December 1, 1996

The search for the origins of the snowboard halfpipe take us into the past,beyond snowboarding and skateboarding, to the fluid ocean wave. Its shapeand power are ultimately responsible for creating the modern snowboard halfpipe.

The fluidity of water is reflected in the shape of the structures man hasused to control it. Pipes, dams, swimming pools, and drainage ditches allhave smooth flowing lines because water has the tendency to wear off anyrough edges man builds.

By 1975 skateboarders had progressed from riding downhill on flat streetsto riding the flowing lines of drainage ditches, and swimming pools, butthey were still searching for that perfect transition. In the full-pipe theyfound it. The halfpipe was a popular item at skateboard parks in the mid-70sbecause it was the transition of a wave, or pool distilled down to its mostsimple form.

When skateboarders and surfers began riding snowboards in the late 1970'sthey searched for the same kind of terrain they enjoyed riding on their skateand surfboards. In nature, thanks to the work of gravity, water, and wind,flowing and smooth transitions are very common. Snow covered creek beds looka lot like frozen waves, or drainage ditches, so snowboarders began seekingthem out.

NATURAL PIPES

In 1978, resorts in California's Lake Tahoe basin hadn't realized snowboarding'spotential and refused to allow snowboards on their mountains. Because ofthis, snowboarders spent most of their free time searching for good spotsto ride. "Back then not everyone in high school had cars so we needed placesto ride that were close by," remembers 29-year-old Tahoe local Bob Klein.

Klein's friend Mark Anolik was hiking around Tahoe City in 1979 when hediscovered the perfect hit on land owned by the Tahoe-Truckee SanitationCompany. It was literally the city dump. No one is quite sure if the spotwas a bend in a creek bed, or the edge of the land fill. It had an entryand a couple hits, which was all these snowboard pioneers needed. Word ofthe pipe spread and within a few days Mark, Bob Klein, Allen Arnbrister,and Terry Kidwell were beginning to session the spot. They named it the TahoeCity Pipe.

By the spring of 1980, thanks to a local phone company employee and skateboardfanatic named Mike Chantry, the pipe was exposed to the skateboard world."Mike Chantry took me there nearly blindfolded because Bob Klein didn't wantanyone to find out about it," remembers Tom Sims, founder of Sims Snowboards."What's wrong with other snowboarders finding the pipe. At that time thereweren't even that many snowboarders in the world, let alone riding the TahoeCity Pipe."

Over the next few years pro skateboarders Rob Roskopp, Steve Cabellero, andScott Foss began visiting the pipe. Lensmen from Thrasher magazine and laterInternational Snowboard Magazine were close behind, not as much for the pipe,but because of the people who were there.

By today's standards the Tahoe City Halfpipe was not even a halfpipe. "Thepipe itself was really just one-hit," Chantry says. "To make it good tooka lot of shoveling."

That didn't seem to bother Terry Kidwell or Allen Arnbrister. "Once Kidwelland Arnbrister got into it, it became more of shaping thing," Klein explains."They would spend more time shaping it than riding."

At the time, the idea of building a snowboard halfpipe to match the dimensionsof a skateboard halfpipe hadn't seemed possible. And the snowboard equipmentin the early 80s didn't help that progression either. "We were on boardswith bungees for bindings so we were most interested in dropping in and goingup the other wall," Klein says. "It wasn't really about air."

Keith Kimmel moved from Burlington, Vermont to Tahoe City in the fall of1983. Tom Sims had given Keith Mike Chantry's phone number when Keith gotto Tahoe Mike showed him the pipe. "It was only half a block from where Ilived," Keith says. "So I used to ride it all the time by myself. That'swhere I met Terry and Allen and we started planning sessions." Keith latershowed up on the cover of the first issue of Absolutely Radical, riding theTahoe City Pipe.

Around 1982 Eddie Hargraves and his brother Cary began riding a naturalquarterpipe across the road from Sugar Bowl resort, near California's DonnerSummit. Joel Gomez, now the owner of Sessions Snowboard Shop, and Mike Chantrywere snowboard instructors at Soda Springs at the time and would often driveover to ride the pipe.

Damian Sanders and Shaun Palmer also rode the Donner Quarterpipe quite abit. Both were riding for Avalanche Snowboards at the time. "The startingwall was just a big hillside," Keith Kimmel explains. "At the Tahoe CityPipe there was a limit. We had to build up the starting platform to get extraspeed, but at the Donner Halfpipe you go hike as high as you wanted."

