Despite growing up in Hood River, OR, Hunter Knoll wasn’t a snowboarder from birth. Rather, he was into any and all physical activities including team sports—lacrosse, specifically—and spent a string of winters homeschooling, fishing and camping on the beach in Baja California, Mexico. 

Now, though, Hunter is committed. He moved up to Mt Baker, WA four years back, took his first trips to AK this past winter. He’s embedded up there, refining a fall-line approach with room to grow. With a park-based background, he’s crafted a smooth style that now shows in natural terrain. Combine that with support from Mountain Hardwear and a few others, along with an easygoing and approachable attitude, and he’s well situated to grow as a rider in the public eye. 

After filming Chunkbuster over a two-week period at Baker in December, we sat down with Hunter to learn more about this Oregon transplant who, in his early 30s, has only recently established a presence in snowboarding’s public eye. 

All smiles at the end of another Mt Baker powder day.

Can you tell me about your parents? Their names, their jobs…

Greg and Karen—growing up, dad was a carpenter. He had a garage door business and would build spec homes. My mom worked at the hospital in the next town over, The Dalles. She also would do other jobs. They moved to Hood River to be windsurfers in the late 80s. When we got into snowboarding, she’d work at the mountains so we could have passes. 

Were they outdoorsy folks? 

My mom was until a diagnosis of MS. She was our biggest supporter, driving the van full of us and our friends everywhere. My dad grew up in Bend [OR]. He had a bit of a skiing background. He was more into fishing. He got us into dirt biking when we were pretty young. He grew up more of a traditional sport kind of guy, football and that kind of thing. 

You have siblings? 

I have a brother, Hudson, who’s almost exactly a year younger. He’s one of my best friends and someone I’ve always looked up to. We’ve got a younger sister who’s a year and a half younger than him, Harleigh. She just had a baby girl last year and I’m a proud uncle. 

How did you start boarding? 

Growing up, when we were younger, we weren’t winter people. We’d spend two or three months of the winter in Mexico, going down there and fishing and living on the beach. Winter came about one year, and we were on the fence whether we were going to go south as a family again. I forget if it was seeing snowboarding on TV or maybe on Rocket Power, the cartoon, but we saw snowboarding and had some friends that were doing it. I was 11 or 12, and we had a family friend who babysat us who started working at Mt Hood Meadows [OR], 45 minutes away. She was our first plugin—she got us lessons and tickets.

Dropping into the deep on an early season storm day.

You were homeschooled in Eastern Baja for your childhood years? 

We’d go to school until winter break, then Dad would pack up his dually construction truck, load the camper on the back of it, and we would tow a 24-foot Boston Whaler behind that. The dogs and the kids and everything would drive all the way down to where we camped at Punta Chivato, which is between Santa Rosalia and Muleje on the Sea of Cortez. We’d homeschool and live on the beach and fish whenever the weather allowed it. We’d go out early in the morning, catch our baitfish, then rip out and chase boils around, look for birds diving. 

How do you think that shaped you as a person?

Maybe learning you don’t need a lot to make it happen, and how to fend for ourselves and conduct ourselves around adults. At the time, we didn’t really realize that we might have been roughing it because we were having the time of our lives.

Was it a campground scene with other families?

It wasn’t regulated or patrolled or anything. On the bluff above, there was a couple houses, and we befriended everybody there. There were maybe 15, 20 rigs camped there long term, so we got to know these people and we’d have a big potluck every week. There weren’t many other kids, everyone else was retired. 

So you had a bunch of people looking out for you and you could just cruise around? 

Definitely. One of the families down the street, they brought us in and taught us Sunday school. It wasn’t religious, but they gave us coloring books and would teach us stuff, helped with our homework.

That was from when you were little all the way up to 10 or 11? 

We did it for five or six years. I’m super grateful for that experience—it’s pretty rare. 

Backflip into the natural halfpipe with TK Kromer.

Then you went boarding. Did it grab ahold of you pretty quick? 

We didn’t have passes that first year. I do remember Meadows has this big A-frame hut at the bottom of their lifts and there’s this perfect snow ramp going up, looking like a quarter pipe from the skate park or something. Day one I was like, “Oh you could jib that.”

Next year, mom got a job up there working for the Snow Blaster program—the kid camp they’d run every weekend. My brother and I started first. My sister picked it up in the next year or two. She started skiing and then my brother switched to skiing. He went on to have a ski career for a while. 

Did you have those aspirations as well? 

Boarding was more a hobby. It wasn’t until way later that I was like, “I want to snowboard and see how far I can take it.”

