Burton is offering a $5000 bounty to the person or crew who submits the best poaching video documentation at each resort on their hit list. It’s open season on Mad River Glen, Alta, Deer Valley, and Taos for snowboarders with their digital video cameras. Burton has a list of rules for snowboard poachers, which asks them not to break the law and insists that they buy lift tickets at the resorts they’re going to poach.
I wouldn’t mind seeing snowboarders at Alta, but I don’t know how they could handle those traverses with knee-deep bumps. Besides, don’t snowboarders want to be outlaws? If they were welcomed at places like Deer Valley I think snowboarding would lose some of its inherent scofflaw coolness.
via Funner Presents
ByRocky Thompson
Boarding isnt about being an outlaw. Honestly, you sound like my mother when I picked up the sport. Its about being out there and enjoying the fluid movement, freedom, and fun. I skied for 6 years and never enjoyed it. I started snowboarding when i was 15 and fell in love. Why do you ski? Is it to fit in or be a conformist? No, I assume its because you enjoy the sport. Every year more and more people loose the skis and swap for a board. My 78yr. old grandfather started last year. So ,its not just young people. Its a newer and emerging sport that appeals to everyone. For starters, its more challenging than skiing because you cant simply wedge your way down a run regardless of the terrain. I’ve been riding for nine years and I still have a lot to learn.
Rebels, outlaws, hooligans. Call us what ever you want. We are here and boarders have just as much right to be on the slopes as skiers. If you want to ban someone from the slopes, require proficiency testing. What about the skiers that cant control their speed or direction like the ones that cause pileups in the lift lines or the ones who stand in the middle of the trail and hold conversations. These are the people that are the problems. Snowboarders arn’t innocent, I’ll grant you that. But skiers are just as malicous and giulty. Last year I was stabbed in the thigh with a pole by one skier because aparently I was in his way. Nobody is innocent, everybody makes mistakes. Don’t hate snoboarders because we’re in the minority.
I don’t know. I think the outlaw status lends a bit of a mystique to the sport. How bad do you really want to go to Deer Valley?
I was all for this contest and was willing to help some of my boarder friends out with a MRG poach, until I learned that Burton recently dropped all their R.E.D. and Anon pro skiers.
Yeah, if there wasn’t a rebel/outlaw flavor to snowboarding, boarders wouldn’t get laid nearly as much.
NE Rider: ask your grandpa at the end of the winter if he’s pulling more tail than he did in ‘06. The answer may surprise you!
I liked this post so much I linked to it. Hope that’s cool.
Poach Alta and the patrollers would do more than $5,000 damage to that poor fool. True DV might throw hot watercress soup at a poacher.
What next Burton? Poach Delicate Arch? Statue of Liberty? Not sure what the point is as boarders are welcomed around the world.
I’m going to throw a rock through the window of my local snowboard shop and “poach” me a brand new Custom X. Thanks for the inspiration Jake.
whats with the wedge comment? there are as many snowplowers out there as there are wedgies.
up at the U there is a snowboard/ski club that is called “One Love.” http://www.uofuonelove.com/about.htm
One Love was formed to unite skiers and snowboarders.
these four resorts have their own “constitutional right” to offer their services to whomever they choose.
but by encouraging boarders to break laws and resort policy is ridiculous and moves us all in the opposite direction. these two sports should be about progression not regression. I agree with Rocky, Burton doesn’t really care to have deer valley opened up to boarders they just want to encourage a rebel spirit.
should alta or dv open up? sure, but this is not the right way to go about it.
final word: respect gets respect.
Irony? Burton sponsors the Chill Program for inner city Utah kids to board free with mentors at Brighton. Is Jake having a mid life crisis? View the URL, its not making a case for poaching. Resorts are private properties, you screw up and the sheriff is waiting. Poach PCMR from Deer Valley and you get arrested.
After all the gains earned by boarders this makes pawns out of boarders.
This campaign is almost Geo Bush like in its stupidity, heads are gonna roll in marketing!
Can you imagine the lawsuit when a video equipped boarder hits a skier within bounds? Goodbye Burton.
Resorts do their best to contain the madness while of course allowing all to test their mettle, and if you saw the list of heinous accidents you’d never ski again.
hypersailor. The true irony is that there actually are inner city kids in Utah.
