Prior to the first wide parallel stance single-ski, there were other products like Look's elevated platform monoski that was made to have a set of ski bindings mounted to a flat platform which was then mounted to a single alpine ski. By the mid 1960's, the use of two skis being fixed together side by side with brackets became the standard garage invention. Hans Schmid, a 23 year old electrician, supposedly invents the mono-ski in 1970, but Mike Doyle made and skied his first single-ski in 1969 and Jack Marchand in 1961. Now, though Jack invented the monoski, he wasn't the one that fueled the initial interest in to the (almost) mainstream.

Mike Doyle, professional surfer and legendary waterman came up with the single ski idea from a recurring dream he had on a ski trip in spring of 1969. Surfing on the snow became something that he had to do, but how would he make this surfboard for the snow? He thought that poles would be needed for balance and that conventional ski equipment would have to be used to make his idea work. Though he had experience making surfboards, he thought it would be a challenge to make a good durable single-ski.

Using materials at hand, Mike made his first single-ski out of biaxial fiberglass and resin (he actually made five before he got it right, well...almost). He mounted it and tried to ski it but pulled the bindings out of the ski. After trying it out, he realized that the flex wouldn't work properly as a flat ski so he added a piece of hard wood under the feet to mount the bindings to, and two gradual tapered pieces of surfboard foam which tapered to a point towards the tip and tail.

His first experience skiing his newly designed "Ski Research" single-ski was a problem as well; again he pulled the bindings right out of the ski. Luckily a quality technician was near by and saw the mishap. Mikes' single was fixed to try again the following day. He had a problem skiing it at first, but after figuring it out he could ski places that he could only dream about skiing with two skis.

Problems and controversy were aroused when Mike went out on his new single ski with some of the patrollers from Jackson Hole. He didn't impress them, but intimidate them he did. The patrollers who had devoted their lives to learning how to master the art of skiing were being out skied by a surfer who had only been skiing for a couple of years. They didn't want that thing being skied on the mountain by anybody because they were a bunch of mamby-pamby winning wimps that couldn't bear to see a single-skier get as good as they were on their two skis in a fraction of the time. Though the patrollers never wanted to see anybody on one of these single-skis again, the ski industry seemed to be far more excited about this new snow-sliding toy.

Mike made a promo video in Spring of 71 with surfing buddy Bill Bahne of "Fins Unlimited" who engineered the skis and with sponsorship from Lange. The first article about monoskiing was published in Ski Magazine in the November 1971 issue on page 97 entitled "Man, I can hardly ski on two skis. How can I ski on one? "The following 71/72 ski season Mike teamed up with good friend Dick Barrymore to film the monoski in Canada. The short film won cinematography awards in Europe and had some excellent monoski footage. There was one scene where Doyle and Joey Cabel filmed 268 consecutive figure 8 turns in pristine powder. Powder Magazine used a photo of the completed 8's in one of the premier issues in 1973. (This event led to the current figure 8 competitions, everybody wanted a new record now that someone had said they had set the standard.) There is footage of Dick Barrymore's first run on the single-ski in this movie, he had it figured out after his first few hundred vertical feet and was turning near perfectly by the bottom of that first run. Now word of the new invention had started to spread through the ski industry.

Mike and Bill Bahne went to pitch this new snow sliding invention to the Hexcel Corporation in 1973 (Who was interested 10 years prior with Jack Marchands monoski). The Board asked Mr. Doyle "What's goin' on with this new single-ski???". Mike described his passion for this new snow sliding phenomenon. Hexcel was obviously impressed because they offered Mike a job and a van to promote the new single-ski as well as $80,000 and depreciating royalties over the next few years. After they had left the meeting Bill convinced Mike to manufacture the single ski on their own.

Mike agreed and Bill ordered the machines that would be used to make the new single-skis. They had it patented in 1973 and called it the Bahne Doyle Single Ski. Now that the ball was rollin', it was time to get out there and sell and promote the coolest new snow sliding invention ever. Dick Barrymore, featured the single-ski in his 1973 film "Mountain High", this would be the single-ski's major movie premier. Mike was getting some excellent publicity for his new single-ski with it's state of the art honeycomb aluminum core, but Bahne seemed to be having some production problems and couldn't fulfill the orders that Mike had for the singles.

