I am Burton
Jake Burton Carpenter is, of course, the mastermind behind Burton Snowboards. But despite fame and fortune, it seems that Jake has never suffered delusions of grandeur, and would rather chase winter around the globe for a year with his family – strapping into over 100 days of powder – than cash in and retire in Aspen. HUCK caught up with the man behind snowboarding’s super brand for a casual chat on life, the state of the industry and where we all go from here.
HUCK: You weren’t the first to create some form of the modern snowboard, but you seem to be the first to have had the vision that it was going to take off. What gave you that confidence?
JAKE BURTON: As a young kid I skied but I never had an opportunity to surf. The concept of surfing always appealed to me – it was something I always wanted to do, but it just never happened.
Then a product called the Snurfer came out and it cost less than $10. All of my friends and I bought them, and even though I was only fourteen years old, the minute I got on a Snurfer and rode it I knew there was a sport there. The early Snurfers had no bindings, edges or p-tex bases, but when you got on them in powder you could definitely shred.
From that point on I always talked about the idea of starting a real snowboarding company and making it a sport. I was going to school at the time, and I expected that someone else would take the concept to the next level but it never happened, so shortly after graduating from university I set out to start Burton Snowboards.
What did the first board you make look like? How was it to ride, and do you still own it?
I modified Snurfers until 1977 when I started the company and built my first production prototype. I was a complete loser in shop class in school, yet there I was, working out of a barn in Vermont, figuring out how to manufacture a snowboard. There was no road map. I combined some skateboarding and a little bit of surfing experience with the Snurfer, then added some common sense – which is probably why it took so long to make a product that was rideable.
I made 100 prototypes before deciding on a production board. They were all made of entirely different constructions, from marine plywood, to fibreglass, to solid ash that I steamed and bent as if making a chair. I remember making a board in a furniture factory in upstate New York. Driving back to Vermont, I saw a massive highway embankment covered with a foot of snow. I parked the car on the side of the highway, pulled out the new board, hiked the embankment in my street shoes and just shredded down, having the time of my life. I finally settled on a skateboard construction for my production board, and in 1977 I made my first Burton snowboard in Londonderry, Vermont. And yes, I still have some of these first boards. One is hanging on the wall at Burton headquarters.
Everyone always talks about the ‘good ol’ days’ of snowboarding, when there were just a few outcasts out there doing it. How would you describe the spirit of that time?
Prior to resort riding, snowboarding was simply a backyard sport. We would find a hill or mountain to hike somewhere and just spend the whole day hiking and riding. If the weather was good, we would build a jump or banked turns. Our clothing sucked and we rode in basketball shoes, so after a day you were pretty much soaked.
Once we started getting on mountains the sport grew, but it still seemed that if I ever saw anybody with a snowboard I would know them one way or another. The sport was incredibly small, but the people involved were passionate about riding and making it happen.
The competition thing got going pretty early, and that played an important role in elevating the quality of riding and equipment. Initially the contests were all alpine oriented; they were either a straight shot down the hill or a few turns. This might sound lame in the context of what’s going on now, but at the time simply stopping or turning a snowboard on hard-packed snow was difficult, and timed races did a lot to develop the sport. I always loved the straight shot races the most, which we called Downhills. It was so much fun to scare the shit out of yourself and watch you and your friends pull off some insane wipeouts.
As fierce as the competition was, we did all have this feeling that we were building something, and over time we learned to put the sport before everything else.
How would you compare that to snowboarding today, with its Olympic status, big brands and commercial sponsorships?
Of course it was very different back in the early days. I mean, snowboarders weren’t even allowed on chairlifts, so that gave it way more of an outcast kind of feel. But more than anything, the spirit of snowboarding is still the same. It’s about individual style and passion and living a lifestyle that you love. All the money, corporate sponsorships and Olympic gold medals in the world can’t change what snowboarding is really all about – having a great time on the hill with your friends.
You didn’t just create a brand but were actually instrumental in turning snowboarding into a bona fide sport. How hard was it back in the eighties trying to convince resorts to open up to snowboarders?
Initially it was a nightmare. It was a lot of hard work communicating with the resort owners. We just lobbied them and showed them what was going on. If there were issues, we’d try to talk them down and address the whole thing using common sense. We couldn’t have done it without the local support, but at the same time the local kids needed somebody to come in and make a presentation. We did that at a lot of mountains. I can remember making a presentation in Aspen and them telling us, “Sorry.” They didn’t want the snowboarders as the skiers complained. It was frustrating. But the sport had so much momentum at that point, it was like, “Your loss.” Now Aspen hosts the X Games.
If you had one day left to snowboard, where would it be, and who would it be with?
It would definitely be right here at my home mountain in Stowe, Vermont. I would start the day with some tree runs and lift-access backcountry runs with my whole family and some friends. I would then do some park laps with the kids and have some fun scaring the shit out of myself. I would end the day hiking up the mountain with just my dogs and my iPod and enjoying a sweet soul run down.
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