Is this the same rebel attitude that involves buying $1500 designer Burton jackets? Laughable man.
They can’t be serious calling the resorts “fascist” with “draconian bans” on snowboards. Jake Burton certainly seems serious about it though. Enough to post a reply explaining his intentions to the people the have already sent him letters in protest. If the goal is to end “segregation” of snowboarders by these mountains, this thing couldn’t help to integrate them with the skiing population. I am still looking forward to watching the videos though.
Kudos for blogging on this thing Rocky. I’m not sure how I feel about it. They can’t be serious calling the resorts “fascist” with “draconian bans” on snowboards. Jake Burton certainly seems serious about it though. Enough to post a reply explaining his intentions to the people the have already sent him letters in protest. If the goal is to end “segregation” of snowboarders by these mountains, this thing couldn’t help to integrate them with the skiing population. I am still looking forward to watching the videos though.
good luck running the steeps in Taos and the catwalks are as narrow as they get. What’s wrong with having one or two places just for the skiers? There are 150 other places in North America that allow the boarders…!
pfffft…boarders poach Alta all the time. Burton is, like, soooooo, last year with this thing.
OneLove: That’s a great idea for a program you have at your school, and I applaud your school for creating it. However I think you’re thinking about the contest the wrong way.
There are rules and then there are laws. When they’re breaking the rules of a privately owned business, there isn’t much they can do to penalize the poachers. And the contest clearly states that there are no LAW-BREAKING allowed (i.e. trespassing, vandalism, etc), and to respect other skiers, otherwise they would be disqualified. They are also required to buy a ticket, and since they are not trespassing on private property the poachers would do nothing wrong in the eyes of the law.
snowboarding……….sooooo 90’s
freeskiing’s taking over
faster,higher, bigger moves
well first off, the trespassing thing may be legit in some places, but national forest land, forget it, it is a public resource to be utilized by all…so really Mad River is the one to poach, and it really isn’t poaching because it is public land. And for the record, there is nothing at any of those resorts that can’t be snowboarded…there seem to be a few (not all as I ride with a number of skiers) ignorant skiers that seem to think snowboarders can’t race through moguls, traverse narrow ridelines, or take on the steepest of terrain. Think again! It’s really ashame some skiers are so afraid of snowboards. It’s kind of funny these days, skis are starting to look a lot like snowboards, shaped, twin tipped…hmmm.
twin tip skis may be mimicing snowboards but at least we don’ have to keep taking off our bindings at the bottom of the lift.
fuk those gayass skihills anyways. Anybody who rides lifts are probly fags. phuck all the ski areas. The real deals about figuring it out your own self. I build a big ass hit and do it to it all day just like i do your girlfriend when ur working. I videotape both of them. hahaha. skifagots. snowboardfagots. You got nothing on this. pura vida!
KB, the resorts on forest service land pay rent to the government. They all have long term leases that allow them to build, maintain and set the conditions for use. Suggesting that you have some sort of invented “right” to snowboard at a private resort just because it’s on a forest service lease is as absurd as suggesting you have a right to board or ski for free….because it’s forest service land.
I was STOKED when I heard about this! I just moved to the Park City area a few months ago and actually hiked Alta after some pre-season dumpage. I then hatched a plan to streak down either Alta or Deer Valley at some point this winter and videotape it. Now I find out that I can enter it into a contest!!
Yes!
yeah sickgirl, you can also get ahead of the curve by passing on the left going too fast down Little Cottonwood Canyon! Screw the man! Do something big for your clothier! I’m sure Jake the Snake will send a tow truck when you go over the side. With YouTube this idea is already old.
Jake is laughing all the way to the brain bank. Now if he could only cure boarders from sitting on their ass 4 feet from getting off the lift.
Wow! I thought the ski vs. board hostility ended with the 90’s. It is sad to see it alive and well. I guess I should hate myself for enjoying both.
it is not that hard to drop over into alta from snowbird. I have done it before. Did not get in big trouble because at the time I had no idea what I had done. I have hiked all over alta with my snowboard.
it would have to be a higher reward than 5,000 bucks to get me to do that…come on burton…actually put up some cash worth it to risk all the fines and such doing it.
Skiers elitist? And where does that leave your average snowboarder who’s parents pay for his board and his holiday? This is so lame, it’s not funny.