Snow Jammin! For even more pictures from the Snow Jam, check out the On Topic links. © 2006 Adam Mordan
Burton's Third Annual Abominable Snow Jam
Aug 01 2006 / Los Angeles, CAChristmas in July at the Abominable Snow Jam
It’s a hundred kinds of hot all across the country this week – Al Gore’s global warming alarms have made him a summer movie star, “hottest summer on record” records are melting away like the rare vinyl LP collection your grandma put out for the yard sale, and even snowboarding golden boy Shaun White is focusing on his skateboard for the moment, thriving in the dry Denver heat at 100 degrees plus.
We’ll forgive you if snowboarding has been on a backburner in your mind recently.
Still, it’s easy enough – presidentially easy – to put the inconvenient truth temporarily aside when you’re a camper at High Cascade Snowboard Camp, Mt. Hood’s off-season utopia in Timberline, Oregon.
Thanks to a perfect storm of modern technology, prime glacial geography, and the artistry of world-class park designers, High Cascade represents your best chance to session with Santa in July, catch a glimpse of the elusive yeti in his Bermuda shorts, and rehearse your New Year’s half-pipe resolutions ahead of the curve.
Summer snowboarding in these abominable times is a gift unto itself, but if you really want to make the most of Christmas in July at High Cascade, you’ll need to enter Burton’s Abominable Snow Jam.
It’s a hundred kinds of hot all across the country this week – Al Gore’s global warming alarms have made him a summer movie star, “hottest summer on record” records are melting away like the rare vinyl LP collection your grandma put out for the yard sale, and even snowboarding golden boy Shaun White is focusing on his skateboard for the moment, thriving in the dry Denver heat at 100 degrees plus.
We’ll forgive you if snowboarding has been on a backburner in your mind recently.
Still, it’s easy enough – presidentially easy – to put the inconvenient truth temporarily aside when you’re a camper at High Cascade Snowboard Camp, Mt. Hood’s off-season utopia in Timberline, Oregon.
Thanks to a perfect storm of modern technology, prime glacial geography, and the artistry of world-class park designers, High Cascade represents your best chance to session with Santa in July, catch a glimpse of the elusive yeti in his Bermuda shorts, and rehearse your New Year’s half-pipe resolutions ahead of the curve.
Summer snowboarding in these abominable times is a gift unto itself, but if you really want to make the most of Christmas in July at High Cascade, you’ll need to enter Burton’s Abominable Snow Jam.
 |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
||||||
Just ask 16-year-old Elena Hight, who claimed the Volvo Overall Rider Award at last week’s competition after winning the women’s half-pipe, best trick, and highest air contests, and placing second in the quarter-pipe contest. She drove off in a new 2007 Volvo C70 Convertible for her efforts, and also collected a Ski-Doo snowmobile, a MacBook Pro, and some cold hard cash while the rest of us were busy collecting sunburns and sweatin’ to the oldies.
Danny Kass and Jamie Anderson won the other big prizes of the contest, each claiming an 883 Harley-Davidson Sportster for innovation, creativity, and style through all of the events to win the Most Inspired Rider Contest.
Other winners included Nicolas Mueller and Molly Aguirre in the quarter-pipe contest, Nicolas Mueller (Chicken Wing McTwist) and Alexis Waite (McTwist) in the quarter-pipe best trick contest, Pat Moore (25 feet) and Elena Hight (12 feet) in the highest air contest, Takaharu Nakai and Elena Hight in the halfpipe contest, Jamie Anderson and Juss Oksanen in the slopestyle contest, and Andreas Wiig (switch backside 900) and Silvia Mittermuller (backside 720 nosegrab) in the slopestyle best trick contest.
Kass already has Silver medals from the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City and Torino, Italy and has won Burton’s US Open event four times, but he found the Harley prize humbling. “I’m totally overwhelmed right now… I think I’m dreaming. I’m just so stoked to win the Harley.”
Now in its third year, the Burton contest is already firmly entrenched as the top summer snowboard event in the Northern Hemisphere. It gives High Cascade campers a chance to ride and hang out with top pros, gives the pros a chance to throw down in their t-shirts, and gives snowboard magazines an excuse to publish on a year-round schedule without sending too many writers to places like New Zealand and Argentina.
Unfortunately, annual returns to Mt. Hood also serve as a grim reminder of the inconvenient truth. The fact of global warming is explicit on the Mt. Hood glaciers: experts say mountain glaciers in the Northwest are melting more quickly than anywhere else in the world, and Mt. Hood’s is fading fast. The biggest glaciers on the mountain have faded by as much as 34 percent in the last century, enough that you can actually see dramatic change on the face of the mountain from one year to the next. Here’s hoping that events like the Abominable Snow Jam can attract enough attention to the related environmental issues to ensure their own existence, and that High Cascade and Burton will help produce a generation of riders with some environmental activism in their bag of snowboarding tricks.
Harley Davidsons and Elena Hight’s new convertible suddenly seem much more appropriate than snowboarding’s usual SUV prizes. Maybe next year they’ll give away a Prius.
Danny Kass and Jamie Anderson won the other big prizes of the contest, each claiming an 883 Harley-Davidson Sportster for innovation, creativity, and style through all of the events to win the Most Inspired Rider Contest.
Other winners included Nicolas Mueller and Molly Aguirre in the quarter-pipe contest, Nicolas Mueller (Chicken Wing McTwist) and Alexis Waite (McTwist) in the quarter-pipe best trick contest, Pat Moore (25 feet) and Elena Hight (12 feet) in the highest air contest, Takaharu Nakai and Elena Hight in the halfpipe contest, Jamie Anderson and Juss Oksanen in the slopestyle contest, and Andreas Wiig (switch backside 900) and Silvia Mittermuller (backside 720 nosegrab) in the slopestyle best trick contest.
Kass already has Silver medals from the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City and Torino, Italy and has won Burton’s US Open event four times, but he found the Harley prize humbling. “I’m totally overwhelmed right now… I think I’m dreaming. I’m just so stoked to win the Harley.”
Now in its third year, the Burton contest is already firmly entrenched as the top summer snowboard event in the Northern Hemisphere. It gives High Cascade campers a chance to ride and hang out with top pros, gives the pros a chance to throw down in their t-shirts, and gives snowboard magazines an excuse to publish on a year-round schedule without sending too many writers to places like New Zealand and Argentina.
Unfortunately, annual returns to Mt. Hood also serve as a grim reminder of the inconvenient truth. The fact of global warming is explicit on the Mt. Hood glaciers: experts say mountain glaciers in the Northwest are melting more quickly than anywhere else in the world, and Mt. Hood’s is fading fast. The biggest glaciers on the mountain have faded by as much as 34 percent in the last century, enough that you can actually see dramatic change on the face of the mountain from one year to the next. Here’s hoping that events like the Abominable Snow Jam can attract enough attention to the related environmental issues to ensure their own existence, and that High Cascade and Burton will help produce a generation of riders with some environmental activism in their bag of snowboarding tricks.
Harley Davidsons and Elena Hight’s new convertible suddenly seem much more appropriate than snowboarding’s usual SUV prizes. Maybe next year they’ll give away a Prius.
– Colin Bane
