Origins Of Snowboarding

How Snowboarding All Began

When was snowboarding invented? Who invented it? How did s/he come up with it? These are all good questions soon to be answered. Modern day snowboarding is also like skiing, downhill, on a snowy mountain, but we all know that they are very very different.

In 1964, a surfer named Sherman Poppen invented the first snowboard. As a surfer, Sherman wanted to surf on the mountain as well as the oceans. So he built his first prototype for his daughter, Wendy. It consisted of a two skis bolted together to create a 1.20 meter board. A year later in 1965, he took his idea to the production line. He carried this out with a bowling ball manufacturer, the items themselves were then known as Snurfers (a snow surfer). Over one million snurfers were sold in the next ten years, Sherman then began to make a competition series. But then snurfers disappeared quickly and most people remembered them as an uncontrollable toy.

In 1970, an east coast surfer by the name of Dimitrije Milovich, had an idea while he was sledding. He developed snowboards in a new way. He experimented with laminating glass and gravel on the board, adding rudimentary steel edging, and also used nylon straps as foot holds. His company was considered the first ever snowboard manufacturing company called ‘winterstick’.

In 1980, a man named Jake Burton really got into the snurfing toy and kept on improving it. He wanted to be able to develop it as a functioning toy/item that people would actually like and use. He was the first person to develop good solid foot straps for the early snowboards. In 1977 he started his very own small company making ‘snowboards’ which was what he called them. He took a board and attached waterski bindings onto it. His company is still around today, now, it i known as ‘Burton Boards’.

In the same year that Jake started his company a guy by the name of Chuck Barfoot invented another type of board. Made of polyethylene, the board had no foot straps or foot traps but it featured a leash to control direction and speed.

During the time where these people had been making boards, snowboarding had been illegal in almost all ski resorts (only 7% in the US!!), people who loved snowboarding (anybody cool enough to realize it had potential) would have to sneak up the trails at night to snowboard so that they would avoid being seen at day and given penalty.

Snowboarding is now a popular sport and an Olympic Event as well as a hobby that many people enjoy, it's is also fairly well known that it competes with its rival, skiing. Though these rivals find much to bicker about, there are still many of us who think that one is not better than the other and just want to have fun on the mountain. This is how snowboarding was invented. What do you think the next extreme mountain sport people will come up with next?