Snowboarding wasn’t mainstream in the ’80s, but that didn’t stop a young Dustin Lyman and his Boulder buddies from messing around on their snurfer boards on the sledding hills of Scott Carpenter Park.
Back then, the future National Football League player would meet up with friends before they’d conjure whatever kind of snowboarding setup they could muster. In those early years, that sometimes meant strapping their Sorel snow boots to wooden planks with rudimentary plastic bindings or by nailing down belt straps.
The city of Boulder had its limits, though. That led Lyman first to nearby Eldora Moutain Resort and then others. One of those was Copper Mountain Resort, where Lyman remembers pushing his young snowboarding limits on the Coppertone run.
The snow wasn’t the only place where Lyman was pushing himself athletically though. Growing up in the shadow of the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field, Lyman was inspired as a kid by the Buffaloes’ championship football teams.
“I just really, really enjoyed competing,” Lyman said. “It only ended up being football later in life. When I was younger, it was really anything.”
That “anything” included both snowboarding and skiing. About three decades later, Lyman still skis and snowboards.