.

The first Sims FE Pro had segmented edges that had a black trim line around them - they had no high backs. I immediately became a dealer for Koflach boots (merely at first to buy boots at wholesale..which was the same reason I became a Sims and Winterstick Dealer) I would convert the boards over to hardboots by removing the highbacks which I initially helped design. Soft boots had no support back then and Alpine Randonnee ski touring boots were the way to go...far better than climbing only boots. The Heel would engage under the Sims footplate to give good lockdown.

But the boards did not carve.

They did not have a true sidecut... they were shaped like fish.

Tom told me to remove the fins and they would carve better and overnight we stripped our boards of the fins and found that they did perform better... forever dragging the fins around to someday ....hopefully put them back on for a powder day. They never got put back on.

But they still did not carve well.

The next year the first production highbacks came out. They were on they Sims FE Pro series and there was not black outline around the edge.

The boards were still swallow tails.

The Burton Elite 150 came out the same year with superior straps to the Sims bail and hook system. The board was flat and so railed from edge to edge quicker than the Sims boards, but they had a terrible sidecut and nearly no tail.. They were ineffective boards for carving.

The Sims Fe Series came out with other sizes the same year. The Sims FE Pro 1600, 1700, and 1800 which BTW were all far shorter than the numbers (in mm) would suggest.

Those were maple cores horizontal laminates... like plywood....certainly not anything we would see in an alpine baord...and still not cambered or flat from edge to edge. They were powder boards. With very little tail and a tremendous amount of leading nose for staying atop powder.

The Sims FE Pro 1700 was a decent board and could nearly carve. I lost a race at Nashoba Valley (240 vt feet) to one of two brothers that were racing there riding them. I was on a custom Sims Oak and Ash laminate 1600 FE Pro. riding the Koflach Valluga 4000 lite Randonee ski touring hardboots...I was the only competitor on Hardboots. I also raced at Camden snowbowl in Maine again the only rider on hard boots.

Jose Fernandez was sponsored by a Swiss window manufacturer... he was the first sponsored rider. He rode for Sims and then Hooger.. I still have all of the original ISM and Absolutely Radical snowboard magazines (Both by Tom Hsieh)... he was on the cover of one of them.

In I think 1984, Avalanche made the Uniplate binding.. which AFAIK was the first snowboard specific plate binding.. very crude... Avalanche made the First Cambered boards - flat edge to edge, and with side cut... but IMHO they still did not carve. The flex profile was horrendous....just terrible. I would call them a directional freeride board, but not an Alpine board.

The problem with many baords of the time with camber was they used a ski core profile and so were too stiff in the middle- and never bent properly and had to be ridden with ridiculously tight stances just to try and get them to flex into a proper arc.

I was always after the carve. Talking to Sims about what was best. Tom assured me they had something special.

It was.

The Sims 1710 blade was a radical departure for Sims.

Why?

It had a decent sidecut.

It had the first good core profile and carveable flex pattern enabling pencil thin carves. I rode this with Yellow Koflach Albona Boots- same ones used by Damian Saunders.

It was the first vertical laminate made by Sims.

It had no fins.

It had a lot more tail than any of the other boards at the time.

It really carved.

There were few of them and I broke mine. (a miserable day)

None were available and I settled for a Sims X -2000 a huge throwback in technology to the Sims FE Pro series again a maple plywood rocker style deck not flat from edge to edge. I rode this for several years. (it was stolen by some guy- who posed as a collector in 1999- mail fraud).

But the Sims 1710 Blade board was the board that carved. It changed things...

It was the first good snowboard flex profile and proved that vertical laminates would rule and that Flat was where it was at and that camber allowed you store edge in the board. it was a radical departure because at the time Snowboard manufacturers were trying to surf the snow not ski the snow...and now we would adopt ski technology. It had a very thin core profile ...not far off from boards of today.

The Sims 1710 Blade did not have an ABS sidewall and was simply polyurethane coated wood but it sure did carve.

Later the Burton Safari (The Safari did carve...but was after the 1710 blade and was bigger...wider... clunkier, but under the right feet outperformed the 1710 blade) came out and the others written about in this thread. but As someone who lived it..and knew what tech was hitting the shelves before it came out,,,, this was the first alpine board.

Why???????

Because it was NOT A POWDER BOARD. It was to be hardpack use mainly due to its low profile nose and what at the time was extreme camber- also Tom was not interested in vert- he was a racer.. and the 1710 Sims Blade proved to be a powder submarine in deeper snow. it was the first of the "Blade Series" of which the others rode nothing like that deck. Sims would later sell to Vision (and even later...Umbro the soccer company) and the boards performance would plummet.

That is why... it was the world's first Alpine board. Because it was NOT a freeride board or a powder board and it carved.

The Burton Safari came later.

[Jack M]

Thanks John, great stuff. The input you sent me for my article will be included someday, I promise! I agree to the best of my memory about the Sims Blade being the first alpine board. Two small nits though - the Express was Burton's first alpine board, before the Safari, but it probably didn't carve well due to almost no sidecut. And the Elite 150 was most definitely not flat. That was my first board and it was horrible on packed snow. I don't know how I learned. I'm dumbfounded by the return to non-flat bases on Burton's kiddie LTR boards.

[softbootsurfer]

So could it be possible that Sims was influenced by Mike Doyle and the

Monoski and simply wanted to change the stance by separating the feet ?

[WinterGold]

When you say that the Sims Blade was the first alpine board, can you specify the exact year (also whether they were prototypes or production models)? I would like to compare this to the European developments (which sometimes are forgotten here ;)). Also are there any pictures?

[Neil Gendzwill]

I bought a production model in the fall of '87, if memory serves.

[tahoetrencher]

Maybe it was '87.

Mine was red with multiple gold vertical stripes.

Sometimes things show up a season "early" in ski towns.

[b0ardski]

The 1st Sims I saw at the start of the 86-87 season was the red w/gold stripes, a dorm mate had just bought one. I don't remember for sure that it was a "blade" but it was definitely horizontal laminate, you could see the plys at the edge. Many of the other blades I saw the next season (white w/florescent stripes) were horizontal laminate also. These were the 1st metal edged boards I saw followed by the avalanche in dec. '86.

Makes me think the 1st vert laminate blades were a special run, and not the main production boards available at most shops.

I too believe Alpine started with boards that were designed to carve on hardpack, as in Alpine skis (opposed to nordic skis which had no sidecut and were often edgeless). I gave up on "nordic" skis for tele in '88 also when I saw a guy rippin' tele turns at Alpental on rossi 4S "alpine" skis.

Being a skier, of the dozens of boards I demoed in '88 & '89, very few carved worth a schite, so I preferred the sims blade, look overspeed & K2 TX. These were the top performers, my favorite being the TX, so I bought it in '89 despite the flaming pink graphics. I bought UPS Alpina hardboots the next year, seems like everything was fluorescent pink in those days.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Mine was red with gold stripes and vertically laminated for sure. It made the horizontally laminated Barfoots look like clunkers.