How did rails come about in skiing?

SirFryanator

SirFryanator

Active member
To all the people who ski on them and enjoy them, how did sliding these long pieces of metal come about in skiing or snowboarding?

 
My guess is the idea came from the influence from skateboarding...

That's just a complete guess though.
 
yeah but for skaters it was a way to get around without having to walk down stairs, just slide the rail down...it's not like we ski around town.
 
My thought is, urban rails have their origin in skateboarding, so sometime or another, snowboarders realized they could have fun on urban rails with their snowboards. They liked Urban rails so much, they wanted to bring them onto the mountain, so they could hit them up on a regular day as well as urban missions. Of course, many skiers are also skateboarders and would also have realized teh potential of rails to be a good time sliding on skis. When rails started showing up in 'snowboard parks' of course skiers would hit them too.
 
i heard that snowboards stared seeing scateboarders always doing it so they decided it looked cool so before freestyle skiing became into the picture it was just snowboarder in the park doing rails and when newschooling started getting popular then they started doing rails too 
 
I kinda feel that it was snowboard influenced, when it became popular they were trying to ride everything. log rides probably progressed to the more durable, less edge-catching metal rails.
 
I always awesomed that skateboarders did it, then snowboarders put rails on snow and did it, then skiers took it from snowboarders.

But the idea that snowboarders rode on logs, then made less-catching metal rails, then skiers took it is very likely too
 
Think about it, freestyle skiing came into place after Mike Douglas and others decided to mess around in the snowboard park after training for moguls or w/e they did. So basically we got it from the snowboarders. Watch Salomon TV episode 2 or 3 and you'll understand.
 
After the ollie was invented, new tricks started popping up everywhere, like flip tricks, and jumping(ollieing) onto anything skaters could find . then skaters realized they could land on an obstacle and slide/grind on it just like the way they slid on coping of ramps and pools. Eventually this progressed into sliding bigger and bigger rails and ledges, then someone realized they could jump onto a handrail and grind it. Many years later when freestyle snowboarding came around skateboarding had a big influence on it. So the snowboarders started grinding and sliding rails too, and then the salomon team kinda invented freestyle skiing and we were influenced by the snowboarders to start sliding rails with mad steez yo... the end
 
This isnt true.

Skateboarders rode pools, hit the coping.

That translated to rails

skaters started being snowboarders

started hitting rails in their backyards or wherever on their boards

Rails finally showed up in the park

Skiers started riding the park,

Skiers started hitting the rails.
 
well I feel retarded now haha I thought for sure...maybe I'm the only one who skated for transport purposes and since I couldn't ollie high, I just slid a rail down to the bottom of the steps. But I've quit. So yeah.
 
it traces back to skateboarding.

people would slide on the edge of the pools and bowls they would ride. then they started translating this onto other objects like curbs and ledges,. when the ollie was invented the possibilities became endless (hence hand rails).

a few years later, but around the same time, BMX and inline skating started to replicated that as well.

with snowboarding having a big skateboard influence they started doing it on snow, and when the newschooler movement started skiers started doing slides as well.
 
Perhaps the better question is, Which came first, urban grinding or park grinding or log grinding

On snowboards I mean,

Then skiers stole it and we don't appreciate the rails as much or have as much fun on them.
 
I think that snowboarding was influenced by skating and then when rails/boxes showed up in parks skiers said "why not" and thats why we do them now?
 
I would have to say grinding rails is quite possibly the worst mode of transportation I've ever heard of
 
The first park to have rails and jibs was Bear Mountain, California, way back in 91 or 92. At first, it was essentially just junk setup that was jibable. Things like fridges and pipes. It took a few years before it began catching on and rails started popping up in the Bear junkyard for people to jib. From there, it spread to other hills in the area. I think that log jibs would have started showing up in Colorado around that period of time, maybe a season or so afterwards.

The first time people started sliding rails on skis would have been around the time the PBP movie Degenerates was being filmed. The first guy I think that I saw sliding rails was JF Cusson, this would have been a few years before I had my first pair of twins.
 
Mike D does an urban rail as late as Happy Dayz in his segment. Skogen was doing urban early on skis, mike nick was doing it on snowblades...this is back in like 2000
 
The first ever handrail on a skateboard was done by Natas Kaupus in a comp in 1986. I don't think he landed it, but it nevertheless gave people a whole new idea of what was possible.
 
Craig Kelly started what we all know as jibbing, he coined the word too. He took it all from skating though. That was the influence.
 
dude, peopel were doind slides and grind on skiboard way before JF cusson.

newschoolers need to stop denying their skiboard roots. skiboarding had a big part in the evolution of freeskiing.
 
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