Mike was on the road promoting for a couple of years and after finally getting a chance to visit the factory to see what the problem was with production, he found that the production equipment sat in the Bahne warehouse in boxes. This made distribution rather difficult because each ski was manufactured one at a time by hand. Though the manufacturing side of things was struggling, Mike had enlisted a couple of representatives that were starting to market the singles in California.

Dennis Thorne, of South Lake Tahoe, had been turned on to the single-ski in 1974 by one of the first reps., Joel Kaplin. Dennis had a screwed up toe and had a hard time pressuring it to turn his alpine-skis. He thought this would be the perfect solution to his problem and after skiing it he found that it was the cure and he became one of the first single-ski distributors in 1975. The South Shore of Lake Tahoe became the home for the single-ski in North America, but even with distributors helping out, a product must be available to sell, and Bahne was still having serious production problems. In 1976, Mike would see the first Winterstick snowboard, designed by Dimitrije Milovich, and for the first time realized that chances of his single-ski making its mark on the ski industry were diminishing.

Here was his surfboard for the snow and though the first bindings were archaic, the board did work well for surfing on the snow. Production at the Bahne facility was plagued with constant problems, Bill Bahne dissolved his and Mikes' partnership and started manufacturing Bahne Single-Skis on his own. Mike then moved to Sun Valley, Idaho. Most of the research and development took place in Lake Tahoe after Doyle had moved to Sun Valley. Dave and Don Bruce became the main testers for Bahne. With Dennis Thorne's marketing background and resort connections, his selling the single-ski gave it a good chance to make it's way into the ski market.

They got the Bahnes into a few local shops and did some direct sales while skiing Palisades and the Gunbarrel, exposing the critters in the trees and whoever else to the new single-ski that could make it through the "Sierra Cement". Though things were going well, there was a small marketing hurdle to jump because snowboards were banned at many of the resorts, so they banned single-skis as well.

Dennis shmoozed some of the Mountain GM's and proved to the patrollers that monoskiers had their shit together. Unlike the snowboarders with bungee cord bindings and no edges, the monoskis were state of the art at the time and made to be skied at the resorts on-piste. Dennis went to the top of Squaw, launched and ripped! After that the monoski was again aloud on the hill. They allowed single-skis back on the hill because of Dennis's efforts! Soon, a small cult following was developed, but the single-ski never got much exposure outside of the small group that skied them.

During the spring of 1978, Yves Bessas and Marixtu imported the first two Bahne single-skis from the U.S. to France. A few Chamoniards (Pierre Poncet, Alain Revel, FiFi, "Turtle" and Phillip Lecadre) would experiment with the single-ski and later become the gurus of the movement known as "La Glisse", or The Glide. Later on that season a small manufacturer located in the Jura began producing Bahne Doyle replicas called the "Petite Jennette". This French single-ski was skied down the north face of Mt. Blanc by Jean-Paul Frechin in April, 1979.

(According to Siegfried, the owner of the monoski bar "La Rencard" located in Argentiere, the Petite Jennette was made in the early 70's. He has two of these antiques on the wall in his bar as well as other collectable classics. This monoski looked exactly like the same shape as the Bahne, but was made of wood).

In the early development stages in France, the single-ski was helped tremendously by the UHAINA film festival which helped promote this new snow sliding sport. Back in the U.S., Mike Doyle started to make singles again subcontracted by Rick Bernetto who started a new US ski company called Research Dynamics. They had purchased rights from Bahne to make the single-skis and used the same shape as the original Bahne Doyle, but used a foam core instead of the honeycomb. The "RD Solid Gold" and Doyles new ski were one in the same so now there were three U.S. single-ski manufactures; Bahne, Doyle and Research Dynamics. Back to Europe...

The first manufactured French "monoski" was developed by Duret in 1980. The "Pierre Poncet" edition Duret was to be the premier commercialized monoski in Europe. Michel Duret was the most active promoter of the monoski, driving from resort to resort with a couple of dozen monoskis to let people try. He would sell a few a day and before long almost every shop would adopt the monoski into their inventory. The only competition for the Duret ski was the Rossignol "Soleil", or Sun. Both of these monoskis looked extremely similar to the original Bahnes and these were the only choices for the consumer in France until 1982. During the first couple of years, Gilles Zékeli was working on developing over 25 new monoski shapes in his garage.

