Aleksey Ostatnigrosh the founder and co-owner of GROMEL snowboards stopped by the Colorado Snowsports Museum this past March and dropped off a donation for our collection - a GROMEL 163cm snowboard. The board graphic is an art collage made of exotic wood veneers and hand drawn graphics, making abstract composition influenced by the Bauhaus School of design. Not only is this board stunning, but we also learned that GROMEL works with several snowboard instructors in Colorado. Thank you for coming by and for your generous donation, Aleksey. The following provides a deeper dive into the history behind GROMEL snowboards.

Aleksey at the Colorado Snowsports Museum snowboard exhibit “Out There”. Aleksey and his partners claim to be the first men in Russia to build snowboards. Aleksey is the co-owner of the first snowboard production Russian company - GROMEL.

In 1976, being 12 years old, Aleksey Ostatnigrosh used to toboggan. Once he saw something unusual on the slopes in Russia: a forty-year-old man riding a wide and short ski made of a solid plastic sheet with a rope attached to the front of the ski. The man could not turn very well but managed to brake by pulling onto the rope and shifting his weight back. Aleksey went to say hi and found out that the man's name was Boris Ivanovich Kovalev.

However, no one called him by his full name. For local kids he was simply - Bor. He was making such skis with a seat attached and giving them to kids for free. Aleksey later found out, Bor borrowed the idea from the Snurfer - the predecessor of the snowboard patented in the United States in 1966. Bor spent his time with kids on the slopes and is rightly considered to be one of the first to ride a ski sideways in Russia.

Aleksey got his first Snurfer in 1980 and his friend Alex Melnikov got one a year later. They rode Snurfers for about 5 years, but something was missing. It was the ability to jump. So, Aleksey attached a stiff rubber cable to the tail of the board. This allowed them to jump while holding the board with both hands. By 1985, after making several alterations, Aleksey realized that ropes and rubber cables should be dropped in favor of attaching the board to the feet somehow. He made a set of bindings using an alloy plate and rubber bands which were attached by a single bolt in the center. That allowed for quick angle adjustments as well as easy switching from regular to goofy. At the same time, the first western snowboard magazines started circulating in Moscow.

The first fiberglass snowboard with bindings was made by Santa Cruz inventor Gary Tracy of GARSKI with the assistance of Bill Bourke in their factory in Santa Cruz, California in 1982. Louis Fornier, in Canada, was one of the first people to experiment with integrated, fold-down highbacks, in 1984 and is known among industry insiders as one of the early innovators in snowboarding. Back inn the United States, Boulder’s Kurt Hill, created the first releasable snowboard bindings. He only made a handful of boards, and never sold any before setting his sights on a releasable/step-in binding system, which could be dialed up for releasable or dialed down for non-releasable. In 1988, he was granted a patent for the releasable binding. Furthermore, Tom Sims and Jeff Grell were also instrumental in these early days of binding innovation.

In 1988, Aleksey got his hands on a Barfoot Freestyle 144 and immediately realized how far they lagged behind with comparison to the western snow sports industry. Santa Barbara, California surfer Chuck Barfoot built his first snowboard based entirely on his own design ideas in 1978. Barfoot, a friend and employee of Tom Sims, was instrumental in some of Sims’ earliest designs and later founded Barfoot Snowboards.

Aleksey was inspired by Barfoot’s design and rushed to find anyone in Russia who knew how to make skis and is extremely fortunate in meeting enthusiasts of winter sports that helped with getting magazines and other information about skiing and snowboarding through the Iron Curtain.

Valerii Evseev, at the time, worked on the development of ski manufacturing technologies in a ski factory in Moscow. He helped Aleksey with getting base material, edges, and explained how a real ski press worked. Valera Novikov, skater, skier, and a joiner by trade, made a mold for Aleksey and a wood core.

On the 1st of April 1988, the first modern Russian snowboard was made and tested by Aleksey and Gleb Secretta on the remainder of spring snow near the village of Mihanki 60km from Moscow. Results were promising. That was the birthday of the GROMEL (OstatniGROsh and MELnikov) snowboard company.

