View from Toilet Courtesy of Burton

Editor's Note: Most of us can only dream of setting off on a world tour. This year, Jake Burton and his family will be living the dream, embarking on a 10-month trip to snowboard all over the globe, covering six continents and following winter the whole way.

Jake, Donna, George(13), Taylor(10), Timmy(7) and niece Victoria (15) set off in July for a year of adventure travel. They will be snowboarding at resorts and in the backcountry of Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Morocco, throughout Europe and in the Himalayas (India). To round out the trip, they will be surfing in the Galapagos Islands, Peru, New Zealand, Tonga, Australia and Hawaii, sea kayaking in Thailand, and touring through China, Tibet, and Vietnam.

From Jake
After 30 hours of travel out of Peru, we finally arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand. Guy Alty, our NZ distributor, met us at the airport and led us to our home base for the next six weeks - a two bedroom house overlooking four different surf breaks and just a two hour drive into the mountains. I included a 'toilet view' photo below as it's the best view I've ever seen off a crapper in my life. The house is located in the village of Sumner, just outside of Christchurch. While helping us move in, Guy said what became our New Zealand slogan, "it's New Zealand mate, it's always going off somewhere." We found this to be more than true. When we arrived it was 'low tide' (not much snow) in the mountains so I surfed while the kids hit the skatepark in Christchurch. We were all happy. A few days later when it started to dump, we headed for the mountains. Getting there took a little longer than expected, thanks to me filling up the diesel Land Cruiser with regular gas.

After a week of snowboarding, skating and surfing, the team came over for our fall photo shoot. This is the first time we got a bunch of '05 product on snow and the results were solid. Gigi, DCP, Romain and Trevor went directly to a club field (Temple Basin) with Blotto and Zacher. Dave (Downing), Victoria (Jealouse), Jeff Curtes, Jon Boyer and I went to Mt. Cook Heli to get some pow shots. Riding the Cook region with Dave and Victoria was as much fun as you can have on snow. Their powder riding is inspirational, and their attitude is so positive and fun that I think I actually improved in the days I rode with them. It snowed two feet (60 cm) the day before we went out, but then it blew 100 mph (160km) most of the night. Nonetheless, our guide, Trevor Street found the goods. I've known Trevor for a long time and I can't think of anyone I trust more in the mountains. Riding terrain like this with world class riders, a laid back guide and two feet of fresh is about as good as it gets. Everybody has their favorite aspect of their job. That is mine.

	Heli-boarding at Mt. Cook Courtesy of Burton

In the next few days, more riders including Shaun White, his brother Jesse, Jeremy Jones, Natasza and JP Solberg showed up. They hooked up with the UnInc crew to ride Snowpark. Snowpark is a relatively new resort that is designed specifically as a snowboarder's paradise. It's only 600 feet (200 meters) of vertical serviced by one t-bar, but it's got everything you need to progress your park and pipe riding skills whether you are a beginner or pro, including a superpipe, rails/boxes of all levels, tabletops, QP and a wall ride. There are even a variety of snowskating options, not to mention a full time DJ providing music in a DJ booth overlooking the park. Much like the features, the staff is all about making sure snowboarders have a good time. The riders loved the place, blew the locals' minds and Shaun predictably left his mark when he requested the cat driver to make a run in the quarter pipe wall for him to gap from the QP to the wall ride.

After leaving Cook, Dave (Downing) came down to Christchurch for an early morning surf prior to his flight back home. The surf was small (chest high) and the water was cold (booties/gloves/hoods) but the whole scene was super fun, especially when you can take your wetsuit off in an outdoor hot tub overlooking the break while drinking a latte. We must have sat in that hot tub for an hour just talking about how much fun New Zealand is. Where else can you ride powder like that one day and surf the next? After sending off Dave and Victoria we packed up ourselves for a ten-day trip to Tonga.

Tonga is a chain of Islands about 500 miles (900 km) east of Fiji in the South Pacific. We went there with an old friend ('rippin' regular-foot Michael McDonnell') and his family. Michael is the guy who made Burton's early videos 'One Track Mind' and 'Chill'. The McDonnells live in Malibu and Michael loves to pioneer new surf spots, which was a big part of his purpose for this trip. The surf on Tonga's main island Tongatapu is well known, but we were at the northern most group of islands named Vava'u (vah-vah-oo). We rented a boat and cruised all over the area looking for surf, but it turned out that the best waves were on the reef right in front of the island we were staying on (Foe'ata), and when that wasn't working the kids surfed behind the boat. The swell we were praying for never really came, but we had plenty of chest high waves breaking in less than two feet (60 cm) of water.

I find surfing in water that shallow similar to a backcountry snowboarding in avalanche conditions. The high is as much in surviving the session as it is in the ride itself. We all ended up with a few coral cuts (try rubbing sand and lime juice into a coral cut sometime), but we all caught some very fun waves.

The place we stayed at was a trip unto itself. The spot is called Blue Lagoon and the name is well deserved. The place looked like an island floating in a pool of grape Gatorade. The accommodations consisted of four Fales (Polynesian for huts): no hot water and often no water at all (it had to be brought in by boat), part time plumbing and only a few hours of electricity a day. It's been a while since I went 10 days without washing my hair or shaving. Mosquito nets were essential and when we asked about phone or internet service, they laughed. Feleti (expat German) and his wife Ma'ata (Tongan) own the place and live there with their four kids. Feleti is as close a character to Gilligan as you will ever find. He is so removed from western civilization that he didn't find out about 9/11 until ten days after it happened.

— Jake Burton, Burton Snowboards