EP 147 For the glory and the story with IG

In this one, Cody talks to Dan Egan, better known as IG. In 1986, he started IG Boarding Shop. At the time, he was competing in big wave surfing, but there really wasn’t much money to be made in it. So, he thought, instead of trying to be in the contests and scraping by, maybe he’ll just make surfboards for all surfers he knows. His surf shop soon blossomed into a full retail store and for 25 years IG made and sold his own surfboards, skateboards and snowboards. In total, he hand-shaped about 4,500 surfboards, thousands of skateboards and about 1,500 snowboards.

 

But what he really wanted was to make enough money so that he could go surfing and snowboarding. So, every year he would take weeks and months off work to ride. And as snowboarding got bigger, IG found a new place to explore: Valdez. Those early days of riding Thompson Pass saw heli rides for as low as $15, $20 and $25. It was a common occurrence for anyone riding that area at that time to get a first descent. And they were doing it with no guides. They’d ride mountains all day long — Diamond, Python, Stairway, Hog’s Back, Billy Mitchell — and then party all night. It was a wild time, on and off the mountains.

 

And in the middle of all this, IG, along with my dad, Scott Liska, were pioneering surf spots out of Resurrection Bay. At the time, most everyone they talked to about surfing in Alaska told them that it was impossible, it was just too cold. But they were determined. IG tells the story of the first time they found surfable waves out by Latouche, Elrington and Montague islands. It was IG, my dad and Giles and Sebastian Landry of Turnagain Hardcore and the waves were barreling. My dad checked the fish finder for depth and water temperature. It was a little cold for the wetsuits they had, but they jumped in anyway. The first wave IG caught was a triple barrel. It was only about a foot overhead, but it barreled right over the rocks. Over the next couple of years, they would find about 25 surfing spots.

 

IG says that his outlook on life comes from his relationship to surfing. That the unique thing about surfing is you have to trust your own judgement — to be optimistic — because you’re relying on so many unpredictable things — the weather, the tide, the wind, the swell. Because when you paddle out to the spot, sometimes it’s flat, so you hope and you dream that it starts pumping and a perfect wave is on its way to you, in that specific spot. That’s the hope IG carries with him throughout his life. When he was just a kid with the idea to start a surf shop, when he came to Alaska because he heard Valdez was the North Shore of snowboarding, and then when his shop closed after 25 years of business and he transitioned to the weed industry.