What precipitated that? 

I moved to Colorado to go to school, and it was my first time living in a mountain town. Hood River is kind of a mountain town, but it doesn’t really have a big snow scene, it’s more a windsports place. I went to school at Western State in Gunnison, CO. I had been snowboarding since I was young, I’d had a few rep sponsors and done USASA contests, I was decent at it but didn’t take it very seriously.

In Colorado, all these kids had moved there from the east coast to ski. They were taking it seriously. I only went there to get out of Oregon, to see something new. Tuition wasn’t crazy expensive. I was a lacrosse player. I continued to play through college, at the club level anyway. I went to college for a business administration degree, but as soon as I got there it was like, oh there’s all these people who are really into snowboarding and are here to do that. I kind of fell in with the snowboarders. 

Did you finish your degree? 

I did, over five years. I also rode Crested Butte a lot. We had a couple good winters there and then a couple where it didn’t snow, but they had a fun park and good terrain. I didn’t have a big freeride background coming from Meadows so that opened my eyes up a bit. We were pretty close to Summit County, so we’d go there on the weekends to ride Keystone and Breck. 

You got out of college, then what happened? 

I moved back to Hood River because I was kind of over how little it snowed in Colorado, started bartending, which I’d done in college, making good money, snowboarding in the wintertime, dirt bikes, surfing, kiting, fishing in the summer. 

Then I had a buddy from Colorado who was getting ready to make his first Baker trip. He hit me up and was like, “Hey, come pick me up in Seattle and we’ll go spend a week up at Baker.” Surprisingly, growing up in Oregon, I hadn’t really heard much about Baker. We came up and that trip opened my eyes to what this is.

It was the end of February and it was on. I didn’t have any [avalanche] training. I think I was borrowing some gear. The guys that were showing us around had been here for a couple years so they were getting their grasp on things, but we were pretty green.

Shawn Bond, my buddy from Colorado, was friends with Mike Scarfi, Andrew Burns, Zach Beh, the Gotosland squad. They were filming a local’s flick, and we filmed with them. After that trip I made sure to come up as much as I could and hop in with the squad.

Grabbing frontside on Shuksan Arm.

What year was that? 

Probably 2018. 

What made you decide to move here? 

It was partially the crew, really sick snowboarders who meshed really well, mixed with the terrain that was available. I’d never seen terrain like that before that you could access from a chair with a short walk. Combining that with the park background I had felt pretty natural.

That’s the curse of riding Baker. Everybody here can rip but they don’t all have the tricks… You moved here in 2020? 

I’d been visiting for a couple years and then I got gold duct tape [at the Legendary Banked Slalom] in 2020. COVID shut everything down immediately after that. I was down in Oregon collecting an unemployment check, doing construction on the side, saving money. Winter came around and I was like, we gotta go up to Baker for the winter, because neither my girlfriend or I were working at the time. We found a little mother-in-law apartment up in Glacier and spent the winter up there, 2021. 

How did sponsorship fit into this? 

When I was in Oregon I had been working with a local outerwear company. That winter the Rome rep was at the race and saw me on the podium and was like, “Oh, if you ever need anything”… So, I hit him up and then in 2021 the TM put me on as an am rider. I wasn’t really expecting anything but that happened, some gear flow.

If I’m going to be up there spending all this time snowboarding and filming a bit anyway, it seemed like a fun project to try to get and maintain a sponsorship. It’s by no means how I’m going to make a full living, but it makes me feel like I’m working towards something instead of just fucking around up there the whole time. I wound up in a few of the Gotos films, still getting outerwear, but that was kind of stagnant, and at Banked Slalom 2023, I heard that Mountain Hardwear was doing something, so I asked if they needed help. This is when I met Anya, their creative director, who’s definitely one of the coolest people I’ve met on this whole snowboard journey. She said they were doing a shoot. That went pretty well, I think they were stoked on my presence at the event, knowing people locally, being friendly, that kind of thing. I was like, if you guys need anything, let me know. 

That progressed to where the next year they were starting to dive into snowboarding a bit, and because I’d worked with them before, they were stoked to bring me on, I think. 

Shuksan Arm powder turns.

Then you went to Alaska.

We were having a really bad winter here and we were trying to film a little welcome to the team Mountain Hardwear thing. That was my first trip up to Alaska. We just went to Alyeska. They were having a record season. Maybe not the Alaska experience you dream of, but it was a nice start. 

