Snowboarding @ Hunter Mountain

About this series "New York Living- Nature & Countryside":
We often feel fortunate to live in Manhattan-- get to enjoy its rich cultural life and, with a short drive, beautiful nature. This series shares the nature and countryside near Manhattan that we like to visit/do outdoor sports.

Snowboarding in Hunter
While we liked mountains in upstate NY for hiking, for skiing we always go to Vermont or the West where the terrain, the snow, lodging and restaurant choices seem to be far better. In the 2007-2008 season, we decided to expand our snow sports "portfolio" and learn snowboarding & cross-country skiing. We checked out Hunter Mountain. For beginner snowboarding, Hunter is good enough. And it's really great to be able to take day trips and practice-- it's over 2hrs' drive (one-way) from Manhattan.
















I found snowboarding more difficult to learn than skiing. Snowboarding also requires more protective gear than skiing. Lucky that our friend Simon knows a lot about gears and helped us pick out appropriate ones. We absolutely loved the Burton glove with build-in wrist guard and the 661 Knee Pad-- it felt so comfortable to fall on the knee with the pad! I also loved the Red Impact Short (a.k.a. "Butt Pad"), except I could not pull it down when I needed to go to bathroom :-)! I got the older model (maybe 2007?) which looked more sturdy and effective than the new model (maybe 2008?). But the older model has tight legs, and the knee pad blocks its way to come down :-)


























Checkout our snowboards, they actually match the color theme with our road bikes. Did not plan it, just turned out by coincident.