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

[Rob Stevens]

I got my Blade direct from Sims in 87.

From what I remember, the sidewalls were a horizontal laminate and the core, starting an inch or so inside the sidewall, was vertical.

I had an Outland before this. James Klassen's boards had metal edges before either Sims or Burton. Well, they did have edges in some cases, but hadn't given up the fins yet.

When I broke my Blade, I bought an Avalanche. That board was crap compared to the Sims.

+++ for the 1710 Blade as the first board that could own a hardpacked turn. That right there might be the "Birth" of alpine... The first board you could actually hold in a proper arc.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Damn Chris, it has been too long since you stopped by.

Thank you VERY MUCH for your post!!

Hope all is well.

Bryan

PS. If the only way to get you to come by is to post

inaccurate details on the history of snowboarding.

I will get busy with the miss information.

Or , promise to come by again soon ok?

[WinterGold]

If the Blade is from 1987 then I don´t think that it is an unchallenged choice. In Europe companies started focusing on the "alpine" style quite early.

It would be interesting which board Jose Fernandes was using in the 1986 race ... it was a board by Hooger Booger self designed by Fernandes. Hooger Booger is supposed to have started experimenting with asyms in 1984 - if this is true then these boards would also be no freeride or powder boards.

Hot had a model called the One Sixty in 1985 (see picture). This board had already a sidecut of 6m radius and was supposed to be revolutionary. Many others are supposed to have copied this deep sidecut ;).

And Nidecker also offered their "The Gun" in 1987 (see picture) - also a dedicated alpine board.

The pictures are taken from the websites of Nidecker and Hot (Hammer).

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

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?

Your thread has brought out some Legends. I will email Tom , perhaps he would be willing to post on the thread. Wouldn't that be cool?

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Consider there is definitely some gray area concerning a number of companies and specific "Alpine" or "Carving" snowboards of the era.

Don't forget GNU, Flite, Moss, etc.

More fuel for discussion. Carry on ;)

[softbootsurfer]

If the Blade is from 1987 then I don´t think that it is an unchallenged choice. In Europe companies started focusing on the "alpine" style quite early.

It would be interesting which board Jose Fernandes was using in the 1986 race ... it was a board by Hooger Booger self designed by Fernandes. Hooger Booger is supposed to have started experimenting with asyms in 1984 - if this is true then these boards would also be no freeride or powder boards.

Hot had a model called the One Sixty in 1985 (see picture). This board had already a sidecut of 6m radius and was supposed to be revolutionary. Many others are supposed to have copied this deep sidecut ;).

And Nidecker also offered their "The Gun" in 1987 (see picture) - also a dedicated alpine board.

The pictures are taken from the websites of Nidecker and Hot (Hammer).

I am Confused here with the 86 worlds at Breckenridge. yes it was the 86/87 season Fall 86 Spring 87

The Dates in TW Snowboarding our given as April 3-5 1987. The North American Championchips were a Month later on May 2-3 1987

This Pic is from that Mag released in the Fall of 1987 and shows Craig on a Blade and Jose on a vary Alpine looking Hooger Booger.

[John Gilmour]

Maybe it was '87.

Mine was red with multiple gold vertical stripes.

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

The gold striped ones were the 2nd run pressing. the first pressing was Red and white... which I liked because those were 1970's traditional sims colors.

[John Gilmour]

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.

Those horizontal laminate Blades were actually later models.. I know...weird...why would they go back? They did go back... ughhh which is why my X-2000 was a horizontal laminate instead of vertical like the 1710 Blade. (Some jerk told me he would sent me the cash for it in 1999 and stole it from me- I mailed it to him and he never paid... I think he was in Oregon... screwed a bunch of other people too) But Tom did not want the boards to be like skis he wanted them to be closer to surf boards and skateboards.

The Fish shape (like from surfing) was the shape models were based on until the 1710 Blade came out...

Thoughts were that the Terry Kidwell Model (the first rounded tail freestyle (really a directional powder deck by todays standards) has been successful with skateboard type laminates.. I'm not sure if Watsons laminates or Taylor Dykema was making them... SIMS was out of 835 N. Milpas Street in Santa Barbara at the time. We tried the 1710 blade for freestyle and thought flat bases did not work as well on roundwall as they were too "catchy" and that some 1710 blades broke but the horizontal laminates were super strong.

[John Gilmour]

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.

You are correct.

The Burton Express Absolutely did come before the Safari... forgot about that one as I was not a Burton Fan but I do remember thinking it was no threat to the Sims 1710 blade. The Safari on the hand was a clearly superior deck for racing.

