Poaching Snowboarding

Bumper sticker promoting the poaching of Alta Ski Resort

Poaching originally refers to the act of illegally snowboarding at a resort where snowboards are explicitly prohibited. Poaching is intended as a form of protest against what snowboarders view as segregation and can be seen as a form of civil disobedience.

Very few resorts continue to bar snowboarders. Because, by definition, poaching is the practice of snowboarding where it is disallowed, usage of this term as a mean of protest is falling out of use as most resorts now allow snowboarding. In the United States poaching is only possible at three resorts: Deer Valley, Alta Ski Resort (Both in Utah) and Mad River Glen in Vermont. In contemporary usage, the term sometimes refers to skiing and snowboarding in out of bounds areas.

1 Background
2 Sabotage Stupidity
3 10 Commandments
4 References
5 External links

Background [link]

Even though snowboarding was accepted by the mainstream winter sports industry in the 1990s, and is now recognized as a Winter Olympic sport (debuting in 1998), ski areas adopted the sport at a much slower pace than the winter sports public. For many years, there was animosity between skiers and snowboarders, which lead to an ongoing skier vs snowboarder feud.^[1] Early snowboards were banned from the slopes by park officials. In 1985, only seven percent of U.S. ski areas allowed snowboarding,^[2] with a similar proportion in Europe. Because of this, snowboarders sought ways to protest of such treatment from resorts owners and to a lesser degree, other skiers. Indeed, the snowboarding way of life came about to rebel against skiing. As a result, snowboarders chose to "shock" skiers by snowboarding in a ski-only resort as protest.

Sabotage Stupidity [link]

Sabotage Stupidity^[3] was an illegal contest in 2007 created by Burton Snowboards to encourage the average snowboarder to go out and poach then four remaining resorts (the three resorts stated above, plus Taos Ski Valley) that do not allow snowboarders. The founder of the company, Jake Burton Carpenter has a strong view on poaching: "In the face of this blatant and aggressive disregard for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, poaching isn’t simply a peaceful form of protest, it is truly your patriotic duty" despite the fact that all of the mountain resorts are privately-owned entities with no legal obligation to serve snowboarders.

Taos made the announcement of lifting the ban soon the competition was announced.

10 Commandments [link]

Burton Snowboards has established The Ten Commandments for Poaching. These commandments made it clear that this illegal form of protest is non-violent and requested that except the act of snowboarding itself, all other regulations are to be followed (Commandments 1 "don't break the law.", 2 - "Always buy a lift ticket." and 3 - "keep it safe, stay inbounds, and always wear safety equipment") and respect the authorities (e.g. ski patrols) (Commandment 6 - "Always respect Ski Patrol; even if they tackle you."). The Commandments has parallels in the theories of civil disobedience.^[3]