The days are getting longer and warmer as summer rapidly approaches. For many, the summer is lush and desirable. For us snowboarders, it’s comparable to purgatory. Most resorts on the East Coast don’t start running their lifts until mid to late November, and sometimes even as late as December.
After already dealing with terrible conditions and all the resorts closing early during the 2011-12 season, the thought of having to wait six or seven months to shred again is catastrophic for too many of us east-coasters.
Luckily, there are solutions to this problem. If you go to the right place, you will find snow. Although each of these involves spending the prettiest of pennies, it could turn out to be the best trip of your life. Here’s my list for you:
1) High Cascade Snowboard Camp:
Or should we just call it “Heaven on Earth?” Located at the base of Mt. Hood in Government Camp, Oregon, High Cascade leads the pack in terms of greatness as an extreme sports camp. The main park offers a variety of small, medium and large jumps, as well as a 22-foot super pipe.
Winner of the 2010 Winter Dew Tour Wendy’s Invitational Half Pipe competition Danny Davis said, “The pipe is epic and you can’t touch the rail garden there.” The
ridiculous collection of rails the camp has acquired over the years, along with the always-growing creativity the park crew exhibits, puts High Cascade on top.
High Cascade’s Team Riders, including my personal favorite urban and park rider Scott Stevens, recently released a full-length snowboard film, “Hungry?” in April. You can check those videos, and others, as well as pricing and session dates on their website at highcascade.com.
High Cascade is open exclusively to snowboarders. Sorry, no pole-holders allowed.
2) Woodward at Copper & Woodward at Tahoe:
The internationally-known and award-winning skateboard camp Woodward has officially taken a part in the snow scene (finally). Woodward now has two snowboard camps established, one at Boreal in Northern California and another at the summit of Copper in Colorado. Each are the only summer snowboarding camps in their states.
Along with the nicely-sculpted jump lines and killer rail features the snow park have to offer, each of the camps have indoor facilities to be noted as well. The Barn, at Woodward at Copper, has a number of indoor trampolines, foam-pits and a skate park.
Woodward at Tahoe has a snow park comparable to its sister park at Copper, operated by lift (no hiking necessary!). If you’re not feeling the snow that day, you can always check out the camp’s 33,000-square-foot indoor skate park.
For videos, pricing and session dates, check out the camps’ sites, woodwardatcopper.com and woodwardattahoe.com.
3) New Zealand:
Now, if you’re really trying to ball outrageous, you could fulfill your appetite for shred and obtain college credits simultaneously.
I’m studying abroad in New Zealand for the entirety of my junior year. My first semester abroad starts in just under two months, on July 2. The closest mountains to the town I’ll be living in, Dunedin, plan to open between July 10 and 15. One of these mountains is the home of Snowpark, NZ, a resort that has been known to have the best terrain park in all of the Southern Hemisphere.
Pretty cool beans, eh?