In 1981, he brought these monoskis to Rossignol and was hired to design their future monoski line. In 1982, Tua released the "Tueur", or Killer. There isn't much distinguishable difference between any of these first European monoskis except for the heaviness of the Tua, but even the lengths were uniform at 185cm. This is also the year monoski competitions were organized, sponsored by Cartier, the first of these competitions were held in Italy, and the second in Les Arcs (France). In 1983, Monoski and Co.(a small manufacturer in Maurienne, France) would develop the first monoski with any significant changes to the original design of the Bahne Doyle.

This Swallowtail skied extremely well compared to its counterparts, but its wood composite construction would make it too costly for most consumers to afford (about $1000 U.S.). There was one U.S. distributor, John Bise of Sunshine Sports in Anchorage Alaska, who had been selling the Bahnes for many years and also imported some of the Monoski & Company boards. Research Dynamics and Doyle both stopped manufacturing in 1983 and sold all of the production equipment, excess materials and patent rights. This new U.S. company called Ski Tech Research was started by Steve Chichinsky.

He began to produce a copy of the original Bahne Doyle single-ski starting in the fall of 1983. Chichinsky spent over $50,000 trying to build a grinder because there wasn't anything available from the ski industry to tune the monoskis properly. They experimented with new shapes and sizes as well by using the existing RD/Doyle foam cores and adding extra layers of glass to make the shape different, thus a damn heavy single-ski. Bahne was in somewhat full production making honeycomb core single-skis but not getting much of product into the hands of retailers. At the same time, the popularity of monoskiing in France was growing out of control and many companies were starting to manufacture and outsource monoski production.

In 1984, Rossignol organized a press meeting to introduce a new style of monoski to the market that had easier skiing characteristics that even the novices could ski on easily (This model along with 25 other shapes were designed in 1981 by Gilles Zékeli - it took Rossi a few years to decide on which shape to use). Rossignol displayed this new monoski at the ski show in February 1984. Duret saw the new shape, copied it (almost), and started to make the Pan Am right away. The taper from tip to tail is obvious when viewing this new style of monoski, so it's easy to understand why turns are initiated easily and finished smoothly and why it's a better product for beginners.

The "Pintail" is an immediate success so all the other manufacturers follow suit with their own "Pintail" model monoskis. The Duret Pan Am was the most popular of these new pintail shaped monoskis. Team Rossignol sponsored a new monoski movie: it was called "Apocalypse Snow" and was made into three half hour mini movies which were definitely the strangest ski videos ever made. Two teams, the red and the yellow have a fierce competition and only the team who possessed the master of the glide could win (This guy must have been a bad ass!). The first episode contained only the old style "Soleil" monoskis and prototypes. Notice all the airbrushed graphics on this first segment, those are all "Soleils" and there were prototypes that were all white.

These were the predecessors to the first production pintail that are featured in the second half of the movie (This is the ski with the gray background and the birds). This monoski production helped the movement, it was getting organized and stronger with production levels increasing and more events being organized. The first public monoski competitions got started at Vars held in the Southern Alps during 1985. This event consisted of a mogul competition and derby format race where everybody raced down an open field of ungroomed terrain simultaneously. The next derby event to follow in Chamonix would become the most popular of all events on the mono circuit. In 1986 the circuit joined the FFS and the first championships took place in France. In this same year a few companies set the standard for the competition circuit and for the other monoski manufacturers to follow.

The Be Bop Subterfuge had an extremely narrow waist, a little tip and a very aggressive feel. The demand for the Bop was overwhelming and the little company had a hard time keeping up with the consumers need for their product. After developing a new board in 1986 for Rossignol (The blue ski with low shovel and geometric shapes, dubbed the "Blade Runner") Gilles Zékeli had quit because the ski was finalized in manufacturing without his approval. He went to Nitro and developed the Cham, they offered it in three different flex patterns. It's shape was similar to the Bop and both would gain excellent reputations as the monoskis to have.