The Burton Elite 150's were not like saucers like the FE Pro series from Sims but actually I think they were convex so you had to be on edge.. they were not flat... and they oddly did have tail bevel... they would often crack at the tail and the straps on the bindings broke, but the highbacks on the Sims broke and I was forever replacing them with soccer shin guards..and then convincing people to buy Koflachs from me after I got sick of replacing cracked highbacks.

We would debate on chair lifts and decided that the Burton decks were okay if you were constantly on edge and not riding flat at speed. My Sims decks were outnumbered 75 to 1 in the East.

[Neil Gendzwill]

I had several problems with my Elite 150. One is that the helicoil inserts into the foam deck were ridiculously weak. I pulled them out the first day I rode on a serious hill. The second is that the webbing straps with fastex buckles were very finicky, I had to spend a lot of time at the top of each run fiddling with them to get them tight enough. The Sims board was a big improvement in every way.

[John Gilmour]

Btw I have a handle on an original Lonnie Toft board with Sky hooks..this was the Sims snowboard deck in 1980 (reviewed in Skateboarder Mag that same year) that you mounted a skateboard deck to... it is the Holy Grail of Sims decks... it has a Vintage Dave Andrecht deck mounted to... Sadly there is not a Lonnie Toft deck on it. The condition looks to be amazing... All Yellow still Bright...wow!

BTW two of my friends recently sold their mint Burton Backhills (single strap) for $15,000 and $12,000

Pics to follow.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

BTW two of my friends recently sold their mint Burton Backhills (single strap) for $15,000 and $12,000

Pics to follow.

Wow! That is just madness :D

[b0ardski]

I'd sell my performer for a mere $2000 since it's not mint & later vintage:rolleyes:

[GeorgeS]

I came into snowboarding from a surfing and windsurfing backround. I went to the local trade show here in SoCal(Action Sports) in the fall of '82 and came home with lots of snowboard info. So I ended up riding and selling Burton boards for a few years, starting with a blue

performer, which I liked better than the next years model(I put edges on mine). The Performer Elite150?(fall '84) worked fine for me as I am a lightweight, but I heard of issues others have mentioned. The Elite (and others before it) were flat in the front going back to that sort of rounded v bottom, Sims had a similiar bottom design.

Fins on hardpack just didn't work, I ground my blue board's fins down so they barely were lower than the board. I Removed the fins on the Elite(Sims and Burton still added fins when they started putting edges on their boards).

The 1st sign of highbacks for me was at the '85 worlds at Soda Springs

The burton team riders had pieces of white plastic(prototype highbacks) attached to the back of the same type of binding I had on my Elite. I didn't see anything on the Sims till the next season('85/'86) production boards when almost everone had highbacks.

Those 1st 3 years only one larger resort allowed us in So Cal, so you would ride with the team riders for Barfoot and Sims or the Slicker guys I always rode with from San Diego. I already met Tom sims in the past but I had the pleasure to ride with him one day and he noticed my almost new Elite and he said he wanted to try it so we switched boards. I don't remember if he liked it or not but the next fall at the trade show I ordered a 1500FE.

I Agree about the 1st Sims blade. That board was a revelation, I could do cross under type fast turns on the FE, like Tom in some of the old videos

but that board had no flex. But the Blade was a ton smoother and was the 1st board that had any kind of "pop" at all, the vertical lamiation made it way more lively than anything I rode before.

I went to the Worlds at Breck and I was really impressed with the one guy I saw on a asym(Jose?) just ripping slalom type turns. He was better than

I was but I knew that was what I always wanted to do.

My next board was one that has not been mentioned, the Nitro ameroslalom and the asmys that came out with it, I think 88/89?. This was my 1st board that never saw soft boots. Up to this point those of us who were more "carve oriented" were messing with angles and stance width and canting. I narrowed my stance on my Blade and had both feet angled forward but nothing like today. Guys were riding the Nitro with soft bindings with forward angles and a canted back binding. With my Nitro I put it all together with Kolflach boots and Emery bindings, even at 125 lbs I still broke the bails on the Emerys and ended up with about 4 pair just to keep me going. I still have the board and four pairs of (broken)bindings.

Also the Nitro was the 1st board I heard of someone even trying a carved 360 on.

To me, when I do a toeside turn on this one 90deg turn it always has felt

almost the same whether on a Blue performer or my modern day boards. By this I mean it feels exciting and like I'm doing a big frontside turn on a wave.

Of couse heelside was another thing with the old rubber waterski bindings!

[philw]

Excellent stuff. I wonder if someone should not set up a wiki for this sort of information, then you could hack it around collectively until you have a good collaborative history nailed down.

Personally I rode monoskis whilst you lot were kindly pushing the snowboard makers to make boards which worked on piste. It's kind of funny looking back that what now seems like an obvious idea (use ski technology) took so long to take hold.

