Jonah DiPasquale remembers the first time he carved up a fresh bank of snow on his friend’s Burton snowboard. It was the late ’80s, when skiing still dominated the mountains and snowboarding was finding its footing in professional and recreational winter sports.
“The equipment back then was just so antiquated, these giant buckles and big webbing straps,” said DiPasquale, who is now operations and events manager — and self-proclaimed “Wonderful Wizard of Snowboarding” — at Neon Wave.
That first somewhat-reckless ride down a hill off the back nine of a golf course is when he knew, “Yep, this is it, I literally bombed, I loved it.” DiPasquale was determined, and eventually got a board of his own and a lift ticket to Swain Ski Resort, where the humbling slopes were nothing like a snow-covered par four.
“I literally wanted to scream,” he said. “Riding in a resort was so much harder. The snow is so different. I had no idea how to steer the board.”
Those early struggles are a constant reminder as DiPasquale teaches new riders now, including when he taught Fred Rainaldi, founder of Neon Wave, how to ride his first snowboard at age six. Decades later, that ethos of determination has translated into the company’s community pop-ups.
Inspired by the Burton Riglet Program founded by Burton Snowboards in 2009, Neon Wave introduces youth to snowboarding, regardless of snow.
“Since we opened in 2017, we’ve done riglets all year-round. We’ve since begun calling them ‘learn-to-snowboard riglets,’ just to detach ourselves from that brand a little bit with the sole intent of getting kids excited about the idea of snowboarding,” said Neon Wave creative director Justin Dusett. “So we bring a glorified version of sledding, where you have to stand up to do it, to local community events. We even have ice brought in from local rinks.”
The program provides specialized boards with handlebars, ropes and accessories to familiarize learners with the stance, balance and mechanics of snowboarding. Though the Burton program still exists today, it has created less emphasis on meeting kids where they’re at through camps and schools, and is largely found at ski resorts around the world — a fact that adds to the longstanding stigma that winter sports are expensive and inaccessible.
Neon Wave’s free community events bring the experience to families newly interested in the sport, an example of some remaining initiatives in the industry that make snowboarding more accessible. Neon Wave also has a store in Stowe, Vermont, two hours from Killington Resort, which offers a snowboard lease program free to youth.
“(Killington) invested $60,000 into this program for the year — you come to the mountain, you get a voucher and take that to a local partnership shop in the area, and you get a lease for the season,” said Dusett. “They’re banking on the fact that you’re going to get that lease and then come to the mountain and pay for a lift ticket. While it doesn’t remove the barrier, it makes it a step shorter.”
DiPasquale — who has seen the industry change across decades — said despite existing barriers, some parts of the sport have become more accessible, especially secondhand and leasing equipment, while lift tickets at resorts have become more expensive as giant conglomerates absorb the resorts.
There’s an ongoing debate as to whether the acquisition of ski resorts is necessary and healthy, but there has been a shift in the local subculture in response to rising resort prices. Smaller “rope-tow” (a service lift that helps riders up a hill by holding on to a moving rope) locations have become increasingly popular, for instance.
“Powder Mills Park has a little downhill with a rope-tow, Swain Resort operates a rope tow at Northampton Park (in Brockport),” said DiPasquale. “It’s like $100 for a season pass, and you go and hit the rails and have fun all year long. There’s a lower cost of entry (to) spend time on the sport.”
Other organizations within the snowboarding industry are piloting concepts to create more access as well: Hoods to Woods out of New York City and The SHRED Foundation in Troy outside Albany share a similar mission to help local unsupported youth experience snowboarding.
“The goal is a kid falls in love with snowboarding and remembers that day for the rest of their life,” said Dusett. “They become not only a lifelong patron of the snowboarding industry, but also somebody that cares about the climate and our effects on it, because if they don’t take care of the planet, that mountain is not going to be a place they can snowboard anymore. The only way is up, and then the funnest way is down.”