Rossignol was manufacturing 10,000 units and Duret 60,000 units this year. Because of increased orders for their product as well as outsourcing about 2000 units for Head and Look, Duret had to supplement production with Johnathan (another European manufacturer) making many of their monoskis. Virtually all of the European ski manufacturers now made monoskis and with sales in the realm of 120,000 units this year, the monoski would obviously be the next snow sliding trend. Most of the sales during this period were in France but the monoski was starting to become a more desirable way to slide in other parts of Europe as well. The French companies decided they could do double the production they were at if they could convince the US to adopt the monoski.

Team Rossignol started their new marketing agenda by filming some of the Apocalypse Snow series in the U.S. and Philou Azais undertook the task of organizing a promotional tour of all the major North American ski resorts in 86 & 87. Steve Chichinsky approached the Frenchies to try and work together, but they were very rude and did not want to work with the stupid Americans ;-). A fair amount of interest was shown while touring these American resorts, but Azaiz thought this marketing attempt was of little success.

The Duret crew had started to promote the sport in the U.S as well and was seeing moderate success, but the U.S. consumer was much more difficult to persuade to try new things than the European skiers. Jean Phillippe Thevenod's good friend Eric Darsonvol also came to the U.S and started his own monoski company called Darsonvol in 1986. Ski Tech Research, after making about 600 monoskis and only selling 300 and giving the rest away for promotion, decided to take their losses (about $250,000) and sold off all of the former Bernetto/Doyle equipment and materials to a Japanese woman and her son. Mike Lish (Mohawk Mike) and his mother moved the company to Southern California in 1987 and called it Yama monoskis.

So now the US market had Bahnes and Yamas available as well as Darsonvols. The Rossignol and Duret teams left the U.S in 1987 after establishing some moderately strong distribution channels. There was a problem though because there was little training about this product offered to the U.S distributors. None of the manufacturers educated these shops nor the U.S representatives about their companies products and now there were five competing companies distributing their monoskis in North America.

Look, Dynastar and Dynamic monoskis were also available as well as some Blizzards out East and in Alaska. Though the French gave up, Eric Darsonvol was the crusader that remained in the U.S., he made his home in Summit County Colorado. He worked Jackson, parts of Utah and Montana as well. He'd demo his pintail monoskis (OEM'ed Duret pintail monoskis with a white or a black topsheet with a cat on it) out of the back of his van to all the locals wherever he traveled and he quickly developed a small but dedicated following of hard corps monoheads in the Central Rockies.

Philippe Russman tried to market the concept in the Southern hemisphere in 1987/88 with less luck than Philou had in the North, but still managed to get the monoski (in a very small scale) into the marketplace. The Japanese market would also be open to the influence of monoskis in 1988 with Christophe Vaquier of Eurosport International importing monoskis there, but it would never be adopted as it was in France nor would there be any professional competitions to help promote the sport.

By 1988 speed had been added to the French circuit with Vincent Guinchard establishing himself as the worlds fastest man on a single ski, attaining a top speed of 180 km/hr or 112 mph. Even with all the manufacturers making monoskis and all the promotion that was going on, the monoski circuit was struggling to find a consistent format. The organizers finally decided on mogul and derby competitions by 1989. Now things were really getting together (it seemed) but Bebop went out of business this same year. They threw the biggest monoski party ever to celebrate the end of this cult manufacturer's short time in business (they still made monoskis in their home until 1999). This also turned out to be the turning point in the battle between two alternative snow-sliding toys both fighting for room in the manufacturers presses.

In the U.S., Kent Hunter would try marketing his new super sidecut monoboard (The World Board, based off of Dimitrije Milovich's original Winterstick) to the inexperienced skier. The popularity of the snowboard created a lot of interest and the manufacturers began to pursue making them and did not pay much attention to the development of new monoskis. In Colorado, Eric Darsonvol and his wife seperated and he moves back to France, shutting down his business and leaving the last of his monoskis in Breckenridge with his ex-wife (I purchased 2 boxes of unskied Darsonvols in 1992). The fervor behind "La Glisse" started to die into the 90's, and the companies that made monoskis would become fewer and fewer.