Then you went back… 

I met some guys from Tahoe through that Mountain Hardwear shoot at the LBS: Tucker Adams and Blake Hunter. They have been going up to AK for a while, bringing their sleds up. I went down to Tahoe earlier in the winter for a week and they gave me the sled 101 program. It was straight to Thompson Pass after that. I think it was day five on a sled ever and we were going all the way out into Hatchett Land, which is very deep, maybe 30 miles out. Thank god I had at least a decent dirt bike background. Those guys were patient with me and got me through some shit. I had one moment where I thought I fucked up pretty bad…

Tell me. 

We were in this drainage at the bottom of our last big climb. The snow was kind of crusty. I’d rented a 154 track Ski-Doo from a friend, and the pull start broke on day one. I had to clutch start it over and over, all day. So, we are at this climb out of this valley and I don’t make it up a couple times, roll it down, restart. Because I jumped off a couple times and killed it I was like fuck this, I’m not using the kill switch, hooked [the safety tether] on the handlebars. 

Same thing happens: I’m off the track, stuck on the hill, this time with the sled above me and it’s rolled onto the throttle. The thing’s pinned, the track’s screaming, right next to my face. We’re 30 miles from the truck. It took a while for anybody to see that and get to me to shut the thing off. I was pretty close to just jumping away as far as I could and letting it run over me, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. That was the scariest moment of last season for sure.

But you made it out. 

Blake, when he did see what was going on, was able to dive in and shut it off. There wasn’t a whole lot more time left on that one. But he got there in time, we made it up to the zone, on top of this glacier, fully surrounded by the most insane terrain. We’d double up as high as we could go then bootpack up the lines, and that was my first intro into riding a proper AK line. 

Did that change your outlook on snowboarding at all? 

Yeah. I want to continue to do that kind of stuff. It also changed my outlook on risk tolerance, because looking back at it, there’s no way I could do that without the team we had, without their knowledge and patience. Being comfortable with that level of self-reliance is something you’ve got to grapple with a little bit. Shoutout to Gary Richardson for being the ultimate guide and making sure everyone felt mostly safe.

Did it change your perspective on Baker? 

It made it seem a little more chill. Baker is definitely a good training grounds for it. Valdez is like mega Baker. It’s so sick when you can ride for 2,000 or 3,000 vertical feet and have features all the way down. 

In a dream world I’d have a bunch of helicopter budget and be able to go do 10 runs in a day, get comfortable that way. When you’re doing it yourself you get two runs in a day if you’re lucky. I was definitely thrown into the deep end last year…

Frontside 360 on Hemispheres.

You’re about to go to Japan?

Yeah, it’ll be the first time leaving this continent for me. We’re going to try to shoot as much as we can and document the first timer Japan experience, but we don’t have a big project. We’re just doing it just because that’s what we want to do.

And you fund all of this by working construction in the summer? 

I was framing houses all summer and I’ve done a number of odd jobs over the last few years, but going forward that seems like a good way to go. This spring I’ll be going up to Jeff Hickman’s Kimsquit Bay Lodge on British Columbia’s Dean River, helping expand the guest rooms there, and hopefully fishing some too.

You flyfish?

Yeah, I got into it in Colorado. Fishing’s always been a part of my life, but my college roommate showed me how to use a flyrod. When I moved back to Oregon, I got into Steelhead. I’ve been doing that for eight years and Hickman’s spot is pretty much dreamland. 

You’ve got some sponsors now, you’re going to Alaska, you’re filming—are you motivated to try to be a full-on pro snowboarder? Is that something you care about? 

I wouldn’t say being a pro snowboarder is what motivates me. I have a lot of idols who are the pro that you look up to. I don’t really see myself as that guy. I’d say what motivates me is I like a good challenge, especially a physical challenge. I like pushing myself and seeing what I’m capable of. I think that might be my old jock mentality, but that’s what keeps it going.

I want to see how I can get better, how I can progress. I’m still not sure I understand the snowboard industry fully, maybe I should. But my hope is that I can be somebody that kids can relate to a little bit, who they can connect with on the hill. There are a bunch of younger rippers around here who are in a similar boat to what I was in at their age. They love snowboarding. They don’t need to take it to great heights of fame, but they want to have this as a lifestyle. And that’s been my goal: how do I live the purest snowboard lifestyle that I can? How can I travel, meet cool people, and snowboard in different places around the world? 

Maybe I can promote some level of relatability that you too can do this. There are steps that I might have ignored for a while. I don’t know what those steps are exactly, but you have to meet the right people and be in the right place. For me, it was, I think, moving here and meeting the right people.

Another day in deep at Mt Baker Ski Area, WA.