High Cascade Snowboard Camp — Local services in Sandy

Note: this is a review of the Adult Coaching-Only session. We only attended the on-snow portion of the full camp experience.

Foreword

Mt. Hood and the larger PNW area experienced unprecedented heat wave on our arriving weekend, presenting a unique challenge for camp operation. This review acknowledges the difficulty faced by the staff. However, there are still quite a few areas unrelated to the situation that made the overall experience unsatisfactory.

Spotty Communication

On our arriving day, The Camp sent a welcome email stating that our coaches would reach out to each of us that evening to prepare us for the week. However, only 3 out of 7 friends (including myself) received communication that night. One of our friends never received any text message throughout the entire week of camp session.

Oversized Groups and Mismatched Ability Level

The adult campers were split into 3 groups of around 15 people, and 3 coaches were assigned for each group. Ideally, this would result in a 1-to-5 coach-student ratio. However, our group was mixed with intermediate riders and absolute beginners. The few beginners immediately took up two of our coaches and left the other one with more than 10 students for the day. Due to the large class size and the crowded lift lines, we only did 3 cruising runs and that was it for the morning session on Tuesday. The coaches promised to reorganize the groups for the following days, but that never happened. The coach-student ratio reached 1-14 at one point on Friday morning.

The oversized class made teaching extremely difficult and inefficient. Coaches didn't have the capacity to look after every student and give meaningful feedback. One-by-one practices take much longer to get to the next turn. Overall, we did not gain much out of these sessions.

Poor Time Management

The Camp's time management skill is very questionable. We were told to meet with the coaches at 9:15am every morning, but the crew were never once on time. On Thursday, we did not get the lift tickets until 10am. By the time everyone got to FTC to start the lesson, it is already after 11am.

While the morning classes are often delayed, the afternoon clinics are volatile. The carving clinic on Tuesday ended after just two quick runs, with the coach emphasizing three times that he "really wants a beer at the lodge". On Wednesday, the coach supposedly in charge of the small jump clinic simply no-showed.

Varying Coaching Ability

All camp coaches are awesome riders with skills I dream to match, but their ability to structure a class and help students progress varies. The coaches assigned to our group never asked about my goals. Instead, I was told to just "work on whatever you're working on" throughout the first riding day (Tuesday), and I did not receive any feedback other than "everything looks good".

I was really nervous about my progress by Thursday, so I started telling every coach that I want to work on jumps. They heard it but was unable to change the lesson plan. I eventually decided to break with the rest of the class to work on things alone, and three more friends joined me on Friday. We all reached our goals by the end of the session, but it is unfortunate that we have to do this on our own.

The Up-sides

Proper credits must be given to the staff members for how friendly they are. Each of them are sincere and personable, showing that they want us to have a good time. Their positive attitude is greatly appreciated.

Conclusion

I want to acknowledge again how challenging it is for the staff in the week we attended. It is the very first adult session this year, with limited reference available from last year due to COVID, and complicated by the unprecedented heat wave causing ski area operation to halt. After much internal debate and knowing that we are likely an outlier, I still decided to post this review just to share our own experience. I firmly believe this is not the standard that HCSC hold themselves to, and I sincerely hope anyone else deciding to attend will have a much...

My 11-year-old son attended the Whitespace day camp this year for the second time, and this year was a mess.

The highlight was meeting Shawn White and receiving a snowboard from him, which is an unforgettable experience for my son. If not for that, our dissatisfaction would be even greater.

On the first day, boarding was canceled due to weather, which is understandable. However, on the second day, my son came home without his gear and told us he had been left alone to snowboard. He was driven back to camp and stayed until 8 pm, walking around without shoes because they were left on the mountain. No one noticed his situation or informed us of what happened. He fell towards the end of the day and, worried about missing the bus, left all his gear behind to make it back in time. It seems no one realized he was missing. When the shuttle dropped him off, no one explained what had happened; we only found out from our son.

We visited the camp the next day to speak with the team and were told his coach was overwhelmed with a crying child. Despite this, my son enjoyed white water rafting the following day, but we were promised photos from that day and the week, which we still have not received. This also happened last year. They sent a folder with the coaches' names and the pictures, but my son's coach had no pictures.

We were told someone would look for his belongings while he was rafting, but based on the communication, it seems no one did. I drove up to the mountain on Thursday to search for his gear myself, but it was gone, along with his phone.

The camp attempted to make amends by arranging a meet-and-greet with Shawn White, promising us pictures from the week (which we still haven't received), and providing a new backpack. While we appreciate these efforts, we paid a substantial amount of money for this camp, and the chaos and lack of care for my son's safety were very concerning. Previous reviews indicate this is not an isolated issue.

We are torn because our son had a lot of fun and wants to return, but as a parent of a younger child, I am hesitant to recommend this camp to others. The lack of organization and leaving my son alone to snowboard were unacceptable, and we are fortunate he wasn't injured or...

Terrible experience for our child. We sent our daughter here for the second year in a row and things have taken a turn from mediocre to downright horrific. This group has jam packed the camp with far too many campers and basically have very young kids running this program. Our daughter never received the one on one training that we were told she would get. She lost a backpack which one of her fellow campers found and turned into a counselor but it never made it to the office or lost and found so that is gone without a trace. The counselor was absent most of the time and the kids were basically fending for themselves unsupervised (our daughter just turned 12 prior to camp.) She ended up getting really sick after this camp most likely due to the unsanitary conditions and the lack of nutritional guidance by counselors(I think our daughter survived on candy bars and gatorade for the week). Clean water (it was brown!) was a major issue there and conditions in the bunkhouses were deplorable. I spoke to a few "supervisors" about this and they admitted that there were many problems last year during this camp and they all told me that they were going to do something "really great" for us for this year. Needless to say, nobody followed up with us and nothing has been done. I presume this camp is just as poorly run this year as it was the last. An adult or older child may not have such a bad time with this camp but I would never send a young child back here again, ever!

UPDATE AS OF 9/26/19 I have been contacted by High Cascade and they have been very thorough with my issues and admitted that 2018 was a bad year for them in particular, the week that we sent our daughter. They did end up contacting me and attempted to make everything right. I'm going to give this another try especially due to all of the new changes that they are making with more professional staff and added attention to the snowboarding instruction and progress. I'm updating my review to 3 stars from the 1 star and will again update this review after our 2020...