"I have the best lifestyle in the world. The job I have, the family I have, the sports that are my life—it just doesn't get any better." These are the words of Jake Burton, and if you didn't know him to be one of the most affable, easygoing moguls in America, you'd want to sock him for being so smug. But, really, he's just being honest: Jake Burton has it good, and it's almost impossible to begrudge him his fortune.
It's early October, and Burton, 53, has barely had time to recover from the Fall Bash, a now-legendary affair held at his home in Stowe, Vermont, that dates back more or less a quarter century, to the early days of Burton Snowboards. Once each fall a blizzard of humanity descends upon the gray-shingled compound surrounded by dense woods—friends, family, pro snowboarders, company employees toting along their kids and dogs. "It used to just be everybody who worked at the company and our friends," Burton recalls. "It really hasn't changed—it's just gotten a lot bigger." This year, more than 1,400 people showed up, and the band Shiny Toy Guns performed. "It was epic," he says. Surely his home gets trashed, though, right? "It's part of the deal."
Burton—whose full name is Jake Burton Carpenter—didn't invent snowboarding, but the former competitive skier and onetime horse trainer almost single-handedly popularized it. The company that bears his name evolved from a single snowboard whipped up in his Vermont garage in 1977—a pointy-nosed, fish-tailed oddity that was steered with a rope—into the dominant force in the sport, a behemoth that earns an estimated $200 million a year, controls nearly half of snowboarding's retail business, and has since branched (via affiliated brands like Gravis, Analog, and Channel Islands) into skateboarding and surfing, the latter hardly surprising once one spends any time with the Long Island–born boss.
Three years ago, Burton pulled his kids out of school, hired some tutors and folks to look after the family dogs, and set off on a 10-month trip around the world. "We followed winter," he says. "But you can't help but find good surf along the way." He and his wife, Donna (who oversees women's initiatives at the company), and sons George, 18, Taylor, 14, and Timmy, 11, spent a month in Austria, a month in Tokyo, and six weeks in New Zealand. All told, the family hit 15 countries, surfing and snowboarding on six continents. "I thought going in it would be this character-building thing that would be best when it was all done, but every day was an adventure," Burton says. "It was the best year of our lives."
Burton still chases the best powder, wherever it may be, snowboarding in Alaska or Norway or New Zealand alongside team riders like Shaun White (the Torino gold medalist and indisputable dominator of the half-pipe) and Terje Haakonsen (one of the most innovative boarders of all time), or just cruising Stowe, a few miles down the road, with his boys. He and his youngest son, Timmy, took a boat-and-surf trip to the Maldives last summer, and later this afternoon the two are headed for New York to catch a few waves and attend the VH1 Hip Hop Honors awards—you have to imagine Timmy is one of the few kids not embarrassed to sit next to his dad in a crowd that includes Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott, and Pharrell Williams.
