We received a letter to the editor from L. Chow who enjoyed the story about Ken Achenbach and remembers buying one of his first boards.

In the recent Kootenay Mountain Culture Fringe Issue, an article ran about Ken Achenbach and the birth of snowboarding in Canada. A reader remembered buying one of Ken’s first boards off his mother before she had even unpacked everything for their Snoboard Shop.

L. Chow writes:

It’s great to see the Achenbach story finally make it into print. It really should be represented in the winter sports museum at Canada Olympic Park. If I’m not mistaken their first boards sold in the classified ad section of the Calgary Herald in the early 1980’s. I bought an early Burton from Ken’s mom who was still unpacking boxes for the new storefront. The board had three steel fins sticking out the rockered split tail. I can’t recall if there were even boots yet but not all the boards had steel edges. The Achenbachs were the ones who got ski resorts to allow us on the hill through a photo ID riders license. They should get royalties for that alone!

Darren Davidson replies:

Thanks for the note! I had a great time researching that story with Louis Bockner. I was on the road late last year delivering issues of KMC to stores around Canmore, Banff and Calgary and I tracked down the prairie slope near Ken’s old house that gave birth to Canadian snowboarding. I snapped this pic with the article.

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