MAN-MADE TERRAIN

These hits, or pipes as riders called them were nothing more than modifiednatural terrain. It wasn't until 1983 when Tom Sims organized the first WorldChampionships at Soda Springs, California that man-made halfpipe was constructedat a resort. It was the first snowboard halfpipe contest.

"I hired Chantry to help me lobby Soda Springs management into building ahalfpipe," Tom Sims says. "They built the pipe, but it was not good. I wasextremely disappointed. Then the Burton Team threatened to boycott the contestbecause they felt that halfpipe riding had nothing to do with snowboarding."

Apparently, the first contest was extremely important to Jake Carpenter andTom Sims. It was a battle between the West Coast skateboarders and the EastCoast Snurfers. The Sims riders had been riding pipes for three years, andthe Burton riders had been racing. When the two groups got together therewere sparks.

"The pipe was horrible," says Keith Kimmel, who couldn't afford the entryfee. "It was basically two rows of snow chunks. And the chunks were onlyabout four feet high."

The riders, who had been shaping hits in the forest for several years knewwhat they wanted in a pipe, however it was difficult communicating thoseneeds with the people at the resorts. The Soda Springs pipe was placed toohigh on the mountain where the slope was steep and riders had a hard timecontrolling their speed. While it may not have been the dream pipe everyonehoped for, it was a starting point. The idea that someone with a snowcatcould shape a rideable halfpipe got many people thinking.

In '84 and '85 the Soda Springs World's pipe was on the lower part of themountain where the slope was less steep and riders were able to boost air.Due to the success of Soda Springs' pipe Slide Mountain, Nevada, a resorton the eastern side of Lake Tahoe built a pipe.

A VORTEX SHIFT TO COLORADO

By 1986, when the World Championship contest moved from Soda Springs, Californiato Breckenridge, Colorado things began to progress. Dave Alden, with helpfrom his father Paul, convinced Breckenridge Ski Resort to to help them builda pipe. The resort employees didn't know what they were building. "Dave andI to go in and meet with the management and convince them that the halfpipewas not a speed events," remembers Fran Richards, who is currently the marketingmanager at TransWorld SNOWboarding Magazine. "They thought it was an Alpineevent and they wanted us to wear helmets."

The pipe that Breckenridge and Dave Alden built was short and wide. It wasabout 150 feet long, 60 feet wide with walls about five feet high and novertical, but it was better than the pipes at Soda Springs. Breckenridge'scommitment to the halfpipe, however, pulled the vortex of halfpipe ridingfrom California, to Colorado.

That same year, two other pipes appeared in Colorado. One at Berthoud Passand another at Wolf Creek for the Southwest Snowsurfers Association contestorganized by Mike Maynard. So far none of the resorts had built a permanentpipe. The pipes were only built for contests.

When the Worlds contest returned to Breckenridge in 1987, the location ofthe pipe moved from Peak 8 to Peak 9, where it has remained for the pastsix years. Nearly everyone agrees that the Worlds pipe at Breckenridge April2-5, 1987 was the best pipe up to that point in the history of snowboarding.It was about 200 feet long, 40 feet wide, with four-foot wide roll-out deckson either side, six foot high walls that nearly went to vertical, "and atree on the bottom right side that Rob Morrow hit during his run," adds TinaBasich. The pipe was left of for people to ride, and it became the firstpermanent snowboard pipe at a resort.

RESORTS HOOK UP

By 1988 halfpipes had become media magnets. Every magazine and televisionshow wanted to do a story about "those wild snowboarders who ride in halfpipesmade of snow." Because of this resorts realized that in order to attractsnowboarders they would need to build halfpipes.

In the spring of 1988, Jake Burton decided that after six years without ahalfpipe it was finally time for U.S. Open at Stratton to have a halfpipechampion. Halfpipe had become a very important part of snowboarding competition.

Later, in the summer of 1988, Snow Summit and June Mountain in California;and Waterville Valley, New Hampshire decided to build permanent halfpipes.All three resorts chose to shape the pipes by moving dirt into the shapeof the pipe and letting the snow fall in during the winter. It seemed likea good idea. Snow Summit used blueprints drawn up by Tom Sims. Eric Websterhelped out at Waterville Valley, and June Mountain worked with some localsnowboarders and Ronnie McCoy, the grandson of Mammoth Mountain's owner.

Come winter the "in-the-ground" halfpipe idea, which seemed so logical duringthe summer, didn't seem as functional as everyone had hoped. During the earlyseason with two to three feet of snow on the pipe it looked good and waseasy to maintain, however as the snow piled up the pipes began to fill inand it became difficult for cat drivers to know where the dirt walls were.Occasionally they would gouge the wall with their blade and uncover dirt.The dirt would heat up in the sun, then freeze at night leaving icy spotson the walls.

