12 – I N T E R V I E W –
secrets of the
illuminati
WORDS: JOHN RODOSKY
I
n some ways, growing up in Jackson Hole is like growing up on an island. Although thousands of miles away from the nearest ocean, Jackson’s vast mountain ranges enshroud it much like a coastline. From the age of about 10 to 14, my friends and I understood very little about snowboard culture as a whole. For us, the world of snowboarding started and ended within the Jackson Hole community. Travis Rice was the best snowboarder in the world and BlueBird Wax and Illuminati Snowboards were the two coolest companies by far. It wasn’t the big name pros of the day like Bjorn Leines or Kevin Jones that we idolized, it was the Illuminati team, guys like Mark Carter, Bryan Iguchi and Adam Dowell. The one thing that made us feel worthy enough to stand behind these dudes in the lift line was the Illuminati decks underneath our feet. For a time it seemed like anyone who was anyone was riding the
PH OT O : @ J EEP _ C H I EF I M AG E S
red and black boards of Illuminati, thanks to one man who founded the iconic snowboard company: Lance Pitman. With this being a very important issue— Jackson Hole Snowboarder Magazine’s 10 year anniversary—I decided to catch up with Lance to relive some stories from Illuminati’s heyday and a period of time that led to many of the things we take for granted in the Jackson Hole Snowboard scene, this magazine included. JOHN RODOSKY: What was it like to grow up as a snowboarder in Jackson back in the 90s? LANCE PITMAN: We grow up in the place we grow up, and we have little context for what it’s like compared to something else. The town was smaller, the snowboard scene was just getting started. Basically all snowboarders knew each other and just about all of them were skateboarders too. RODO:
At what point did you break into the
professional snowboard world? Did you take the contest or the film route? PITMAN: I got my first nationally published advertisement at age 15 in Snowboarder Magazine. It was an advert for Bonfire clothing. I was into contests for sure. I won quite a few of them as a kid on the intermountain USSA circuit. Filming before the digital revolution was a whole other beast. We were lucky to get to use a camera that shot with any decent quality, and 16mm film was only for the pros.
I was pro for K2 for seven years. In my mind I had already hit the big time. I was a teenager getting paid salary, incentives and travel budget. I made good money for a few years and I think that fed my ego in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I wanted more. RODO: When did you realize you wanted to go your own way? PITMAN:
In the fall of 1999 I was on a
