NEW WAVE : Mountain Resorts Warm to Snowboarding, a Mix of Skiing, Skateboarding and Surfing That Offers Non-Binding Alternative for Winter Sports Set

Ski enthusiast Ron Elliott ascended mountains via chairlift, gondola and helicopter while traversing the western United States and Canada in search of perfect powder. Few slopes were unreachable and even less were unconquerable for Elliott, who hungered for speed and life-on-the-edge sensations.

But on New Year’s Eve, the 40-year-old visited a local Southern California resort and suddenly discovered that the downhill thrill was gone.

He was a bored ski bum.

That’s when Elliott decided to try snowboarding, the newfangled winter sport that combines elements of surfing, skateboarding and skiing.

“I’ve been skiing for 25 years,” the Simi Valley resident says, “and I’m going to give up skiing and go to snowboarding. It’s like surfing an endless wave.” Elliott is not the only one smitten by snowboarding--an activity that has taken the mountains by storm. According to industry officials, it is the fastest growing winter sport in the world. And although the Beach Boys have yet to write a song about it, many consider snowboarding to be the wave of the future on the slopes.

Dominated initially by teen-age male surf punks and skateboard rats looking for new thrills, snowboarding no longer is considered a fad and has begun to attract a growing number of women, children, snow-bored members of the thirtysomething crowd and even senior citizens.

High-tech engineering has eliminated safety concerns about equipment and ended the snowboarding industry’s uphill battle to gain access to ski-area slopes. Mountain operators who once gave the cold shoulder to the young and aggressive clientele have warmed to a sport that has boosted profits and provided a shot in the arm to an otherwise dwindling skier base.

“Eighty-five percent of the people doing this have never been on snow before,” said Paul Alden, president of the Denver-based North American Snowboard Assn., which sanctioned about 60 amateur and professional competitions this winter. “It’s putting people on the hill who had no interest in going to the mountains.”

Standing sideways on a foot-wide board that ranges from 4 1/2 to six feet in length and retails from $300 to $500, snowboarders lock themselves into high-top bindings and descend powder and hardpack slopes--without poles--much like a surfer working a swell.

“When you experience carving a turn on a snowboard, skiing is rather lifeless by comparison,” said Jake Burton Carpenter, one of the founding fathers of snowboarding and the owner of Vermont-based Burton Snowboards, the largest manufacturer in the industry. “It’s so much simpler and the sensation is so much purer.”

Four years ago, just 7% of the ski areas in the United States allowed snowboarding, according to Thomas Hsieh, Jr., editor of International Snowboard Magazine. Some resorts continue to forbid the activity because of already crowded conditions, but more than 75% of the nation’s ski areas embrace what has become a multimillion dollar industry with an estimated 225,000 participants in the United States and about 150,000 in Europe and Japan, Hsieh said.

“Snowboarding is going to the mainstream but it’s not going to get there as a mainstream sport,” Hsieh added. “We firmly believe we are the future. We firmly believe we’re having more fun (than skiers).”

It is difficult to miss snowboarders, whether they are in the lodge or on the slopes.

Skiers attired in traditional red, black or navy blue outfits literally pale in comparison to the majority of their snowboarding counterparts who prefer a rainbow spectrum of day-glo spandex.

“Snowboarders definitely feel like different individuals,” said Don Szabo, a 21-year old former skateboard pro from Reseda who has been snowboarding for four years. “I wouldn’t say we’re rebels. We’re just people on the mountain who want to have fun.”

Nevertheless, snowboarders do have a certain air about them. In fact, much of the cultural jargon involves the definition and description of air (the area between the bottom of a board and the ground during a jump). Method Air, Mute Air, Rocket Air, even Slob Air are acrobatic, skateboard-influenced aerial tricks performed by snowboarders when they venture into a half-pipe (a banked, man-made gorge). Swiss Cheese, Roast Beef and Burnt Toast are some of the latest acrobatic tricks invented by snowboarders hungry for more air.

“It’s so addicting,” said Brian Pitchford, a 19-year-old snowboarder from Granada Hills. “You can go as fast as your heart desires and get a heck of a lot of air.”

Before 1983, snowboarders were forbidden at all ski areas. They hiked the back country and took pride in their image as free-wheeling, freestyling renegades. “For a long time, there were perceived problems in terms of liability and concerns about its (snowboarding) mix with alpine ski operations and guests,” Alden said. “The question was, ‘Could skiers and snowboarders co-exist?’ ”

Increasingly, the answer was yes.

In 1985, less than 40 ski areas in the United States allowed snowboarding. Today, more than 450 welcome the activity, Hsieh said.

From Stratton Mountain in Vermont to Mt. Baker in Washington to June Mountain and Snow Summit in California, snowboarding has been brought into the fold of ski-area operations. For the first time, the Professional Ski Instructors of America are certifying snowboard instructors. Many areas are sponsoring clinics and amateur and professional competitions, which usually feature slalom, giant slalom, moguls and half-pipe free-style events.

“We consider them snowboard skiers and treat them as skiers in all respects,” said Dick Kun, president of Snow Summit. “They are subject to the same safety rules.”

Some of the major areas that forbid snowboarding include Killington Mountain, Vt.; Aspen Mountain, Colo.; and California’s Mammoth Mountain, all of which fear potential overcrowding on already busy slopes.

Killington, the largest ski area in the East, had a million guests last season.

“We reevaluate our policy every year and, right now, we do not feel snowboarding is compatible with alpine skiing at Killington,” said Dick Courcelle, a resort spokesman. “A lot of skiers we speak with are very glad we don’t allow it here. They have been to other places (that allow snowboarding) and say they felt overwhelmed.”

