Powder Mountain, Winterstick team up to mark 50 years of snowboarding
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- A snowboarder rides the snow at Powder Mountain in this undated photo.
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- A snowboarder rides the snow at Powder Mountain in this undated photo.
EDEN — About 50 years back, the nascent Powder Mountain ski resort — aside from giving local skiers a new place to play in the snow — served as a laboratory of sorts for one Dimitrije Milovich.
Starting in 1972, the New Jersey transplant to Utah started using the resort to test a new-fangled device he was developing that allowed users to maneuver through the snow in a new way — via a thing we now call the snowboard.
“I think Dimitrije inspired everybody with what was possible — sliding sideways in the snow,” said Rob Kingwill, a professional U.S. snowboarder based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Now, some 50 years later, Kingwill and the other modern-day operators of the company Milovich founded, Winterstick Snowboards, are teaming with Powder Mountain to recall those days five decades ago. “We want to celebrate how far snowboarding has come,” said Kingwill, part-owner and brand manager for Winterstick, founded in Utah but now based in Sugarloaf, Maine.
From Friday through Sunday, a range of activities are planned at Powder Mountain to mark 50 years of snowboarding, involving Winterstick reps and some top U.S. snowboarders.
Milovich’s efforts at Powder Mountain beginning back in 1972 “started the snowboarding revolution that continues to evolve today,” Rob Lu, the Winterstick president and chief engineer, said in a statement. “We can’t wait to see everybody at such an influential location to snowboarding culture — to share stories from the past and an inspiring vision for the future.”
Vintage snowboards will be on display and group ride-alongs with top snowboarders are planned at what organizers are dubbing a 50th anniversary party for snowboarding. Winterstick — which makes top-line snowboards — will offer demonstrations, and starting Saturday afternoon going into the evening, a ticketed event featuring food, drinks and entertainment is slated.
“You can expect to watch videos of the beginnings of snowboarding, hear talks from the riders who were there when it all started and even possibly catch a couple of Utah’s finest snowboard punk rock bands,” reads a Winterstick statement.
Significantly, Kingwill also sees the event as a way to pay homage to Milovich, who set up a base of operations for his snowboard-making efforts in Salt Lake City and still lives there today. Winterstick as a company floundered in those early days as snowboarding struggled to find a foothold in the scheme of winter sports.
“He was so far ahead of his time it was a curse,” said Kingwill, who dubs Milovich “the godfather” of the sport. “He really set the tone for what was possible.”
Indeed, Powder Mountain operators “were just always open to new things,” hence their openness to letting Milovich test his snowboard designs at the resort, said J.P. Goulet, spokesperson for Powder Mountain. Powder Mountain, which formally opened on Feb. 19, 1972, held its 50th year anniversary last year.
However, Powder Mountain didn’t officially start allowing snowboards on its slopes until 1984.
A brief history of snowboarding in Smithsonian Magazine says that while a Michigan man created a device in the 1960s that mimicked snowboards, “the real breakthrough” came with Milovich and Winterstick. “With steel edges, laminated fiberglass and, most crucially, nylon straps for one’s feet, Winterstick’s boards allowed riders to fly through more treacherous topography than its predecessors had,” it reads.
Still, it took a few years before the sport — “a counterculture to skiing’s establishment vibe,” according to Smithsonian — received more widespread acceptance. Snowboarding is now an Olympic event, but still, that counterculture vibe lingers on.
The early snowboarders “just wanted to surf or skateboard in the snow,” said Kingwill, a desire that persists.
More details about the Powder Mountain and Winterstick activities are online at winterstick.com/pages/50th-anniversary.