I love snowboarding! Even though I'm from Atlanta, I belong on a board flying down a powder run. So, I've found a few places in my travels that are worth highlighting to fellow snowboarders.
Copper Mountain, CO is awesome, with huge well groomed runs. Perfect for those who love to just fly. Really a fun mountain with smoking huts and a good terrain park, plenty of glades.
Keystone, CO. Really great runs, and many feel like a race course. Can get pretty crowded pretty fast, but it's nice and spacious higher on the mountain.
Beaver creek, CO is dope, quiet, powdery with a lot of up and down cruisers and nice cut backs. I'd say great for groups and families, rich ones of course.
Snowshoe, WV is as good as it gets on the east coast. It is a surprisingly big mountain for the east with some very nice runs. They even a double black one the back, and it wasn't icy... If you are stuck on the east coast, go here.
Whiteface, NY. aka ICEFACE! The windiest, iciest snowboarding of my life. It's a big and popular mountain with a lot of runs, full of ice. Maybe for a weekend or two it is nice and powdery, but the wind off lake Placid and just being on the East coast makes this place an ice sheet nearly all season.
Wildcat Mountain, NH. I can't give this one a fair shake because I went during mud season. Aside from the March melt and ice, it is a good mountain best suited for intermediates and advanced. Lots of good and long blue cruisers and black mogul runs.
Mary Jane, CO part of Winter Park, was one of my favorites, first for the name, second for the pow pow. Nice glades here I recall, lots of fun banks of powder and nice spacious runs. It's also cool because it's a little emptier than expected because winter park gets most of the traffic.
Steamboat Springs, CO is a nice big mountain with tons of runs, kind of tucked back from the crowds with some beautiful scenery. They get some nice powder here too but the main drawback is that it's pretty far from the rest of the Colorado mountains.
Vail, CO. the end all be all of skiing and snowboarding. Hands down the most skiable terrain of any mountain anywhere. The resort is a small city and the 3 mountains are the expansive countryside. You can get lost on this mountain and never ski the same run twice. Excellent conditions and bowls accumulate powder like NO OTHER. The only drawbacks are the ridiculously expensive lift tickets and there are tons of traverses, a snowboarder's bane.
Beech Mtn, NC, the best in the south east, not counting snowshoe. 3 runs open on a good day, but that one is enough to have a good time. If a good storm comes through, Beech can have some really killer powder+ they have some cheap lift ticket deals.
Mt. Hood, OR. the most beatiful mountain I've been too, and Portland is lush and green. The conditions here can be hit or miss but if they hit theres nothing better. The mountain itself is pretty massive with plenty of runs.
These are all based purely on my personal experience. Stowe, Jackson Hole, Lake Tahoe and Big Sky are next on my to do list. Am I missing any must-visit snowboard destinations?
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