Stopping for a quick break I took the opportunity to survey the constancy of the dirt road I would soon be riding. The road was originally a mining road that served as a passage through the mountains. The natural layer of hard packed dirt from recent rain was littered occasionally by a protruding boulder or a scattering of crushed gravel. Earlier on in the road I had found myself walking over a thicker level of gravel, most likely an recent improvement to the old road.

I capped my water and pulled on my pack and after situating my mountainboard that was secured to my pack I continued up through the pass. My intentions for choosing this place for my World Mountainboard Day adventure was for the ride. Of course it’s always for the ride but on this day I wanted to focus especially on the ride, the flow, that connection between rider and earth.

The road was somewhat steep at parts but for the most part wound gently through the surrounding hills and peaks. The hike was quiet, except for the rocks occasionally grinding against each other under my feet.
Soon I reached the highest point of the road beyond which descended further into the pass. Marking the end of my journey and nestled in the hills was a small lake. Fed by trickling streams that tumbled down from melting snow and distant glaciers, the waters still surface seemed to reflect the solitude of its setting.

It was at this lake that I geared up. I pulled on my pads and prepped my gear. The actual descent hadn’t even started yet but already the gnar was working it’s way into my blood. The awesome scenery that sprawled out around appeared littered with possible ride spots. Having spent extra attention in surveying my descent path and it’s terrain I felt connected with the ride already-it was mine.

After a couple adjustments after initially strapping in I found just the right tire pressure in order to slow my ride to where I wanted it. The entire mountain was mine, only a couple of confused marmots witnessed my ride. While the ride was somewhat slow, I maintained enough speed to be able to enjoy that awesome sensation of the carve; the exchange with gravity and momentum, the careful balance between too much and too little force at the peak of each carve.

Although my World Mountainboard Day was spent on a solo adventure, I was united by riders from all over. Everyone doing their thing. I think that’s the what makes mountainboarding so gnarly; everyone has their own thing but yet on World Mountainboard Day we can all still unite.

Don’t forget about World Mountainboard Day on June 19th. That’s in just two days if you haven’t noticed so make plans now if you haven’t already done so.

What an awesome opportunity for us as mountainboarders to unite and do our thing- however it is we do it. Please use the comment form below to throw down what you plan to do for World Mountainboard Day. If you dont have plans yet, maybe you can use these comments to gather inspiration.

Here are ten ideas in case you don’t have your own yet:

1. Hit up your favorite park/centre with your crew.
2. Ride the entire day and film it (and if you’re really cool, submit it to Mountainboard.net for posting).
3. Pack a bag full of food, water, and perhaps a few energy drinks and pull a wicked awesome 24 hour session.
4. Throw your own mountainboard film festival.
5. Ride somewhere new- explore.
6. Park hop, hit up as many parks or centers as you can in a single day.
7. Raid a skate park.
8. Start the morning off with a deep clean and tune up of your mountainboard.
9. Invite local crews to ride with your crew (total spirt of unity here).
10. Shred the gnar like you mean it!

Trampa Boards, as most of us know, have established a reputation for custom, bombproof decks. Recently they added their own line of trucks, bindings, and wheels. Many riders here in the U.S. have eyeballed Trampa’s mountainboards, but ultimatley have been turned away by the killer price of international shipping along with the import taxes we get nailed with. Trampa Boards is based out of the U.K. and once the total price including shipping is added up, the appeal of a sexy, bombproof, gnar hungry mountainboard seems to loose it’s appeal.

To help make Trampa Boards excessible to U.S. riders, MountainBoard.net is now an official distributor of Trampa products. The details are still being hashed out, but the “Trampa Shack” is coming soon, and will be added onto Mountainboard.net’s website. I don’t have the exact prices available right now, but I’ll do my best to get them as low as I can.

I’m totally stoked to be able to provide Trampa Boards to the U.S. as I’ve been very impressed with their products. The “Trampa Shack” is already being constructed, so it wont be long now. Feel free to email me if you have questions.

Check out TrampaBoards.com if you haven’t already. This is the Trampa’s website. Email me at Editor@Mountainboard.net if you want to be notified when the Mountainboard.net Trampa Shack is up and rolling.

Mountainboarding spreads by many means. Some see the demos or watch the competitions and decide they want in. Others, like my brothers from Columbia, discover the sport of mountainboarding within their own souls and once they get their hands on a board, they’re ready. Luis ‘Nosferatu’ Soto, the first mountainboarder in Columbia, tells his legendary story here on Mountainboard.net, check it out:

“Mountainboard Colombian Community
Boarding over three mountain ranges

About 5 years ago, completely tired of the colombian sports tradition, I decided to look for a passionate new activity that includes the nature as it principal feature. Thousand of ideas crossed my mind! Weird sports made of the combination of our children games and adventure sports became the core of our research. I figured that my will to practice snowboarding or surf should be ending on a great idea, but there was a huge problem about it; there is no snow near Bogotá (Capital city of Colombia) and the nearest sea is about 1200 Km away. A board to ride on our green fields sounded like the best option, somehow like sandboarding but using the magnificent and beautiful green fields we’ve got in Colombia.

