Julie JagThe executives at Kendall Insurance had to have done a double take. It was the early 1980s and they’d taken a meeting with the representative for a group of snowboarders — known to be unruly, anti-establishment punks — who were complaining that ski resorts wouldn’t let them on their lifts. Then Paul Alden walked in.
“Picture the contrast,” said David Alden, Paul’s oldest son, who was around 18 at the time, “between that group of people, which was my whole friend group, and this very straight-laced, [Latter-day Saint] businessman who wore a suit everywhere and his hair was always [in place], and he was just very put together.”
Behind a mixture of charisma and straight talk, Paul Alden swayed that insurance company and others to treat snowboarders like skiers, opening up access for snowboarders to resorts across North America. He convinced one of the most influential ski areas at the time to host snowboarding competitions, including the halfpipe. Plus, he helped lay the groundwork for the inclusion of the sport in the Winter Olympics.
Alden, an Orem resident, died April 9 at age 89. By then, he no longer wore a suit everywhere he went. He’d become more accepting, David said, of people’s differences. He’d even traded his skis for a snowboard.
“He changed snowboarding,” David said. “But somehow, along the way, snowboarding really changed him.”
A bridge between father and son
(Photo courtesy of the Alden family) Snowboard industry pioneer Paul Alden of Orem rides at Vail Resort in a pair of one of the first step-in snowboard bindings ever invented, by his son Rick Alden, also the founder of action-sport headphone brand Skullcandy and co-founder of snowboard apparel brand Stance. The elder Alden died on April 9, 2026, at age 89.
Paul Alden attended his first snowboard competition as an olive branch. He didn’t know or care much about the sport. All he knew was it had become central to 18-year-old David’s life ever since Paul gave all the kids Snurfers — a stand-up sled considered the earliest snowboard prototype — for Christmas in 1968. Well, he knew that and that a chasm wider than a halfpipe had formed between the two of them.
“Those very earliest efforts, I think, were to sort of build a bridge between he and I,” David recalled. “And then he just was having fun. And then it just became his passion.”
Alden went to work for Burton, a pioneering company in the industry, in 1984. One of his first tasks was to coax more ski areas to allow the strange contraptions on their mountains. That meant winning over the insurance companies.
Two or three years earlier, a Colorado resort had been sued by someone involved in an incident with a snowboarder. The lawsuit produced a chilling effect among the larger resorts and relegated snowboarders to small, mom-and-pop hills — like Beaver Mountain, Powder Mountain and Alta Ski Area in Utah; Soda Springs Ski Bowl and Boreal in California and Berthoud Pass in Colorado. Somehow, though, Alden convinced the insurance providers that a ski and a snowboard were basically the same thing.
Next, Alden had to get the resorts on board.
He started with Breckenridge Ski Resort, in part because it was one of the most influential ski areas in the United States and because he knew its owner, Jerry Blann. David said his father excelled at making and leveraging connections.
“We had pretty well persuaded the insurance guys that a snowboard fit the definition of a ski. When we went to Jerry, he bought it,” Alden told The Aspen Times in 2025.
“In those days, skiing was in a steep decline. We demonstrated to him that snowboarding was going to bring incremental revenue to the resorts and a whole number of departments.”
In 1984, Breckenridge became the first major ski resort to allow snowboarding. By 1986, it was hosting the World Snowboarding Championships, which it also hosted in 1987.
Between 1984 and 1990, according to the Smithsonian Magazine, snowboarders went from being allowed at 40 resorts to 476.
Alden ensured both Breckenridge events featured halfpipe competitions. Halfpipe was controversial at the time, but its inclusion put it on track to be showcased at the Olympics. First, though, snowboarding had to be approved as a sport by the International Olympic Committee. So, the day after the 1987 Worlds event ended, Alden began sowing the seeds for snowboarding’s inclusion in the Winter Games.
An ‘implausible’ path to the Olympics
(Photo courtesy of the Alden family) Snowboard industry pioneer Paul Alden of Orem is pictured attending the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan — the first to include snowboarding and a milestone he nurtured behind the scenes. Alden died on April 9, 2026, at age 89.
The day after the 1987 Worlds, Alden gathered competitors and snowboard manufacturers and formed the North American Snowboard Association. It collaborated with the Snowboard European Association to create a unified World Cup circuit.
Just as Alden had pinpointed that most ski resorts’ reluctance to include snowboarders hinged on insurance concerns, he realized snowboarding’s inclusion into the Olympics hinged on its international acceptance and legitimacy.
“Paul was always looking down the road, and then more people were getting involved,” David said. “In order to even have a path to the Olympics, you have to have a pipeline into the Olympics.”
When Alden first started making the push for snowboarding’s inclusion, though, David thought it was a fool’s errand.
“I actually was asking him, ‘What are you doing?’” David recalled. “It just seemed so implausible.”
Alden’s efforts to have the IOC include the sport in the 1992 Winter Games failed. In 1998, however, snowboarding made its Olympic debut, featuring giant slalom and halfpipe. Alden made sure he was in the stands.
Alden maintained close contact with the snowboarding world the rest of his life. He worked in manufacturing and business development for various snowboard-adjacent companies including headphone maker Skullcandy, which was started in Park City by his youngest son, Rick Alden. He also spent 22 years teaching snowboarding at Wyoming’s Grand Targhee Resort.
Most recently, Alden was a member of the Ascent Ventures investment group that purchased Soldier Mountain Ski Area in Fairfield, Idaho, in 2020, according to Eye on Sun Valley. He served as the resort’s general manager through 2023. Then he was its business manager up to the day of his death, when Alden was injured in a fall following a resort management meeting that also included David, who succeeded Alden as general manager, and Alden’s grandson Dan Larkin.
(Photo courtesy of the Alden family) Soldier Mountain general manager David Alden and his father, Paul Alden, one of the key behind-the-scenes architects of competitive snowboarding in North America, pose for a photo in the Southwest Idaho ski resort’s lodge. The senior Alden passed on April 9, 2026, at age 89.
David can’t help but look back at that day his father first came to his snowboard competition. Alden didn’t make that bridge-building effort with the intent of changing snowboarding. Or with the intent of changing himself. He just wanted to bond with his son.
He did that, and so much more.
“It was a very effective bridge that ended up lasting us a lifetime,” David said. “We ended up working together until, really, his last day.”
Alden was preceded in death by his parents, Albert and Clarisse; and his son Scott. He is survived by his wife, Sharon; his children Mary (Jim) Moore, Carole (Doug) Andersen, David Alden, Rick Alden, and Clare Chadwick; 25 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren.
He was buried Saturday at the Alpine City Cemetery.
