Conquer the Earth on a Mountainboard

You have a skateboard, snowboard and even a surfboard in your arsenal, but there’s a more obscure extreme sport begging for you to try. Mountainboarding is the relatively recent invention of binding your feet to a piece of wood set on pneumatic tires and hurtling yourself down a hill. Unlike snowboarding and skateboarding, this sport can be done on a variety of terrains in any season.

With the rise of skateboarding in the late 80s, a sport that evolved from surfing, riders naturally sought ways to traverse other landscapes. The first recorded mountainboarding session took place in 1978, when skateboarder Mike Motta accepted a bet to ride down Seven Bumps Hill in Malden, Mass., though at the time he was only armed with a standard skateboard.

By 1992, there were four separate inventions of what can be considered a mountainboard. Morton Hellig launched Supercruiser Inc., in 1989 with his patent of an “all-terrain dirtboard”. Over in the U.K., Dave and Pete Tatham, Joe Inglis and Jim Aveline developed their own board as an off-season alternative to surfing and snowboarding, launching noSno in 1992. John Milne of Australia invented a three-wheeled version with no bindings to recreate the surfing experience on land.

The popular mountainboarding brand MBS was founded in 1993 by Patrick McConnell and Joel and Jason Lee, who actually coined the name of the sport. Their design utilized a metal frame with springs that enabled them to steer, giving riders the carving experience they wanted to recreate from snowboarding. MBS went on to develop even more mountainboarding innovations like the eggshock, open heel design and the reverse V braking system.

The sport quickly took off in the 90s, with racing, freestyle and downhill competitions taking place across the United States and U.K. The All Terrain Boarding Association was also organized as a non-profit governing body, promoting safety and events for the sport. Mountainboarding continues to grow and explore new territories with the rise of motorized mountainboards, powered by gas and electric motors.