Jean Philippe Thevenod of Duret designed the World Cup during this same period, this is the first wasp shaped monoski (meaning the tail is wider than the waist), which ended up becoming the best competition monoski available at the time and is still loved by the derby competitors of today. This new style of monoski didn't help though, too many years of poor snow conditions in the Alps didn't help the situation much nor did the lack of carveability of the traditionally shaped monoskis. Even this new Duret that rode like a bullet couldn't help.

The snowboards were developing more symmetric sidecuts so they carved better on hard snow than the monoskis could. Mike Lish of Yama monoskis was the first monoski manufacturer to try and keep up with the new snowboard shapes. Their I.C.B.M (Incredible Carving Ballistic Missile) was a carving monoski, shaped much like an all-terrain carving snowboard. (I heard they copied the sidecut radius of the K2 Gyrator snowboard but the monoski was a much more carving oriented shape than the K2).

Though the World had shape, it's extremely heavy weight and super wide shovel were not quite the same as what was becoming accepted in the snowboard industry. C.J. "Turbo" Turner was hired in 1993 to promote the World and he toured and promoted the board heavily for a couple of years. It was an amazing sight to see "Turbo" turn on a mountain. Within two to three days time, he would have the entire mountain chanting... mono... mono... mono... mono... or when out skiing with him I'd hear almost everybody on the chairlift yelling "Go Turbo!". Even with this kind of hype developed from this promotion, it still didn't help to create many new monoskiers.

The snowboard movement was really getting under way in the U.S. and the rest of the world market. Look stops making monoskis, Blizzard, Tua and others follow suit, then Dynamic stops making boards. The snowboards would begin to rule the market and the monoski would start to drown in the industries wake. In 1993 the popular Dynastar Non Stops would disappear, Bahne made their last manufacturing run of "potato chip specials" before halting their production and Duret would make cut backs on their models available too.

By 1995/96, Rossignol would see the last season of the "Extreme" being exported to the US. Yama stopped their production in 1995 and Mike Lish started to make snowboards in the back of his van selling on slope customs. Duret would only be making two models the "Free" and "Best Off" , with a total of five monoskis instead of the three models with seventeen available in different lengths that were available just a few years before.

Even though the World Board was easy to ski, it never took off partially because of its strange shape, never changing graphics and poor construction. They also went through some internal problems with multiple owners and the inability to make good marketing and manufacturing decisions within the company. Without enticing new monoskiers to purchase their boards, World was having difficulty and few of the old school monoskiers had any interest in trying the monoboard with it's strange spoon shape.

They lost "Turbo" too who started to plug around the ski industry trying to find some interest by one of the manufacturers to keep the monoski alive. Now with snowboarding ruling the newly developing snow-sliding sports industry and buying into the hearts and profit minded heads of ski manufacturers worldwide, very few monoskis are left and the BIG manufacturers have turned their back on this wonderful snow-sliding toy. Duret monoskis remain available in the world marketplace thanks to Jean Phillip Thevenod, designer of the "World Cup", and in charge of the monoski production at Duret. Without his efforts, the traditional monoski would no longer be available to us here in the U.S.

There are now only a couple of small companies making monoskis, Duret and Freesurf (Kiel). Note: Transonic of Japan makes a mini mono called the Gyrostick, this is a twin tip style mono made for jumps and only available in small numbers in Japan only. (For 2005, thay have released the new Gyrostick Universe). Freesurf had a fresh new perspective and made a beautiful wood grained monoski with an 18mm sidecut depth. Their monoski was easy to ski, turned effortlessly and the monoskiers that had access to them were very happy with this new perspective in shape, ride and performance.

Perhaps this is a new trend, because another new manufacturer located in Southern California starts prototyping in 1995/96 with the help of C.J. "Turbo" Turner. Snowshark's first models looked similar to the World board and their earliest production models were available in 165cm and 175cm lengths. With the near death of the monoski from the European manufacturers point of view, we're now seeing a rebirth cycle for the 1997 season in the USA. A few small quality manufacturers have come out of the woodwork in the U.S. and have introduced the best monoskis ever made.

