Mavericks of Snowboarding

By the 1960s, surfers and skateboarders were starting to get an itch to practice their sports year-round. Three men -- Dimitrije Milovich, Jake Burton Carpenter and Tom Sims -- would make this possible by borrowing technologies from each of their favorite sports.

Boardercross
Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images
Snowboarders jump during the quarter final of the snowboarding Boardercross event at the FIS World Cup Grand Finals.

Dimitrije Milovich was a surfer from the East Coast who used cafeteria trays to slide down snowy hills. In 1970, Milovich used the basic design of a surfboard to create a snowboard with a swallowtail shape (it has a "V" cut out in the back).

Tom Sims was a skateboarder who, in the 1960s, tinkered with his board during shop class at Haddonfield Middle School in New Jersey. He added bindings so that he could strap on his feet, put aluminum sheeting on the bottom and called his contraption the "Skiboard." He went on to found his own company, Sims Snowboards, in the late '70s.

Jake Burton Carpenter was a skier when he bought his first Snurfer and began modifying it. He added strips of rubber to hold his feet to the board, which gave him more freedom of movement. In 1977, he started his own company, Burton Snowboards, which helped lead to the 1979 demise of the Snurfer and the rise of the snowboard.

During the '70s, snowboard manufacturers added a few changes, like adding metal edges and narrowing the center of the board to make turning easier. A group of adventurous snowboarders in Lake Tahoe, Calif., discovered the first halfpipe -- a U-shaped structure that enabled them to catch air and perform tricks. In the 1980s and '90s, the sport began to come into its own and surged in popularity.

Skiing vs. Snowboarding -- The Rivalry
As snowboarding became popular, many skiers viewed snowboarders, with their long hair and baggy clothes, as punks who had no place on the more refined slopes. Most ski resorts banned snowboarding. In the few that allowed it, skiers complained about nearly getting mowed down by aggressive snowboarders.

In 1982, Suicide Six Ski Resort in Vermont set a precedent by becoming the first ski resort to open up its slopes to snowboarders. By the 1990s, most ski resorts realized that they were going to lose major revenue by not allowing snowboarding. Aspen Mountain in Colorado was one of the last skiers' holdouts, refusing to open its trails to snowboarders until 2001. The very next year, it signed a seven-year deal to host ESPN's Winter X Games.

Today, all but a handful of ski areas allow snowboarding. The notable holdouts are Alta Ski Area (which calls itself "a skier's mountain"), Deer Valley Resort in Utah and Mad River Glen in Vermont. As a challenge to these staunch ski-only resorts, Burton Snowboards offered up $5,000 in 2007 for any snowboarder who snuck into one of these resorts and filmed it, and $20,000 for anyone who filmed themselves snowboarding in all of the forbidden resorts.

What gear do you need before you hit the slopes? How is a snowboard designed? Go to the next section to find out.

­