The facility that bears his name is located in Burlington, Vermont, next door to Burton’s worldwide headquarters. Lance, my tour guide for the day, leads us in, stopping only to point out the avalanche barrier that looms over the entrance; the first of many nods to Craig.

Inside is a giant, impressively-stocked workshop with enough space to swing a snowcat. It’s something that probably fits the fantasy of your average snowboarder’s dad more than that of the rider themselves. Stacks of wood are piled high on shelves while dogs come and go as they please, at times outnumbering the staff. Were it not for the boards on the wall and stickers on the machines, and perhaps the old Stowe gondola handing overhead, they could be making anything.

And actually here, ‘making anything’ is the idea. While they’ve dipped their toe in manufacturing production boards – company founder Jake Burton Carpenter’s first ‘pro model’ was made here last summer in a run of 100, with 600 units of the Moonshine and Speakeasy to follow this year – the primary purpose of Craig’s remains R&D. Up to a dozen hand-crafted prototype boards can be constructed in a day, depending on what’s being worked on at the time.

“It’s easy to see how Craig’s input helped Burton become the world’s biggest snowboard brand. It’s even easier to see why they’d choose to build a facility like this in his honour”

“Anyone in the building can come by with an idea” says Chris Cunningham, Business Director for boots and bindings and 12-year veteran of Burton. “We’ll also look at surfing, for sure, and when summer comes we skate the ramps out back. All of a sudden we’ll have some new ideas from that“.

The renowned global team is encouraged to contribute, and it’s not uncommon to have Jeremy Jones or Danny Davis dropping by with their requests. As Chris explains; “Sometimes team will trump everything, and the answer to why we’re doing something will just be ‘well, Danny wanted it that way….’ Kelly Clark, for example, wants the fastest possible base, ever. A lot of our high-end boards have die-cut bases, and she’ll be like ‘I can feel a seam!’ so we’ll make her a special model with the same graphic but a printed base”.

There’s presumably a bean-counter somewhere, checking on the spend, but he or she isn’t making their presence felt. “We’re all snowboarders”, says Chris. “and sometimes we’ll just say ‘Fuck it, let’s do it this way’. You can go to Jake and say ‘Hey, we really want to do this. It makes absolutely no business sense but it’d be really cool‘. And he can still look at it from a snowboarder’s perspective and say ‘That’s right, we should be doing this. Go for it!’ A lot of the managers get it; even when it may not make sense right now on paper, they’re happy to roll the dice.”

It’s difficult to imagine a better setup for this kind of suck-it-and-see approach. First off, there’s the equipment, which ranges from the traditional (planer for sanding down the tip and tail, jigsaw and bandsaw for shaping) right up to a state-of-the-art 3D printer. With this, it’s possible to ’grow’ virtually any shape you can think of with layers of plastic, each 1/5000th of an inch thick. While the results aren’t shop-floor ready, they’re strong enough to gauge whether or not an idea is worth pursuing.

“We haven’t even scratched the surface yet, but we’re experimenting. I’m hopeful that we’ll come across the way where we say ‘Holy shit, that changes everything’.”

Then there’s the location, which allows for practical testing to begin straight away. Vermont has more ski resorts per capita than any other state, many of them a short drive from Burlington. It’s a mere 45 minutes to Stowe, with the likes of Stratton, Killington and Jay Peak not much further. Be it a highback or a goggle frame, it can go from concept to on-slope tests within 24 hours.

Finally, there’s the staff, ranging from award-winning engineers to board-builder extraordinaire ‘Thunder’. “He’s personally built so many of the boards used to win contests that he should have his own gold medal”, says Lance, while Thunder busies himself with the construction of a Parkitect 154.

The board is built like a sandwich, layers of wood and fibreglass bonded together with epoxy resin. While the process seems casual, steps have been taken to ensure that any favourable results can be precisely replicated. After the materials have been arranged in one of several moulds (there are at least 600 on site) the board goes to the press, where the camber profile will be applied. The final stop is the ‘Infinite Ride’ machine, where the board is broken in with an even bend.