Early Longboard Skiboards 1961

[jjue]

Here is a pic of a gal at White Mountain in New Hampshire circa 1961 , on some early versions of Longboard Skiboards.... a bit narrow by todays standards but nice twin tip , design :)!

http://sites.legitify.com/skitheeast.net/user_media/363420110/367115521_7a32be1deb.jpg

[Roussel]

wow i love this kind of stuff, someone should gather all these photos and info and put them up someowhere in one place.

[mahatma]

jjue,

Are those lace-up boots she's wearing or just the way the sun is shining off of them? I think lace ups would be awesome for skiboarding. Somebody's got to be able to make a pair of leather/plastic mold with laces. I'd buy a pair in a heartbeat.

[jjue]

jjue,

Are those lace-up boots she's wearing or just the way the sun is shining off of them? I think lace ups would be awesome for skiboarding. Somebody's got to be able to make a pair of leather/plastic mold with laces. I'd buy a pair in a heartbeat.

Yup , lace up leather boots , I started out on those , certainly did not give the support of buckle plastic boots of today ..
Here is more detailed pic of the kind of boots she is wearing

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l88/jjue/mus23.jpg

[jjue]

wow i love this kind of stuff, ....

Me too, Roussel , it really helps to realize that folks have been thinking along skiboard lines for a long time, just never really caught on ... interesting that these short "goon skis" which were the very first twin tip skis of any kind were invented by Jimmy Madden of new hampshire a figure skater as well as a skier , just like a lot of skiboarders are skaters now ..

"Birth of the Goon Ski
It all began in New Hampshire with a figure skater from Boston, Jimmy Madden, who was also an enthusiastic skier. Madden was a former U.S. Olympic team figure skater and 1934 U.S. pairs champ. In the winter of 1938, he gave a skating exhibition at North Conway. Unhappily, he hurt a foot during the performance. He still wanted to go skiing the next day but to ease the strain on his weakened foot, he decided to try kids’ skis.
Once on the mountain, Madden found that these little skis turned so easily he could execute his figure skating routines on them, all but the the going-backward part when the tail of the skis would dig in.
But he was not discouraged. He was so delighted at being able to do “ figure skiing,” he designed the first modern double-ended ski. Then he persuaded Boston’s pioneer ski shop owner Asa Osborn to have the skis made by Thor Groswold in Denver. Madden used his new “ski skates” to create the first ski ballet routines in America. ....
Madden trained a troupe of trick skiers and took them to places like Sun Valley—history’s first freestyle tour. Skiers asking where they could get goon skis he referred to Derby-Ball, the woodworking firm in Waterbury, Vermont willing to make them. In the next few years, Derby-Ball sold several thousand goon skis.
Goon skiers became the snowboarders of the 1940s, doing unseemly tricks on those strange pointy skis of theirs all over New England. Ski journalist Peter Miller recalls that, in the mid-1940s at Mt. Cranmore, he had seen “my uncle Cally, up on the mountain in a group of men—I think there were six or seven of them—holding hands and wearing goon skis and doing a skiing crack-the-whip.”

[pinkkid]

great picture find Jack! Thanks!
What length you gther those are anyways?

[jjue]

great picture find Jack! Thanks!
What length you gther those are anyways?

they were made in various lengths from 4 feet to 5 feet in length or 121 cm to 150cm ... one common size was 4 feet 3 inch or about 130 cm long . and the one she has on seems around that size ... Spruce boards are 120 and 130cm so around the same ball park ..

[pinkkid]

thank you.

[adeehr]

wow i love this kind of stuff, someone should gather all these photos and info and put them up someowhere in one place.

Wasn't Ty doing a 'history of skiboarding' project for school last year? I wonder what ever happened to that and if these things could be coupled with that information to create database of some sort.

[tyberesk]

Wasn't Ty doing a 'history of skiboarding' project for school last year? I wonder what ever happened to that and if these things could be coupled with that information to create database of some sort.

i actually was about ot finish when my computer at school died. Im working on it again, just alot slower of a process....plus havta add the new r8 boards :)