“The whole world knows, or at least everyone I knew or rode with at that time knows … that Jeff Grell invented the highback,” Dave Alden declares. The man speaks with authority. Alden was an early Burton team rider and among the select few first recipients of Grell’s original “Hy-Bak Cuff,” so he ought to know. Indeed, this fact is considered common knowledge among snowboard pioneers of the early years. And it says right there in austere black-and-white text on United States patent number 6,123,342:
High back binding for athletic equipment, Inventor: Grell, Jeffery L. June 2, 1998.
Hell, if the government says it’s true, it’s gotta be a fact, right?
But wait, ’98? How can that be right? Everyone knows that highbacks have been a common binding component since sometime in the ’80s and, with the exception of a period in the early ’90s when no-backs gained popularity among certain jib-nation enthusiasts, highbacks have been stock features on the vast majority of snowboard bindings. And what about the photo of an apparently stoked guy named Louis Fournier waving a board over his head right after finishing second to Terry Kidwell at the ’85 Nationals in Stratton? That binding sure looked like it had a fairly modern highback device on the front foot. And just who the hell is Louis Fournier, anyway?
Well let me tell you. This is the story of how two creative guys, geographically and culturally separated yet linked cosmically by their love of snowboarding and desire for a better ride, independently developed the snowboard’s most important performance element: the highback binding.…
—from The Turning Point, Chris Doyle’s story of the evolution of highback bindings