I think you're saying that the first metal-edged snowboards (snowboards based broadly on sky technology with sidecut, camber and metal edges etc) appeared around 1987. By late 1989 when I switched to snowboards, that technology had completely taken over, in the resort environment I was riding in at least. Everyone was selling what were basically small monoskis.

[Transistor Rhythm]

But nobody tried to drill snowboard inserts into a monoski in all those years? Even without sidecut they would probably be better for on piste snowboarding

[b0ardski]

But nobody tried to drill snowboard inserts into a monoski in all those years? Even without sidecut they would probably be better for on piste snowboarding

... 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.

I'm suprised you or philw hadn't tried that. Mono was way more common in Europe, I'd think a few tried it there before alpine boards were common.

I 1st saw a mono in '84 but never had the opportunity to try one until a friend built a conversion plate for my k2 TX in '92.

Snowboard stance is way more efficient than monoski stance in my experience.

I've been wanting to get a Coda with both styles of inserts just to chance things up a bit.

[John Gilmour]

Also concerning the thoughts on powder designed boards being mistaken for Alpine.. Just because a deck is directional does not make it an alpine deck.

Alpine... I look at Alpine as specialized for hardpack and firmer snow...and not the best choice for deep snow.

The Sims FE Pro had channels near the tail for channeling the powder snow... and so could in no way be considered Alpine.

Same for the Winter Stick Swallow tail (no metal edges!) and Swallowtail plus (with Metal edges) .

So there had sculpted powder channels in the bottom, The Sims Fe's were not very pronounced.....I also think the 1700 Fe Pro was flat... IRRC.

I was calling the Sims Fe Pro 150 in earlier posts when it really was a 1500 model.

Also IIRC Tom Sims who is constantly called a West Coaster.. did live in Santa Barbara...and was ahead of his time... I remember his Dad Paul Sims sending me a newspaper clipping about how Tom had recycled his shower and dish water (grey water) to use for watering his garden at times of water shortages in california... That was back in 1982! So Tom was green way way early.

First time I saw Tom Sims was at the Nassau Coliseum in June 1976 Long Island NY, for a big skateboard contest indoors. Sims was a long boarder... riding I think a Sims 36 inch taper kick in the slalom (might have been the 44 inch). The kicktail was so long he hit a bunch of cones despite putting in a decent run..... on the huge indoor ramp.... (it was indoor slalom) Henry Hester (I was his biggest fan as a kid and now he is on my slalom team...lol) was there as well as Skitch Hitchcock, and I think Bob Skoldberg and Bobby Piercy might have been there as well.. Freestylers were Ed Nadalin, Mike Weed, Ellen Berryman, Desire von Essen, Skitch Hitchcock, Steve Cathey, Russ Howell, Bruce Logan, and Chris Chaput (not as sure about Chappy). There was a high jump and barrel Jump too.

Tom Sims used to live in New Jersey...and I think he surfed on Long island... this was when he was a lot younger.... so the Cali fellah did have some East Coast roots.

My friend Larry Marcus was so impressed by the slalomers, that he bought 50 Sims Slalom cones at the event - he still has them..

That is when I really started to slalom a lot because for a few years prior we just used Baskin and Robbins Pint cups. The Sims cones did not blow away as easily and looked far cooler with the stickers. The polka dots on the ice cream cups were certainly not cool.

So When Sims got into snowboarding... it all made sense to me... a longer board... surf influenced style... ski type technology similar to the Sims/Powell Quicksilver cambered skateboard decks. Even the Sims Taper Kicks (IMHO the most beautiful wooden boards ever made) used waterski type construction.. Tom Sims was married to the long radius turn far before snowboarding.

So to me.... it would make perfect sense that Sims would be after the long carve before anyone else.

As for the first really good Alpine deck... for user friendly it would be the Checker Pig G6 or G5, (they also had the most reliable bombproof bindings made of filamentous fiber reinforced composite! other than the all metal thicker bailed Avalanche Uniplate)

- for Earliest performance Alpine... it was likely the Aggression Stealth which was an odd asym as it had more toeside sidecut than heelside..because it was meant to be ridden at high stance angles... it was also narrow (19.0cm) which was considered insanely extreme at the time. Because your heelside got more powerful with higher stance angles...and the tighter stance (forced tighter because the retention sheets of metal were so close together- and the Emery plate and SnoPro bindings of the time forced limited stances with their mounting plates) also favored heelsides... it was an asym sidecut choice that made sense.

[philw]

I'm suprised you or philw hadn't tried that. Mono was way more common in Europe, I'd think a few tried it there before alpine boards were common. ... Snowboard stance is way more efficient than monoski stance in my experience.

I never thought of it at the time. I think the reason was partly because snowboards of the time looked very short and not much like monos. There were small monos (a 160 Duret in pink...), but I personally found the longer machines (195) better for riding hard on piste, so I moved in the other direction.

