World Mountainboard Day

This ended up as our third choice riding spot for World Mountainboard Day, but no less epic for it!

First plan: An epic backcountry expedition to a secret location, sleeping in a mountain bothy to access a track 4 miles from the nearest public road. We ended up postponing so that ATBA Roger could make it, and we could go to the rescheduled ATBA round at Out to Grass, our favourite english centre.

Second plan: ATBA-UK Round 2 got thoroughly cancelled by the monsoon about half an hour before we were leaving...

So Plan 3 (C) was put into effect. A bloody early start got us to Glenmore as the base of the Ski Road to Cairngorm Ski Centre, just in time to get kit together and catch the hourly bus up the the Daylodge. Ideally we'd hop off the bus and onto the funicular to the top, but environmental restrictions wont allow access to the hill from the top station.

We walked.

and walked.

I took a break.

then we walked more.

then Allan waited for me.

and we walked more.

(a quick note here- noSnos are pretty heavy, but a bungee cord from the front truck to the waistband of yer breeks makes life bearable.)

At the top of the train we went into the cafe (yup, you can go in- ring the bell and sign in to prove that you hiked it, otherwise you're a prisoner)

After explaining for about the 50th time what a mountainboard is and what we do, we were free to ride. I'm not going to try to explain how good the run was, so here's the video:

Videos

It's been a good year so far for filming, I got myself a GoPro a while back and its been out most times we've been riding.
Here's some of the highlights...


A day riding Track 2  for the ATBA-UK DH event:

Race runs from ATBA-UK round 1 at Whinlatter:

Remolition.com came to play as part of their epic charity roadtrip, we took them riding:

So a couple of weeks ago, Allan and myself went with a bunch of my workmates to the Scottish Horseboarding Centre to give it a go. I wasn't sure what to expect- some of the videos I'd seen made it look fairly tame, and the fact that they only seem to use skate truck boards (a stupid idea- skate trucks are frankly dangerous at any speed).

What can I say- it was really good fun! I didn't go near the skate trucks and used one of my noSnos. Two things spring to mind from the day- when asked how fast you want to go on your first run, don't reply with "just go for it!", and feck me, those horses can shift....

Everyone else has a blog out there, so I guess its time for Scottish Mountainboarding to join in. The plan is to use the page to update on our progress on the track for this year's ATBA-UK Downhill round 3 event in September- more details here: ATBA website. I'll also be posting some video from our riding expeditions, past and present, and any future rides planned....

A wee teaser first though- the day after the Scottish Downhill we're planning a freeride trip, so here's a pic of one of the possible spots we'll head for...