Government Camp, OR (July 15, 2010)

Government Camp is kind of like Las Vegas for kids—an overstimulating, hedonistic destination where sleep is at a premium and pretty much everything one could want is right at your fingertips.

After taking in Think Thank’s new film Friday night and the Bonfire Pipe 2 Pipe on Saturday, I was ready for a relaxing Sunday at High Cascade Snowboard Camp up on the Palmer Snowfield—thoroughly drained after just two days in govy, but stoked to spin a few laps and check out the setup at HCSC.

Random Camper, front 9

Up on the snowfield, temperatures had a dropped a bit from the heat wave of the weekend, and a cool breeze floated over the setup: a mini-pipe, rail garden, and big hip, adjacent a collection of wall rides and a superpipe. Burtner and the Think Thanks crew were on-snow for his signature session riding rails across from the big table, which clocked in around eighty feet, where Kazu Kokobu was taking it forty feet past the knuckle with a collection of campers. It was meat-chucking at its finest, with stomps and ragdolls flying in every direction.  

Jesse Burtner, lipslide

So I did what any nearing-thirty editor would do and took to the mini-pipe, milking the twelve-foot transitions down through the camp with photog Aaron Blatt for a while before picking up the camera to document the madness. Thoroughly satiated, it was time to climb in the car and get on I-5 back to Bellingham for some peace and quiet—and make the week-long recovery that comes with any trip to the snowboard-entertainment-capital-of-the-world.