Power to the poachers!

There seems to be only three major ski hills left in the US that continue on with their no snowboarders policy. Taos ski hill near Taos New Mexico now allows snowboarders on their slopes. This means as of March 18th 2008, Alta, Deer Valley, and Mad River Glen are the last major ski resorts in the United States to not allow one board slope carvers.

With the ongoing discrimination toward snowboarders at major ski hills, Jake Burton (Burton Snowboards) announced a $5,000 reward to ‘poachers’ who successfully film themselves poaching and tearing up the slopes at one of the remaining non-snowboarding mountains। Of course they will have to be cautious of the dreaded ski patroller as we all know their crazy diabolical plot to control everything on the mountain and remove fun at any cost.

Burton’s offer is probably one of the best campaigning and advertising ideas for the sport. It attempts to force more boarding terrain meaning higher sales, rentals, snowboard schools and so on. The culture of snowboarding has varying degrees from the sometimes refined backcountry explorer or resorts slope seeker to the extreme, Red bull fueled fanatical boarders.
So the poachers took to the hills and the result are some stellar videos. I was going to post the video but it is not working for some reason so here is the link to the video. Take a look at it, it is a sweet video.

Final note; I came across this info as I was searching to see if there were any hills left in existence with this aforementioned policy. I also found a great blog in the process entitled Backcountry Blog. It is a great site for gear review and a wide base of information on everything in the backcountry.

Good job boarders, enjoy the newly acquired terrain, just don’t get in the way of my skis…oh and Taos founder, Ernie Blake -RIP-, had once said that snowboarders would be allowed at Taos “when hell freezes over”. Well Taos skiers better get your parkas.