A brief history of snowboarding

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 10, Issue 485, 11 May 1993, Page 14 (Supplement)

A brief history of snowboarding

Snowboarding first began in the United States in the late 1970s, but it wasn't until 1988 that boarders became a conraion sight at Turoa. Early in the eighties a pair of boarders, one now a regular ski patroller, worked hard at it on home made boards. But with the advent of performance boards, with ice-cutting edges, boarders started 'breeding'.

Turoa started snowboarding lessons two years ago, and this season has three full time and four part time instructors. "In the States they say boarding is taking over from skiing lessons, but that won't be the case in New Zealand for some time yet," said Peter Reynolds, ex-Turoa Ski School director. He says they've had

quite a lot of skiing families wanting to learn snowboarding. Dangerous? They make a lot more noise than skis but are they dangerous? "I don't think so, people are probably more aware of snowboarders because there's fewer of them," he said, "the same amount of people aren't careful on skis." Snowboards make

more of a scraping sound compared to the 'swish' of skis. This is because they run on one edge and the sound resonates and amplifies from the wide base especially on hard snow, making them sound much faster than they really are. Snowboarders have a considerably lower rate of injury in proportion to skiers, according to Turoa's ski patrol director Alistair Moore

"This is probably because snowboarders tend to be younger people who are reasonably fit and agile." The ski patrol treat snowboarders mainly for wrist and ankle injuries. The soft boots a lot of snowboarders wear don't give the same ankle support as hard ski boots, making their ankles more susceptible to injury. Last year Turoa constructed a half pipe for freestyle snowboarding. The half pipe, below the drive station of the Jumbo T-Bar. Mountain Manager Grant McMaster said they'd had problems building and maintaining one last season because the heavy and constant snowfalls filled it in as soon as it was finished. Because of the popu-

larity of the sport Turoa are looking at providing beginner snowboarder packages and holding snowboarding clinics for freestyling, racing and free riding. Whakapapa Snowboarding isn't quite as popular at Whakapapa yet but they're definitely catching up. They have two full time instructors to cope with the increasingly popular lessons. Ski School Manager Patrick Simmen said there might have been some animosity towards boarders from skiers about five years ago, but now they are accepted. Whakapapa had the same problem as Turoa last season - their kalf pipe needed constant maintenance because of the large amount of snow.