Now sixty, Riordon is an early adopter of another renegade sport, snowskating. "In Colorado, it's growing," notes Riordon, who thinks it's taking "a similar path" to snowboarding. "When I first started snowboarding, there were only a handful of us," he remembers. "Now snowboarding is insanely big, so there's a potential for snowskating to grow bigger."
A cross between skateboarding and snowboarding, snowskating is sometimes credited to American inventor Sherman Poppen, who created a prototypical snowboard, the Snurfer, in the 1960s. Forty years later, Riordon discovered the "bi-deck" board that snowskaters use to ride down slopes and grind on rails. He describes it as a "skateboard with a ski on the bottom of it."
While "that sounds kind of janky, these are actually well-made top decks — the skateboard part — and the trucks are manufactured to allow the bottom part, what we call a sub-deck, to pivot," he says. The board is also tethered to the rider to make sure it doesn't fly too far away when a rider wipes out.
"There are guys and girls out there who can tear it up on bungles if they want to," Riordon says, "or there are people that will do sixty-foot jumps." Snowskaters can do flips and tricks like skateboarders do, as well as work airs and half-pipes like snowboarders. The snowskate offers them the ability to carve up slopes but takes away the snowboard bindings, offering more movement.
"The limitation of snowboarding is you can ride half-pipes, you can do airs, you can do big jumps, but you can't flip the board around and do skateboard-style tricks," says Ryan Peterson, the creative director of Colorado-based Hovland, one of the largest sellers of snowskates in the world.
Hovland has seen 80 to 100 percent growth in snowskates for nine years in a row. "We're selling out pretty aggressively," Peterson says, adding that COVID brought a temporary but "massive bump" in sales.
Glenn Mathewson, a 46-year-old building inspector who has been snowboarding since he moved to Colorado at eighteen, says that "snowskating saved me" after metatarsalgia, a foot injury that causes inflammation, forced him to give up snowboarding in 2020.
Hovland has seen 80 to 100 percent growth in snowskates for nine years in a row. "We're selling out pretty aggressively," Peterson says, adding that COVID brought a temporary but "massive bump" in sales.
"You don't need the extensive amount of equipment you need with skis and snowboards," Peterson explains. "You don't need the bindings. Everything else you do need. For the most part, you would need the same clothes, which is good, because most people have that stuff. You lose the boots and bindings, and then substitute it with winter clothes and footwear."
Snowskaters can take their boards to the big slopes with skiers or to small parks with rails or sledding hills. "It's meant to be from the sled hill to the top of the mountain and everything in between," Peterson says. "It can go anywhere skis and snowboards go."
In particular, Ruby Hill Rail Yard, Denver's free terrain park, "lends itself to snowskating," Peterson says, because its rails invite snowskaters to grind and flip their boards while also offering slopes that are easy to hike. The first-ever Snowskate Slamfest took place at Ruby Hill on February 17; about thirty to forty people attended, according to Riordon.
"People have taken it up for all kinds of reasons," Peterson says. "It's a new way to enjoy the mountains; it's a new way to get out with your family and enjoy the snow. It's also a way to bring in new tricks."
"People have taken it up for all kinds of reasons," Peterson says. "It's a new way to enjoy the mountains; it's a new way to get out with your family and enjoy the snow. It's also a way to bring in new tricks."
It's easier for people to learn than snowboarding. And for veteran snowboarders like Riordon, it's easier on the body.
Glenn Mathewson, a 46-year-old building inspector who has been snowboarding since he moved to Colorado at eighteen, says that "snowskating saved me" after metatarsalgia, a foot injury that causes inflammation, forced him to give up snowboarding in 2020.
"Every day of my life, my feet hurt — they hurt right now talking to you — but they don't hurt like they hurt when I snowboard," he says. "I could only snowboard a couple runs before I'm done; I can't do it. It was heartbreaking to me. It was a depressing time. I was really struggling."
The bindings of snowboards "created an abundance of pressure on my feet," and "every bump, everything in the snow, goes right into your feet," Mathewson explains. Snowskating relieved that pressure.
The lack of bindings is a blessing and a curse, however; it's the reason some mountains won't let snowskaters on their lifts to reach those big runs and get "the vibe," Mathewson says. "There's a lifestyle to being in snow sports. You're not going to find that on a sledding hill."
In order to pass inspections and avoid lawsuits, ski resorts follow guidelines set by the American National Standards Institute, a nonprofit that oversees standards for all kinds of technology and machines, including ski lifts. ANSI considers snowskaters to be foot passengers who are unprepared to ride the relatively fast lifts. ANSI standards require slower lifts for foot passengers because the safety guidelines for the fixed-grip lifts at ski parks were created with the average pedestrian in mind.
"We're talking about everyday, average people. They might have flip-flops on, they might not be physically in shape," Mathewson explains. "They need the lift slower because they're everyday, average people just walking off the lift." But snowskaters "know how to ride off the lift without having to be attached," he argues. "You just lay your board down and you ride off."
Still, some mountains only see snowskaters as detached riders. "That's the problem," Mathewson adds. "The ski mountains look at us and go, 'You're not attached, you're a foot passenger, and the fixed-grip lifts don't slow down to that speed needed for foot passengers.'"
Loveland is one of those mountains. As a result, Mathewson has replaced his favorite mountain with Arapahoe Basin, where his whole family can recreate. His wife, a passionate snowboarder, has also gotten into snowskating; their three kids continue to snowboard.
"A skateboard with a ski on the bottom of it" is how David Riordon describes a snowskate.
Courtesy of David Riordon
Vail, Arapahoe Basin, Winter Park, Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs, Crested Butte and Telluride all allow snowskaters (for a full list, see this map of parks across the country.) But just as some mountains were slow to adapt to snowboards, Monarch Mountain, Sunlight Mountain Resort and Granby Ranch are like Loveland.
"I'm frustrated with Loveland," says Mathewson. "They broke my heart, and my family wants to come back. We spent a decade snowboarding there. All their family memories from their childhood, from like five years old, are at Loveland."
Riordon nixed plans to move to Salida when he learned that Monarch doesn't allow snowskaters on its lifts.
Mathewson is now working to change the ANSI standards, calling for the addition of a "snow sport passenger" category. "The definition speaks to the reality that you're prepared for heightened danger, you're prepared for it to be a little fast, you're ready to slide off on a sporting device," he says. "And it makes that distinction that obviously a snowskater at Copper Mountain is not a Disney tourist in flip-flops with a beer in their hand."
He takes heart in the fact that the ski bike industry has had some success getting standards to change. "They've been working hard to put their voice in the process, and I see that it's working, making changes," he says. "That's what gives me hope. If ski bikes are being recognized and respected and listened to and at least considered, then there should be hope for snowskaters as well, and a ski bike would be a much more heavy and dangerous item to drop from a lift."
The ANSI standards affect people across the country, since snowskating is popular "all over," Peterson says. "It's in California, Utah, New Mexico, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maine, Vermont. Basically, anywhere there's snow, more than likely you'll find snowskating."
Compared to other places, "Colorado is actually pretty open to snowskating," he adds. "It's actually one of the most accepting of it in the country, if not the world. It's a pretty good place to be a snowskater."
And resorts could soon make it better. "Snowboarding changed when people started allowing it because of the economic factor," Peterson says, citing its "huge economic impact" on the state's $1 billion ski industry.
"Colorado is going to be an epicenter of snowskating. It already is, just because of the resorts opened to us for snowskating," Peterson says. "It's going to continue to blossom from here on out."
