The Story Behind The Invention of Splitboarding
With ski resorts across the country getting inundated with hordes of visitors in recent years and folks turning to the backcountry to get away from the crowds and experience the extreme satisfaction of earning turns in sweet solitude, splitboarding has experienced a pronounced upsurge in popularity. These days you can just walk into a store and buy a splitboard and all the accessories off the shelf but back in the day DIY skills were required to secure the necessary equipment.
The following is the story of Brett “Kowboy” Kobernik, the man credited with inventing the first splitboard. Brett Kobernik has been with the Utah Avalanche Center since the 2004-2005 winter season and before that he was a helicopter skiing guide in Valdez, Alaska during mid 1990s and backcountry ski and snowboard guide for Utah Mountain Adventures.
Way back in 1991 Kowboy met the owner of Voile, Mark “Wally” Wariakois and the two got to working on prototyping production splitboards revolution eventually creating the original Voile 195 Swallowtail splitboard. Here’s how Kowboy tells the tale:
“We screwed around with snowshoes a little bit and we built approach skis and whatnot, but that stuff just doesn’t work. What’s the old saying, necessity is the mother of invention.
My buddy split one down the middle, snowboard right down the middle with a freaking hacksaw, bare hands and a hacksaw blade and he says, man wouldn’t it be cool if we could just put these boards back together. I was like that would be cool. I actually injured myself at a ski resort and I was out for about a week, couldn’t really snowboard.
So I was like I’m going to make that happen. I’m going to go to my basement and start cobbling parts together from the hardware store. I’m going to put that freaking board back together. It took me a week and I got it together, and then when I was good enough it was perfect.
I didn’t want to go pound the resort, I’m still kind of injured, so it was perfect. I had the time to go out and screw around with this prototype. I got introduced to Wally down there, and Wally was like hey this looks like a cool idea, yeah you can go to town, use my presses, use my mills. I’m cobbling up these prototype parts and these guys are just like what is wrong with this guy, this dude has lost it.
It’s just been a slow progression since then. it’s taken a long time actually to really catch on, and you know, the rest is history.” -Brett “Kowboy” Kobernik
Splitboard technology has come a long ways since Kowboy started tinkering with off the shelf components from the hardware store and chopped up skis but the essence has remained the same. Cheers to Kowboy, giddyup!
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