Greetings from the Last Frontier
Yo. I'm from Alaska. Born and raised here all 27 years of my life, and haven't hardly ever left. Here's my little story about why I'm here:
I'm a college biochemistry student of humble means, but over spring break, I received a birthday present of a completely paid-for (rental gear, lift pass) first-time snowboarding outing. You see, I had been tangentially intrigued by snowboarding for some time, but felt cut off from the pursuit by the barriers of buying/renting costly gear and resort passes. I still have memories of high school acquaintances of a decade ago going to the nearby mountain and talking about their cool boarding adventures, which I remained ignorant of.
It was my first time doing something fun outside all winter, and I NEEDED the fresh mountain air and scenic views, let me tell you. After the rough first day, I had managed to barely link one or two precariously-performed "S" turns, and despite all the falling (like every 30 seconds) that day, the experience of starting to learn a challenging and cool new skill was liberating. Invigorating, even. I can't remember the last time I felt like such a giddy little kid about something like this. Even after falling repeatedly on my butt with great force and semi-spraining my dainty, girly wrists, I was hooked already. After that day, I expediently acquired my own cheap used board/bindings (but new boots), flew into an unforeseen frenzy of research into all the fine details of this wonderful sport, and managed to go back for four more FULL days before the season ended. And each time I made great progress and had exponentially increasing fun. Already, I can go down most any blue square run and link my turns with relative ease (but still have LOTS of room for betterment!).
I figured I would join this forum because I've pondered many questions during my recent and enthusiastic dive into snowboarding, and I figure there are probably some experienced riders on this site who may be able to offer me a little guidance at times.
Anyway, I'm into the kind of snowboarding where you just shred down the mountain, and don't really have much interest in "park"-style things (there are virtually no places with unnatural or urban terrain here, anyway). My mountain of choice is a totally small-town type of place, with a cool old base lodge, tire-chained old school buses for a lift system, and frequented by lots of interior Alaska's hippies. The mountain is well-wooded with black and white spruce forest, with an intricate network of runs weaving through it. It's where I've done all of my snowboarding so far, so I consider it my domain of sorts.