Contributor / WACKLE /

IN 1990 the contest scene was warming up a bit as seen by the number of entrants below. Pipes were still dug by hand and the entire ethos was a lot of D.I.Y. – if the pipe needed some work, grab a shovel. CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT -  send the name of  bib #128 to competition@westbeach.com to win a FREE JACKET.

Contributor//Jon//

Devun Walsh recounts his memory of the event in  “Out Westbeach: Snowboarding, Westbeach, and a new Canadian Dream”.

I really remember [Sean] Johnson bonking the announcer stand [and] Jamie Lynn doing late-grab 540s and snowboarding way different than anyone else. The first time I saw him was at Westbeach, and he’s doing those frontside fives in the pipe, and he’d come around late mute and bone ’em out straight—it was just like, “That is sick! He’s so different.” There was just a clear-cut difference. It’s not like he was going that much bigger—it was just solid. And that’s when I was like, ‘That’s who I wanna snowboard like.’  – Devun Walsh

Below – Sean Johnson (founder Stephchild snowboards)  bonking the announcer’s stand.

Below – Westbeach team rider Kevin Young – perfect style.

Below – Kevin Young in the news.

By the late 80’s the snowboarding communities’ core followers had started moving to Whistler to see for themselves if it lived up to tales. Leaving the comforts of home, work, and girlfriends, they banded together in the cheapest accomodation available. This often meant 2 to a room, no toilet paper, and only beer in the fridge. Given the hope of a brighter future, or at least unlimited powder to be shared with new friends, many gave in to the higher calling and headed west. Once there they met others who were equally as determined to snowboard everyday and progress the sport. It was this combination of location and timing that set the explosive and progressive scene that would put Whistler on the map as the epicenter of Canadian snowboarding. If you wanted to go pro, you moved to Whistler.

Below: The front porch of “The Snoboard House” in Whistler. Three different Craig Kelly prototypes belonging to Alex Warburton
and Jeff Brushie as well as the debris from the lives of a dozen or so young snowboarders. Photo: John Kamitakahara.

The Classic is widely regarded as the contest that introduced the jam format and brought snowboarding into the realm of entertainment. Watch the video to hear Dano Pendygrasse, Roberta Rodger, JP Walker and a host of others talk about how careers were lost and won at this season end contest.

The Westbeach Classic Heritage Video 2

Contributor // Lenny Rubenovitch

Check out this short video my crew and I made about the history of snowboarding in Whistler. As you may know, we will be releasing some upcoming Westbeach Anniversary videos……more on that later.

The Whistler Film Festival in association with underexposed media group presents a Whistler Stories Film: The First To Go Up, a brief history of snowboarding in Whistler.The First To Go Up documents the story of the first snowboarders allowed to ride on Blackcomb and Whistler Mountains, and the struggles they encountered as this upstart new sport took hold.

Whistler, 2007

The First to Go Up, a brief history of snowboarding in Whistler

When snowboarding first showed up on the mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore, it looked pretty different from the sport we see today. In those days just finding equipment was a chore. Some folks just chose to make their own.

Another Excerpt from “Out West: Snowboarding, Westbeach and a new Canadian dream.” by Dano Pendygrasse.

By 1985 there were already groups of disconnected but dedicated snowboarders out in Vancouver who had been developing the sport independently of each other and riding the local mountains. Some of them, like John Kamitakahara, were frustrated by not being able to find snowboards anywhere, so they built their own. Like Ken Achenbach, Rudy Rasman was another early snowboarder who’d connected with Tom Sims and embraced the burgeoning sport. John tells me about the day he was introduced to Rudy: “I was driving across the second Narrows bridge in my Volkswagen with my homemade snowboard sticking out the back, and he pulls up next to me and starts screaming, ‘Pull over! Pull over!’ That’s how I met Rudy.” At that point riders were so few and far between that any snowboarder was a friend; they were such a rare breed that a sighting was reason enough for an impromptu traffic stop. “We were on our way to [Mount] Seymour,” John remembers, “and that was probably the first or second time I’d been on a board.” I asked John how he got excited enough about a sport he had never tried to build his own snowboard. By now the answer shouldn’t surprise you: “Action Now magazine. I stole them from the library and have still got the issues—I’ve got the diagrams of the Sims [snowboards] we copied to build our own board.” John went on to buy a Sims 1500FE from Rudy and later became one of the first people to shoot snowboarding photos in British Columbia.

Although Cypress Mountain turned a blind eye to the kids with the new toys hiking up the hill after hours, just down the road Mount Seymour was not so obliging and took an active role in dissuading snowboarders. There’s a semi-famous CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news video from 1985 that exists online and occasionally makes the YouTube rounds, with outraged Mount Seymour employees ranting about the dangers of snowboarding while curious bystanders laugh and watch. It’s a stark contrast to the situation less than a decade later, when Mount Seymour embraced the still-young sport and became one of the favourite stomping grounds of the B.C. snowboard scene, appearing in several magazines and movies and birthing the famous Seymour Kids crew.

Images below – ACTION NOW MAGAZINE & SHREDDING CYPRESS circa 84.