With its recently announced class of 2026, Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame is celebrating the history and evolution of snowboarding. 

Most of the six inductees helped shape the sport along with the very boards that remain industry standards. 

An example: Never Summer Snowboards, which manufactures in Denver more than 40 years after brothers Tim and Tracey Canaday tested homemade boards around Berthoud Pass. They are two of the new Hall of Fame members whose legacies stretch back to the 1980s. 

Also back then, Jeffrey Grell “helped transform the sport of snowboarding from a fringe activity into a widely adopted discipline,” reads the Hall of Fame announcement. His “Hyback” invention ー a high-back binding made from modified ski boot cuffs ー was proven in Aspen, where Grell served as the resort’s first director of snowboarding, wrote industry-wide instructions and organized early competitions. 

Along that early competitive circuit, Chris Pappas grew his legend. Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame calls him “a pioneer” who “helped define and break boundaries.” He is also regarded as “an evangelist of early Colorado snowboarding, working with ski areas to open their minds and lifts.” 

Pappas would go on to coach “and 50 years later, is still moving snowboarding forward,” the Hall of Fame announcement adds. “There is no person in Colorado, and maybe the world, who has personally affected as many riders as possible, or has been a greater advocate of the possibilities and joy of snowboarding than Chris.”

Trent Bush, too, is credited for spreading that joy over a career spanning four decades. 

“As a teenager, he drove the sport’s early growth through Wave Rave Boulder, organizing landmark snowboarding events,” according to the Hall of Fame. He’d go on to oversee product design “at the highest levels of performance” with various roles at Mountain Hardware, Black Diamond and Spyder, among other top brands.

Alan Henceroth rounds out this year’s Hall of Fame class. Since 2005, he’s been chief operating officer at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area, where he started as ski patrol director in 1988.

The Hall of Fame announcement notes “his strengths in financial management, planning and team leadership” and praised him for “creating a culture of a rad work environment that is the envy of the industry.” 

The induction ceremony is set for Oct. 10 at Beaver Creek’s Vilar Performing Arts Center.