Stance efficiency: well I'm not sure. Most people on monos then weren't that good - if you put your vertical in on one then you can get pretty efficient. To me they're quite similar, which is why I embraced symmetrical boards without really thinking about it.

for Earliest performance Alpine... it was likely the Aggression Stealth which was an odd asym as it had more toeside sidecut than heelside..because it was meant to be ridden at high stance angles... it was also narrow (19.0cm) which was considered insanely extreme at the time.

Yeah, I coveted one, in black of course. A rocket ship by all accounts, but I could never afford one so I never rode it.

[softbootsurfer]

I saw Mike Doyle on a Blue Surfboard looking thing, in 1 ft. of fresh Pow surf down the Ridge of Bell on Aspen Mt.

in 1970 -71 ? Mike of course evolved the Monoski as well...

also I saw a Monoski in Aspen sometime in the mid-seventies with boots in a modern Alpine stance bolted on somehow?

Who it belonged to or wether it was even allowed up on the mountain I do not know...

To say Alpine riding on a Snowboard started in the mid 80's, well to me, is a disservice to all the early pioneers.

True, Snowboards were basically banned from all the resorts and the groom, but the basics of the Style and the Motion

we all so love today were started much earlier IMHO.

Here is the definition of Alpine Skiing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_skiing

To define Alpine Snowboardings origin as somewhere in the mid 80's ? Shortchanges our Real History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_snowboarding

[Jack M]

As for the first really good Alpine deck... for user friendly it would be the Checker Pig G6 or G5,

I'm gonna have to vote for the Safari there. I loved carving mine.

[John Gilmour]

I'm gonna have to vote for the Safari there. I loved carving mine.

I only picked the pig because if its soft flex pattern.. You could just toss your weight forward to the nose if you ever thought you were going to catch an edge. Also the Pigs had thin sidewalls for their flex patten stiffness so they could cut into that super crusty east coast snow and the Checker Pig G5 was small enough to be of use on crowded narrow trails..in that regard it was user friendly. I taught a bunch of people to ride alpine on Checker Pigs... people really bonded to those boards. I could convince someone to ride a G5 or G6 checker pig, but had a harder time to convince someone to ride a Safari as it was a bigger deck overall. The Aggression Stealth was a better racer.. as the flex pattern and overall flex pattern was better... but it scared people because of Asym lock and the thinness.

But as a racer... The Safari was still a far far better racing machine than the Checker Pigs- though I think the Aggression Stealth would have been better in slalom- and the Safari was stiff enough to hold on a variety of snow. The safari was great for mach'in big hills like for super G and GS... it was really one of the early eye opening Burton Products.

[Skully]

With all this talk about Checker Pigs, I'll have to change pay tribute with the avatar...

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

This is such a "Favorite" thread of mine, hate to let it die out.

Those 1st 3 years only one larger resort allowed us in So Cal, so you would ride with the team riders for Barfoot and Sims or the Slicker guys I always rode with from San Diego.

The "Slicker" guy is skateboard legend Steve Cathey FYI. Only made snowboards for one year. 300 total, 100 of each of the three sizes.

Very well made.

[kipstar]

My next board was one that has not been mentioned, the Nitro ameroslalom and the asmys that came out with it, I think 88/89?. This was my 1st board that never saw soft boots. Up to this point those of us who were more "carve oriented" were messing with angles and stance width and canting. I narrowed my stance on my Blade and had both feet angled forward but nothing like today. Guys were riding the Nitro with soft bindings with forward angles and a canted back binding. With my Nitro I put it all together with Kolflach boots and Emery bindings, even at 125 lbs I still broke the bails on the Emerys and ended up with about 4 pair just to keep me going. I still have the board and four pairs of (broken)bindings.

Also the Nitro was the 1st board I heard of someone even trying a carved 360 on.

If this is Nitro as in Nitro Betty, then the first year they came out was the season 1990-91 Northern Hemisphere, and they launched the first year with a range of alpine boards called the EFT (earth freedom tranquility) which were asyms, and a symetrical one as well which might well be the Ameroslalom, I can't remember the name. They were not insert boards, this came the next season.

I rode the EFT and still have one at home in NZ somewhere; very nice board. Full of holes now from mounting it so many times!

They even had a video that year; somehow there was some connection to Gnu as well I think, possibly through their distributor in USA. Back then many of the alpine and freestyle brands were growing incredibly quickly; the big consolidation occurred after I stopped riding for a while (1998 - 2002) when I started riding again a ton of the board manufacturers seemed to have changed a lot.

Nitro also did an asym freestyle board twin tip (the pyro) and a swallow tail; the next really good board they brought out IMHO was the scorpion, which i loved riding.