Burton Snowboard head encourages protest

By Danny Robinson

February 27, 2008 | Since the dawning age of snowboarding in the late 1970s, there has been what some snowboarders have called a constant battle for acceptance.

It's a battle that the sport of snowboarding has won for the most part. Throughout the last 30 years snowboarding has transcended from obscurity to a global Olympic sport. Virtually every winter sports resort is flooded with eager snowboarders both young and old every season. Even with the widespread acceptance of the sport, there are still four resorts that do not allow snowboarders on their terrain,Mad-River Glen in Vermont, Deer Valley and Alta in Utah, and Taos in New Mexico. This has been the cause for disturbance among the snowboarding community. This season, Jake Burton Carpenter, owner of the worlds oldest and largest snowboarding company, Burton Snowboards, has launched a campaign to encourage snowboarders to "poach", these four resorts.

"Poaching," as Burton calls it, is the process of sneaking into one of the "ski only" resorts, and snowboarding there. Snowboarders do not "poach" because the terrain or snow at these resorts is any better than the resorts they can already attend. They do it as a form of protest against what Burton calls a "blatant disregard of the Constitution of the United States of America." Burtons program not only encourages snowboarders to poach, they are offering to pay snowboarders to do so. Burtons campaign is asking for riders to submit videos of themselves "poaching" the resorts. These videos will be entered into a contest which will pay $5,000 to the winning video from each resort. This has set discussion boards like snowboardingforum.com on fire with snowboarders excitement.

Burton feels especially strong that two of these four resorts are operated on federal forest land, which Burton says, "makes this issue even more frustrating since the taxes of many snowboarders help finance these resorts. I'm confident that if these four resorts outlawed skiing tomorrow, there would be a protest long before 20 years passed, and rightfully so." As a result of this program, many ski enthusiasts and the "ski only" resort owners themselves have voiced and written their complaints to Burton. In a response letter, found at snowboard-revolution.com, Burton says he respects their right to express their opinion and asks that "in return they should grant us the same courtesy." The program is a peaceful one according to Burton, "we have been careful," Burton says, "not to break any laws, nor to encourage anyone to break any laws in our efforts to liberate these mountains. Burton has even posted a "Poaching 10 Commandments" section as part of his contest. These commandments include, always buying a lift ticket, respecting ski patrol, and remaining peaceful.

Since the beginning of this program in the early 2007/2008 winter season, one of the four resorts mentioned, Taos in New Mexico, has decided to allow snowboarding in April of 2008.The program has also gained support from online ski and snowboard retailer evogear.com, which has added $5,000 in total prize money to the purse. The full effects of this campaign will be interesting to see.

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