Lunarboard is a very wide and stable monoski with a 30mm sidecut, great for powder and variable terrain. White Knuckle started in 1997 with an aggressive parabolic pintail and all-mountain model. Snowshark now has two models as well, the Mako and the Tigershark, one having a deeper sidecut and one for all over the mountain. Now that we have three manufacturers with exciting new shapes, the sport needed some promotion.

White Knuckle started throwing monoski events in the U.S. in 1998 starting with a party in Utah in February and with "The Mike Doyle Invitational" at Copper Mountain Colorado in April. During the event in his honor, Mike Doyle rode a monoski for his first time since 1983 (A WK 187 All-mountain) and requested White Knuckle make him a carving model. He also donated his first monoski to the Colorado Ski Museum located in Vail, Colorado.

In Europe, the monoski is still part of the Derby competition circuit in France and White Knuckle became the premier monoski sponsor for the "Derby de la Meije" in La Grave France in 1998. They also were throwing two Monopalooza events every season and were developing a name for themselves within the ski industry in the USA and in France. White Knuckle developed a new Carving monoski this year after Mike Doyle's request, it is completely symmetric and an absolute carving machine! He never got to ride one though as he was sponsored by Snowshark within one month of the "Mike Doyle Invitational".

Rossignol stopped manufacturing (actually they probably ran out of inventory from their last production run from 95/96) monoskis in 1999 and Freesurf went out of business for the 4th and final time by the end of 1999. Now at the beginning of the new millennium, these manufacturers that remain strive to produce new equipment with exciting shapes and to increase availability of their models in different lengths.

Snowshark now has shorter monoskis for beginners as well as Lunar and White Knuckle created the new Freeride, a hybrid of the new parabolic technology and inspired by the designs of Be Bop and Gilles Zekelis' Nitro Cham. Even with all these new and exciting things happening with the monoski of today, 2001 was an even more eventful year for the monoski.

White Knuckle went on a three month national demo tour. This tour really established the consumers need for and their enjoyment of the monoski. With over 700 participants, White Knuckle had a 90% success rate with people learning to ride the monoski in less than a few runs, they reported "0" injuries and also say that 50% of the people figured it out on their first run with the instruction technique that was being used.

Duret has gone out of business but it has been repurchased by Jean Philippe and many of the others that have worked at the factory for many years. The people that truly loved and battled to keep the monoski production alive at Duret now own the company.

Swell Panik of France, one of the most renowned and oldest of the European snowboard manufacturers, has started to make monoskis for the derby competitors and close friends. Also, Aluflex of France, a long board skateboard manufacturer has started to make a new monoski that is supposed to be one of the smoothest easiest to ski monoskis ever manufactured and Snowshark has released a new carbon fiber performance monoski called the mountain gun.

Even better for the monoski, "L'Association Francaise de Monoski" was established in 2001 to help promote the monoski in France and in 2002 the USMA (United States Monoski Association) was established by David Wells. These organizations are starting to work together to actively promote the monoski worldwide and are also working at getting the MAJ (Monoski Association of Japan) involved in a joint effort.

The French Association is throwing a yearly monoski party called "Monopride" and the USMA is planning on events and a demo tour for the 2002/2003 ski season. Snowshark has become active with monoski events in 2002 by throwing two "Mono Motion" parties and promises to keep them going through 2003 as well. Today the monoski is restructuring it's appearance to the general public, and finally getting some positive press in the U.S. as well as increasing momentum in France.

David Arnaud and Xavier Cousseau have been constantly battling at Les Arcs for the 200kmph mark (about 124mph) and finally beat it! The Derby circuit is helping the monoski create a new forum for competitors to meet and compete and to expose the new and exciting developments in the monoski world to the best skiers in the world. The monoski offers a new and exciting perspective to skiers and snowboarders that want to try something new on snow. All the developments pioneered by all these new companies are stimulating the old monoskiers and enticing new monoskiers to join the sport.

"Vive La Glisse"!

Information from The Glenat publication Monoski (translated by: Bee Drury) and Mike Doyles Autobiography Morning Glass and personal interviews were used to create this story along with what could be learned from all of you that I have spoken with over the years. Thanks for your support everybody.