Billy kneels in the grass as Robin squeezes hair dye onto his head from one of those plastic ketchup sqeezie containers they have at Denny’s. Robin, whose own hair is already blue and completely shaved off in the back, expertly douses the blue goo into Billy’s hair, lifting and squeezing each layer so as not to miss a spot. Billy, who can’t be much older than eight or nine, wears one big, shit-eating grin on his freckled little face, like he’s been left with a babysitter he knows won’t make him go to bed at curfew.

These two both have a lot to smile about—only 50 yards away from where they sit in the cool, wet, Oregon grass is a huge skateboard ramp—three of them, to be exact. Not to mention a trampoline, miniature golf course, basketball court, swimming pool, and video arcade to come home to after snowboarding all day in one damn fine halfpipe.

Snowboard camp is a far cry from camps I had to go to as a kid where "activities" included stuff like archery and nature class, and where we were once forced to watch a snake eat a mouse. (One time I got to see two frogs have sex, but that’s another story.) I just remember drinking fruit punch that permanently stained my teeth, scratching multiple bug bites until they bled, and eating too many chocolate chip cookies and soggy P.B. and J.s.

No, this place is more like something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. It’s as if someone said, "If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?" and created the perfect place where snowboarding, skateboarding, summertime, snow, the mountains, the pros, and kids from all over the world converge and dissolve into one big week-long huckfest by whatever means they choose. Sure, you might have to sleep in a bed that looks more like a closet shelf in a room with twenty other people and one bathroom or endure the stench of wet snowboard boots in humid summer heat, but you’ll be so stoked, you’ll just take one big whiff, smile, and realize how little bathing means to you when you can have all this …

By now, you’ve probably seen a million photos of Mt. Hood, riders skying over the high contrast of blue sky and bright-white snow, the purplish-green mountains layered on the horizon. But what is snowboard camp really like? Read the questions and find out.

— Alison Berkley