There’s something beautiful about a long day of mountainboarding on dirt. One can’t help but notice how the dust in the air from an aggressive powerslide appears to dance in the light of a setting sun. Even the sound of your wheels rolling over the dry crumbling earth has an almost musical effect. Is all this real or is it simply the result of too many wrecks. You decide.

There are many of us who have developed a strange kind of love for the dirt we ride. It seems odd as most humans seek to avoid dirt. The mountainboarding dirt lover, on the other hand, searches for it. Hard packed and sun-dried, soft and crumbly, or wet and muddy, all its varieties are welcomed and equally embraced.

Dirt provides a ride like no other substance can offer. It moves and shifts under your wheels almost as if it has waited its whole existence for the sport of mountainboarding to grace its surface. Its sensitivity to weather make it ever changing and often unpredictable. Sun, wind, and rain gradually mold our playground in order to provide us with new riding opportunities.

Let us not forget our good friend Dirt. As we mountainboard its dusty surfaces, let us not consider it to be simply another peice of earth to ride. Surley it is more. It is Dirt. Let your apreciation reflect in your ride as you carve your tracks into its surface. If you wreck, take a moment to enjoy the cloud of dust that applauds your efforts.

Perhaps these thoughts really are brought on by a few too many wrecks. Whatever the case, to those who share similar feelings, for us the ride is all the more enjoyable. So grab your mountainboard and your gear and go out to thank your local dirt.

Most of us have a favorite spot that we ride at again and again. While this is perfectly fine, there is a whole new sensation to be experienced by mountainboarding a new place. It’s all about the element of surprise.

We all know that the more you ride a specific spot, the better you get at it. You get to know every turn and drop. You know what sections have good run-off and which sections don’t. You can almost ride it with your eyes closed.

Well it’s time to shatter your comfort zone. It’s time to ride somewhere you’ve never ridden before. It’s time to face the unknown.

There’s something almost eerie about strapping in at the top of an unknown drop. Find a nice long stretch to really get that mystery factor flowing.

Even if you mapped it out in your head as you hiked up, you still don’t know exactly how the terrain will effect your ride or how the ground will respond. Excitement and uncertainty twist themselves into a knot of adrenaline that seems to lodge itself in your chest. The mind is anxiously awaiting answers to its many questions.

This flood of emotions won’t discourage you however, from strapping in and making the drop. For the mountainboarder, these feelings are soon converted into an intensely enthusiastic energy, better known as “a wicked stoke.”

Riding the unknown is an adventure in itself regardless of the outcome of the ride. You might go right back to your old spot for your next session, but you’ll take a piece of your adventure with you. You’ll be more open to new things. You’ll think more outside the box, keeping your riding far from stale.

Face the unknown. The wicked stoke awaits.

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.

It obviously depends on where you are in the world, but many of us are finally pulling our boards for the start of another awesome season of riding. Hopefully you are all putting the old WD-40 to work as your boards have been in storage are in need of a little lube. Also on that note, many of us are currently finding the trails and hillsides rather wet if not still partially or mostly covered in snow, this makes for another obvious reason to keep an eye out for rust and squeaks.

A couple updates about Mountainboard.net:

First, due to lack of participation by manufacturers, our annual mountainboard product guide for 2010 will not be produced this year making it a very not-annual product guide. We apologize for this but at the same time would like to make a point concerning the matter.

The idea behind the annual product guide was to allow riders the opportunity to see what’s available for our sport. The more riders who downloaded the guide, the harder manufacturers have to work to make us quality products. It promotes competition at their level which results in better more innovative products for us. Great idea right? Thanks Mountainboard.net for caring about this sport, your passion is inspiring-OF COURSE IT IS! (Now you can see we are slightly irritated) Unfortunately our passion for the sport does nothing to change the minds of manufacturers. So thank you to all of you who supported us in 2009 by purchasing the product guide (which is still available), and once more we apologize not being able to make a 2010 issue. Perhaps hearts and minds will change in the years to come.

Know this, however, nosno stood strong and supplied us with the needed rights and images for 2010. So big, awesome, props and figurative fruit baskets to nosno for being the one and only! Obviously a product guide with only one manufacturer’s products defeats the purpose but props and fruit baskets are deserved just the same!

Also, while we’re handing out props, hope everyone has had a look at our current sponsors (links are in the boxes in the right column). Kitewing.com and PrimalTwitch.com.

Kitewing.com is a good site, very informative if you are considering a kitewing. Awesome videos also. I would love to give one those things a try. Anyone used one or own one?

PrimalTwitch.com is a new site. “T-shirts inspired by awesomeness,” they say. It’s a site dedicated to extreme sports and designs t-shirts inspired by the “primal twitch” of such sports. It’s just starting out so check it out and help support our supporters.

So there’s the recent rundown- Now get riding. Send us your comments, your ride adventure logs, awesome weekends, videos, pics- whatever, this is Mountainboard.net- help make it even better!