Aspen and Mammoth both allow snowboarding at neighboring, company-owned areas.June Mountain, just north of Mammoth, has been welcoming snowboarders for two years.

“We’ve used June as a testing area,” said Evan Russell, marketing director for Mammoth. “The jury is still out. June doesn’t get quite the (skier) pressure Mammoth gets. We want to be sure before we allow them here.”

Primitive snowboards were nothing more than pieces of wood with rubber straps and ski operators considered them snow-play devices, such as toboggans and inner tubes. All ski areas have an exclusion clause in their insurance policies forbidding the use of such equipment on their slopes.

“The ski industry has had all kinds of half-baked attempts at other ways to get down the hill,” said Brooks Chase, an account executive with New Hampshire-based Kendall Insurance Co., a brokerage firm that, along with Seattle-based Pettit Moory Company, supplies liability coverage to about 80% of the nation’s ski areas. “I think operators were just suspect that this was a fly-by-night gimmick.”

The snowboard industry, however, has enjoyed 80% to 120% growth each year, according to David Schmidt, national sales manager for Burton Snowboards, which along with Newport Beach-based Sims Snowboards controls about 90% of the market. The slick boards of today feature wood cores, P-tex bottoms and steel edges and can reach speeds of more than 60 miles an hour. The high-tech boards have their roots in the Snurfer, a snow toy that was manufactured by the Brunswick Corp. in 1966.

“I just wanted to make a very good version of the Snurfer,” said Carpenter, 34, who founded his company in 1978. “I didn’t imagine that snowboards would ever be on ski slopes.”

Tom Sims, 38, founder of Sims Snowboards, also sought to improve upon the Snurfer, and one of his own inventions he called a skiboard.

“They (snowboards) were prehistoric until 1983 when metal edges were introduced,” Sims said.

Metal edges enabled snowboarders to carve turns, which has allowed them to venture from soft snow in the backcountry to mainstream hardpack slopes.

But regardless of the advancements, most snowboarders say it takes a few tries--and some time sprawled in the snow--to get the hang of the sport. Once they get the feel, however, many snowboarders say it is easier than skiing.

“You don’t have skis crossing and going all over the place when you fall,” Elliott said. “And you don’t have poles hitting you in the head.”

Despite fears that an influx of snowboarders would cause more collisions on the slopes, ski-area operators say there has not been an increase in accident reports. “We’ve had some collisions between skiers and snowboarders,” said Mary Jane Spencer, spokesperson for the Snowbird ski area in Utah, which opened its slopes to snowboarders for the first time this season and limits access to three lifts. “But to this date, they’ve all been the fault of the skiers.”

And, although it has a reputation for attracting and breeding aggressive participants, some officials say the risk factor in snowboarding is about the same as skiing.

“Snowboarders are probably no more dangerous than beginning skiers,” said Doug MacKenzie, ski school director at Snowmass in Colorado. “They don’t seem to cause damage to anyone but themselves sometimes.”

Two studies that sought to examine injury rate and types of injuries suffered by snowboarders seem to bear MacKenzie out.

Jasper E. Shealy, who has been doing ski-injury research since the 1960s, authored a paper titled “Snowboarding Injuries on Alpine Slopes” after reviewing snowboarding accident reports from three ski areas during the 1986-87 season.

“We found that the overall rate at which injury occurs in snowboarding is about the same as skiing,” said Shealy, an industrial engineering professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. “We found they were not dramatically safer or less safe.”

Dr. Edward Pino, a resident in orthopedic surgery at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Ore., co-authored a study during the winter and spring of 1987 that sought to discover the kinds of injuries to which snowboarders were most susceptible. The study was conducted by interviewing 267 snowboarders in Colorado and it will be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

“The spectrum of injury in snowboarding is very different than skiing,” Pino said. “Ankle injuries seem to be the most prevalent lower extremity injury as opposed to knee-tendon injuries in skiers.

“Thumb injuries, the most common upper extremity injury in skiing, are very rare in snowboarding where there tend to be more wrist injuries.”

Ski areas may well see an increase in their liability premiums because of snowboarders, but that is because the cost of insurance is based either on lift-ticket receipts or total revenue. An influx of snowboarders equates to more money for mountain operators.

“People aren’t taking in snowboarders because they want to be nice guys,” Carpenter said. “They’re selling lift tickets and they’re selling real estate to families that have kids.”

Top professionals who compete on a World Cup circuit in North America and Europe are also earning big money.

Sponsorship deals with beer, binding and sunglass companies make Bert LaMar, a former skateboard pro who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, among the highest paid and most visible snowboarders in the world. LaMar has been featured in a nationally televised chewing gum commercial and also has appeared in national magazine ads for watches and snowboard equipment.

“The first time I saw a snowboard back in 1980, I wrote it off as a loser,” said LaMar, who lives in Santa Monica and could earn more than $150,000 this year in prize money and endorsements. “But 2 1/2 years ago, I went skiing, saw the advancements that had been made and saw the potential.”

Chuck Allen, a trailblazing force in establishing organized amateur surfing, also sees a bright future for snowboarding and has founded the U. S. Amateur Snowboarding Assn. Allen’s goal is the formation of a national team and eventual acceptance of snowboarding as an Olympic demonstration sport.

MacKenzie, the ski school director at Snowmass, is among those who believe that, although it may be a long way off, there might come a day when snowboarders outnumber skiers.

“It’s pretty common to see three generations of a family skiing here during the holidays,” Mackenzie said. “Now we have a generation that’s probably going to be (exclusively) on snowboards.

“One day, we may all be on snowboards and we’ll all be complaining about skiers.”