“Wow, what is that? That’s cool!”

How snowboarding arrived in Aspen

Back in 1989, the not-in-mybackyard phone calls to keep snowboarders off Aspen Mountain (Ajax) came in strong:

“I think Ajax should continue to not let them on the mountain. Be different. Be that one area where they cannot go. They’ve got three areas here, Buttermilk, Snowmass and Highlands that they can play on. They can go down to Sunlight. Let them do it there.”

“The snowboarders should not be allowed on Aspen Mountain. All it will do is increase the injuries.”

“I’m opposed to Burton boarders skiing on Aspen Mountain. We don’t ski on their waves, so why do they surf on our snow? And the reason they snowboard is because they can’t ski. The reason we don’t snowboard is because snowboarding sucks.”

The Aspen Daily News at the time had a phone tip line that people could call into, voice their complaints (and some praise), with “10 of 37 callers supporting the shredding of Aspen Mountain,” according to its story from Feb. 27 of that year.

The unidentified complaints from the story continued:

“Please don’t let snowboarders on Aspen Mountain. It would ruin it.”

“I say no to snowboarders because the terrain just isn’t fit. The environment is way too fragile. What would we do with all those shredders up there?”

Just five years prior, on Feb. 2, 1984, The Aspen Times (a weekly then) ran the first article on this up-and-coming new trend, “For skiers who would rather be surfing, or skateboarders who would like to apply their skills to the slopes.”

As the story goes, two local teenage brothers — Mark and

Andy Collen — had become the only area distributors of snowboards, Burton specifically. From attempting “to make their own out of plywood with limited success (the garage is full of prototypes)” to using their mom’s wholesale license to help build their budding business, handing out business cards — “the Snowboard Brothers of Aspen” — to potential buyers, the bug had caught, and they were there from the start.

The Aspen Times recently caught up with Andy to reflect back 40 years ago to when “skiboards,” as they were also known back then, began to blaze their trail locally on the four mountains.

On Christmas Day 1983, he and Mark’s father had given them Burton boards. According to the Times, “The two had known of snowboards for years but had never been able to find them in any store, even in Denver.”

“We opened them up,” Andy recently said, “and we were like, ‘Oh, my God — these are fantastic! Everybody’s gonna want one.’ ”

His mom brought up the idea of using her license to help them out.

“Let me call them and see,” he remembers saying to her. “Jake Burton answers the phone, and I told him, ‘I’m 16, and I want to sell boards. I got my mom’s wholesale license. Would you take it?’ And he’s like, ‘You’re in Aspen?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ and he’s like, ‘Of course!’”

The Backhill, as Andy describes it, had a water-ski-type binding on the front with a nylon clip that would wrap around the back of your heel. The rear binding was a rubber strap; this would later change to somewhat match the front binding.

“And so your foot was on if the strap was tight,” he said, “so you’re constantly adjusting your strap.”

Metal fins below, along a concave back end; wood edges instead of metal; and a front-end rope with handle rounded out the board components, he summarized.

A slightly more expensive board had just been released, as well, he said.

“The Performer was the board that changed Burton,” he said. “And then after that, they started to really go with the Ptex base and the metal edges and all that kind of stuff.”

When he reflected back on the big difference between snowboarding then vs. now, the stiffness of a snowboarder’s ankles