Local inventor wants to change snowboarding

WASILLA — Chris Hunter can’t keep himself from tinkering.

Last time he appeared in the pages of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman was in 2009. He was holding an oversized novelty check for $10,000.

Hunter had entered and won the Arctic Innovation Competition as part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s School of Management with his invention to extend the life of batteries.

The next year he won the competition again, this time with an electric motor he said would power a car at 850 horsepower, but which weighs less than 100 pounds and fits in a briefcase.

“Then they put in what I call the Chris Hunter clause,” Hunter said.

The clause said you couldn’t enter if you’d already won twice in a row. So he sat out 2011.

But he’ll be back this year, Hunter said, as he demonstrated his latest invention in the Frontiersman parking lot Thursday: Magnetic snowboard bindings.

“The magnets are insanely strong,” Hunter said. “It has to shear off like this.”

Here, Hunter demonstrates sliding one magnet off of another rather than trying to pull them apart.

Hunter believes the bindings will keep riders on their boards unless met with the kind of force that comes from hitting a rock or crashing in some other way that ends the board’s forward momentum.

“That’s what’ll save your knees,” Hunter said. “It’s all just happy times because the worst you suffer is a bruised ego from a faceplant in the snow,” he said.

And while safety is the goal, Hunter said the bindings have other advantages over traditional bindings. For instance, you can connect one foot to the board and push off with the other before planting it on the board. Heck, you could get a running start and hop on.

You can change the angle of your stance on the fly. Future prototypes will likely be designed to pop free if the angle becomes too wide to be safe.

Of course, for now at least, this is all theoretical. Hunter is pretty sure it’ll work, but he hasn’t taken it out onto the slopes quite yet. The idea is new enough he just hasn’t had the chance.

“We’re waiting for the fluffy white stuff that nobody wants so we can test it,” he said. “We don’t even have a product name yet.”

And he might not get the startup capital from that AIC competition. He said when he registered he was the 10th to throw his hat in the ring. AIC needs 20 competitors. He’s hoping that by showing off his invention he might be able to spread the word about the competition and drum up some more entries.

“I really want another one of these checks,” he said. But he said he also wants some good competition. “I know there are a lot of very smart people out there.”

His dream is to manufacture the bindings in Alaska and market them at ski resorts. The prototypes are stamped “Made in Kodiak.”

He said he’s talked to a bunch of snowboarders so far. He asks them if they think it’s a good idea.

“Their common answer is, ‘when can I get one?’”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.