For the first year, they made boards in Aleksey’s parent's flat. Severe lack of space and proper equipment made life interesting. Eventually, they rented a room in the local school where Bor worked as an electrician and organized a snowboard club.

At the time, their main model was a 152 Freestyle board with sandwich core construction. They also made a couple of 175 all-mountain boards with vertically laminated cores. GROMEL Boards proved to be robust, and customers were happy with their performance. One thing was missing still - good graphic design. That was when they met Alexei Savichev, a man of free spirit and with no trade, later known as Designer.

Alexei combined spray-painting style, screen printing, and other non-orthodox freehand methods. Once GROMEL started incorporating these designs, their sales went up. Now, GROMEL would need a ski press and, in about a month, the press was ready. It consisted of two 1940s model paper recycling presses, about half a ton each, steel in-between, adjustable alloy mold, and pressure distribution lining from the printing industry. Heating was done by ice-melting elements from the wings of a MIG-27 fighter. With this press, the time it took to make a board was reduced threefold.

More people joined the GROMEL team: Michail Studencov, production supervisor, Sergei Knyazev, and Andrei Volchkov, a competing snowboarder. They found people who could make polyurethane soft binding and titanium plate binding and business kept moving forward.

Photo of the 163cm snowboard donated to our Museum collection.

The manufacturing infrastructure was still intact after the crash of socialism, but it was in an idle state. In 1992 GROMEL sponsored the first snowboard slalom competition in Moscow. Matcukevich from St. Petersburg took first place. Aleksey took second and Melnikov third.

Around the same time, GROMEL rented a section of a sport shopfront window in Gorky Street in the center of Moscow. Their designer did the backdrop. For a few years, that window was the only Russian company ad in the street. By 1993, crime in Russia increased and private companies were "advised to buy protection". GROMEL was not big enough to afford it, so they sold their business to a bigger, protected company, which made wind surfers and needed a product to sell during winter. Unfortunately, they never made a single snowboard and all the equipment turned into a pile of rust.

Aleksey’s friend Melnikov and his wife migrated to Australia in 1993. He worked for a year making snowboards at "Planet Snowboards" near Canberra, but then got a job in computing. Aleksey, together with Michail Studencov, recreated a snowboard business in the basement of the block of flats where they lived. The new company was named GROSTU. Their experience, desire to make boards, and top of the line materials brought from Austria allowed them to make high quality product, but they did not make many. In 1994, Aleksey and his parents migrated to the United States of America. Aleksey tried to work in the snowboard industry but did not last long. After a while, he got a job in IT and became a web developer.

For over a decade, Aleksey has been making snowboards in Ohio. GROMEL produced snowboards from 1985 to 1994 and then since 2008 till present time. Currently all boards are custom built including the graphics, size, shape, and flex. Their small company is producing high performing product, where every snowboard is not only sporting equipment but an art object at the same time. Therefore, every snowboard GROMEL makes is unique. GROMEL only made fifty-six boards in the last 10 years.

About the Colorado Snowsports Museum and Hall of Fame

Founded in 1975 and located in Vail, Colorado, our mission is to celebrate Colorado snow sports by telling stories that educate and inspire others to seek adventure. The priceless artifacts we collect and display tell the story of the birth, rise and explosion of skiing and snowboarding in Colorado. The Museum features displays including “Climb to Glory” about the 10th Mountain Division, “Vail’s DNA,” The Colorado Snowboard Archive, and The Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame, among many others. Learn more and consider supporting the Museum by becoming a member: https://www.snowsportsmuseum.org.

Sources:

GROMEL snowboards: https://gromelsnowboards.com/

Aleksey Ostatnigrosh (with some editing help from Alexei Melnikov and Valerii Evseev)

Colorado Snowboard Archive – binding, Snurfer, and Barfoot history

Barfoot history: https://barfoot.com/about/

Artifact Highlight - GROMEL 163cm Snowboard