The June Mountain's halfpipe had problems all its own. To build the verticalwalls June Mountain employees stacked bales of hay and covered them withsnow. Unfortunately, during the 1989 Op Pro at June Mountain the hayself-combusted and began smoldering under the snow. Smoke began billowingfrom black holes that had melted into the walls. Photographer Bud Fawcettwas shooting in the pipe and actually fell through up to his knees. The contestwent off anyway.

In Colorado, Breckenridge continued to make pipes the way they always had,by using cats to build a long pile of snow and then dig the halfpipe outof the middle and hand shape the rest. Again, in 1989 the Breckenridge pipewas called "the finest pipe of the year," by TransWorld SNOWboarding magazine.It was approximately 300 feet long, forty feet lip-to-lip, and had two largetombstones at the top of the pipe.

At Stratton Mountain, master halfpipe builder Lyle Blazedale had built anew shovel for his backhoe and Stratton became a real player in the halfpipeworld. The only real competition Stratton and Breckenridge had came froma tiny resort located outside Madison, Wisconsin called Tyrol Basin, andthe 1991 Victoria Japan Snowboard World Cup contest at Rusutsu Resort, Japan.

In 1990, with little more than a hill and only two lifts, Don McKay, Tyrol'sgeneral manager decided to build the best pipe in the world. He and mountainmanager Dave Rogers blew snow and shaped a perfect, 400-foot-long World Cupregulation halfpipe. Riders like Dale Rehberg, Nate Cole, Jake Blattner,and Joe Curtes told everyone how great the pipe was, but few believed itwas possible. Then in June of 1993, Tyrol held a halfpipe contest and theworld discovered this secret spot.

The Rusutsu halfpipe was truly a World Cup Pipe. "The snow had a little dirtin is," says Jimi Scott. "But that was one of the best pipes I've ever ridden."

The builders of the pipe used surveying equipment, and a backhoe to buildthe pipe exactly to the dimensions published in the International SnowboardFederation Rule book. Even though much of the snow had to be trucked in fromthe surrounding hillsides, the halfpipe was perfect, if a little brown.

What the pipes at Tyrol Basin and Rusutsu Resort proved is that when a resortsupports halfpipe building, a perfect pipe can show up anywhere, even ifthere isn't a lot of snow.

THE 90S AND BEYOND

In 1991 halfpipe building reached the machine age when Doug Waugh, anfarm-machinery mechanic from Colorado unveiled his Pipe Dragon. The machineis specially designed slope groomer on a curve. Towed behind a snowcat thePipe Dragon can groom the walls of a pipe perfectly smooth. The machine wasused at Vail, Eldora, Snowmass, Buttermilk, and Copper Mountain with success.One thing was for sure: the Pipe Dragon made it much easier for some resortsto maintain their halfpipes, however, the machine had limited adjustabilityas far as the transitions were concerned and many riders felt the radiusof the pipe was too small, making it difficult to get a lot of air. "It waslike skating the shallow end of a swimming pool," said past world halfpipechampion Jeff Brushie.

Interest in halfpipe riding seemed to drop off after 1991. Whether it wasthe poorly designed pipes of the Professional Snowboard Tour of America,or the inconsistent judging, many snowboarders were bummed about riding pipesand began riding picnic tables, slider bars and fun boxes. It was the beginningof the New School invasion.

Jimi Scott, the 1993 ISF World Cup Halfpipe Champion, believes this happenedbecause resorts have not kept their pipes up, not because people don't likeriding the pipe. "I know that if people had good, consistent pipes to ridein that a lot more people would still be riding the pipe," Jimi says.

"Everyone I ride with says pipes are the shit," says Jeff Brushie, 1991 WorldCup Halfpipe Champion. "I don't think pipe riding will go out. It's not likeskating. On a skateboard you can take your feet of the board and learn 100sof street tricks. But when you're not in the pipe on snowbards all you cando is spin more."

Jeff and Jimi agree that if vertical snowboarding is going to progress theterrain needs to progress along with it. Sure, the best riders in the worldcan ride any pipe, no matter how poorly designed it is, however with perfectpipes the sky is the limit.

Most snowboarders say they'd love to ride halfpipes a lot more if resortswould build good ones. Snowboard halfpipes have been around for 10 yearsand like Jeff Brushie says, they won't go away. It's up to the resorts todecide whether they believe halfpipes will work. Resorts are in the businessof making money, and if they think a good halfpipe will help them make moremoney then they'll build one. Which brings it down to one thing: supportyour local halfpipe.

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