This weekend something really cool happened regarding snow -- and it was not that I was jealous of my beautiful girlfriend hitting the sunny slopes of Colorado practicing for the USASA. Nor was it the oddity of having blizzard conditions in Atlanta. (In a matter of two hours I had two inches of snow in my backyard. Hotlanta?)

The really cool snow event this weekend was the acknowledgment that Pando Winter Sports Park was the birthplace of competitive snowboarding. (http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/rademacher_column.html) On Saturday, January 19th, a bronze plaque was hung in the lodge at Pando commemorating the event.

Why am I so enthused about this? I was the manager of Pando for five years. I wasn't involved with the birth of snowboarding, but I did contribute to the history of the place. I started the Phat Air Friday contests and many other snowboard competitions and events on the slopes of those little hill in Rockford, Michigan.

The real history happened back in 1979 during the World Snurfing Championships. A kid named Jake Burton showed up from Vermont and wanted to compete. He had made his own snurfer, but it had rubber straps that kept his foot attached to the board. He was not allowed to compete in the championships, but they did allow him to compete in a new (created that very day) "open" division which, of course, he won.

That was the birth of competitive snowboarding.

Pando has a long history of firsts in the snow industry: Pando was the first ski area in Kent County (second in the state). Pando was the first ski area in Michigan to allow snurfers and snowboarders unrestricted access to its hills. Pando hosted the World Championships of Snurfing in the late 1970s, where they held the first competitive snowboard race. Pando built the first “snow tubing” hill in the state of Michigan. Pando’s history and more info can be found at  its  Web site ( http://www.pandopark.com/index.php)

P.S. I didn't get the props but half of the photos on the site I took.

P.P.S. This last “first” I'm adding to the list is not documented, but I’m pretty sure it's a fact: Pando was the first place to host a banked slalom course, predating the famous Mt. Baker Banked Slalom. The reason I claim Pando as the first is because the snurfer course and the slalom course that Jake ran had banked turns. Sorry MBHCs, the Pando Commandos out old-schooled ya.