In a short vacations break, next to my cousin Rafacore, we decided to skate on the rocks at our farm, over a stone path that connected the main road to our farm’s entrance. That was wild, nothing conventional and maybe too risky if we think about the serious injuries we’ve got after several tries of controlling the board. I really hurt my hands but that didn’t stopped me to keep working! At the contrary, that really cheered me up about finding myself around the mountain and the boards. In that time it was a hard work to find so much info over Youtube or Google so it took a lil’ longer than usual to evolve and find the mountainboarding and the real deal was to research in the world I was currently living.

Faith took me to Buenos Aires, Argentina for almost a year and at that time of stay, I finally found a local Mountainboards brand! At the time, Mountainboard wasn’t a familiar name to me but walking and looking inside adventure sports shops, I found the one that would become my first All Terrain Board. I made nice friends around it, went out to practice it and feed the idea of practicing it at The Andes Mountain Ranges, which in my country it becomes three great ranges that goes through the whole territory, from south to north of Colombia.

It was 2005 when i came back to Colombia with the First Mountainboard on the National ground. Since then, we can count lots and lots of practice days without anyone who could tell us anything about the right way to ride or how to make a great change on our techniques and evolve. The first one that joined me on the ride was my cousin Rafacore, the one I had practiced skating on rocks before and who is now an active part of MBC² (Mountainboard Colombian Community) going out and training every weekend. The dream became true!!! Since then till now we’ve been traveling all around our country, rolling on deserts, family farms, fallow lands and zones intended for the practice of other sports like BMX or Downhill. All this time, we’ve been struggling against the mind of a country that still waits for the never coming glory at soccer but with great results getting the people involved in the Mountainboarding wherever we go. People who practices any action sport sees us as their friends and everyone is sure that the ATB is gonna be taken as the serious thing it is soon in our country.

We’ve been through real hard times with low budget to invest on protection, new boards and even to go out and practice but no matter the obstacles we’ve make it to bring a bunch of people closer to us and enjoy the fun for ride, the friendship and share the love for Mountainboarding. Here at Colombia, we have so many mountains to ride…so… why don’t enjoy them and keep traveling and riding always taking care of the nature?? This has always been our primary gold.

It’s been several years since we started, we’ve known new boards, new brands and have shared several experiences with many people around the globe. Now, we have consolidated a great group that shares our own life experiences around the boards, knowing no obstacles. Evolution of Mountainboarding in Colombia has been slower than other places…but always constant, with the best attitude and strength. All these people that has shared the love for the action sports with us and want always to be part of the difference has been so supportive to each other that we could say right now that MBC2 is all the way more than just a Mountainboarding team…is a whole family. Until now, at Colombia, everything is pretty free, downhill, freeride and even dirtjump are practiced on many non-appropriate places with a very high risk and a low chance to be transformed and adapted to what we need.

The last year I went to Brazil and met many great people whom I learned a lot not just about the board but the life itself. The knowledge I got from the trip was transmitted to all the people, family and friends who conforms MBC2 and then we started to work on the integration of the rest of the continent; now, countries as México, Guatemala, Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and off course Colombia are integrants of the SouthAmerican Mountainboard Association. This has been such a successful relationship between the countries involved that last year we were able to gather some riders of different countries at the track where I trained for the first time what I could call a “technical” mountainboarding.

Since the last months of the last year (2009), our community has really grown a lot! Now we can count on people around 4 different regions of our country that are part of the MBC2 family and we’re very pleased of seeing every day more and more boards on the road.

Right now, we’re working on some projects focused on the expansion of the sport in Colombia and so we’re trying hard to get resources inside and outside of our country to take the mountainboard to be considered a legitimate sport and bring new people to practice it. One of those initiatives at a short term is based on the organization of camps with kids of different economical possibilities in order to gather them around mountainboard and use the sport as a tool to break the social frontiers, also we are planning the first rounds of national competitions and working on the construction of the first official tracks in order to make trainings and competitions with the technical requirements the sport needs. We are also preparing ourselves to travel and participate on competitions and ATB events in the continent or the whole world when our economical resources let us do it

With my cousin Rafael Gomez and my great friend Tito Diaz, we are now riding over something we call “a race to adventure and brotherhood”. We are now about 20 riders who every day learn new things from each other, kids from 8 years old to men that in our 30′s have learned to enjoy every weekend next to our friends and nature, riding our boards and having fun! We even ride next to women that has shown a great interest for the sport and take the training in a very serious way.

For us, Mountainboarding means Passion, Joy, Fun, Friendship, Brotherhood and Peace.

MBC2 and ATB all around our mountains is what we dream and moves us to work in order to get to see it came true some day.

Luis “Nosferatu” Soto

First Mountainboarder in Colombia”

The Columbia crew’s website is at www.mountainboardc2.com, you can find more info about the riders and check out what they’re up to.

I had an idea, and I need the input of Mountainboard.net readers.

Machete Mountainboarding, or maybe Bushwack Mountainboarding-the name isn’t important rightnow-but it’s a new style of riding, sortof. Technically it would fall under freeride and downhill, but it’s got a bit of a twist: no trails allowed, it’s all about PURE OFF-ROAD riding.

The only trails you can use are those that get you to the top of the hill or mountain. From there, it’s time to crash through brush, dodge unseen logs, and battle the tangling grasses. Many of us have already done this at one time or another, but how often do we actually persue it. I think it could be interesting.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any awesome names for the style. I’d be willing to test it out this season if anyone would be interested. I would post my findings as it develops.

Let me know what you all think.