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Remembering Snowboarding Pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter

As “Jordan” is to basketball and “Williams” is to tennis, one name is synonymous with snowboarding, and that’s Burton.

Jake Burton Carpenter founded Burton Snowboards out of a Vermont barn in 1977 with a grassroots, ad-hoc approach, making prototypes out of a surfboard construction shop before moving to his own factory. He died Nov. 20 at a hospital in Burlington, VT. from complications from a relapse of testicular cancer.

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Jake Burton — as he professionally was known — didn’t invent snowboarding, but he was responsible for turning the once-underground hobby into a full international sensation.

Initially, mountain operators weren’t keen on snowboarding as it was seen as a renegade interruption to the traditions and class of the ski elite. In 1983, he convinced Vermont’s Stratton Mountain to become the first major resort to allow snowboarders on lifts.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, snowboarding — literally and figuratively — took off. By 1984, his sales had hit $1 million and by 1995, his company was worth more than $100 million. The emerging popularity convinced the Olympics to get in on the act, introducing the sport at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. The sport’s trajectory only grew from there and became a billion-dollar business.

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Burton Carpenter was initially diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2011 and doctors gave him a clean bill of health in January 2012. In 2015, he was hospitalized with Miller Fisher Syndrome, a rare nerve disease, resulting in eight weeks of paralysis and eight weeks on life support. In a Nov. 9, 2019 statement to employees he said that “a bit of (the cancer) hung out in my lymph nodes and got back into business.”

Burton Carpenter is survived by his wife, Donna, three sons: George Carpenter, Taylor Carpenter and Timi Carpenter; his stepmother, Margaret Owen Carpenter; two sisters; two stepbrothers; and two stepsisters.

Burton employees and riders took to Stowe Mountain Resort’s opening day on Friday to ride in Burton Carpenter’s honor with Burton CEO John Lacy encouraging employees to do “what Jake would be doing”.

We’re sure riders on mountains across the country did the same.

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Geoff Nudelman, Khareem Sudlow