History

Glebelands

A Little Spark: Glebelands For Life

“Rewind it, Scott, rewind it!” a young Jesse Loomis shouted, bouncing back and forth in anticipation. The crew of local kids and suburban Jersey vacationers anxiously waited, piled on a ratty couch in the Burton Showroom in Manchester, VT mere feet from the small factory floor. Scott Lenhardt fumbled with the VCR controls. As soon as the action resumed, they erupted off the couch, pushing each other, high fiving, staring in disbelief as Randy Gaetano ollied into thin air off a tiny, icy bump at Bromley Mountain. Variations of this scene have played out countless times in snowboarding. That shared joy of watching your friends progress is what fuels the community. For Glebelands, it was something more—it was the catalyst for their collective success in snowboarding and beyond. 

Glebelands never cared if you knew about them. It was never about fame or fortune; it was about snowboarding with the best of friends, cheering each other’s progression, laughing at the crew’s antics, and living to do it all over again. Their friendship was energized by the rebellious snowboarding spirit bubbling out of rural Vermont in the early ’90s. They harnessed the punk rock positivity felt on that beat-up Burton couch and pushed each other toward varied spheres of influence in the snowboarding world. Their mark is etched into every corner of the industry, from Gaetano’s effortless freeriding to Lenhardt’s fantastical board graphics to Shem Roose’s captivating photography to the design and marketing prowess of the LaVecchia brothers. Their paths are inextricably linked to the first two decades of East Coast snowboarding, and they continue to innovate behind the scenes in snowboarding, art, design and commerce. And it all started at a small ski area in the Green Mountain State… 

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