Airboard Sledboard Makes Stunts Easy - Plus, This One Time I Built a Sled and…
The Airboard Classic sled is an inflatable sled with TPU runners. On the slopes it’s half bodyboard and half wakeboard. It’s also almost as fast as anything I’ve ever ridden downhill before and you can stand up and pull some pretty wicked tricks. …no, I didn’t get to try it in a pipe or terrain park yet - but drop me an email or some pictures if you get a chance.
That reminds me of the fastest thing I ever did ride downhill:
There wasn’t always a lot to do in the winters when we were kids, so my brother and I always found interesting ways to stay both busy and injured.
Sledding was the activity of choice the winter after my friends and I got our driver’s licenses. We were using our cars as “power-assist” to get up a lot of speed before we even hit the downhill (kind of like tow-in surfing, except that hitting trees and curbs was common) and we took turns riding in a truck bed-liner behind someone’s car on the way to swim practices at 5am. Still, it wasn’t enough.
What we really wanted was a toboggan, since they were supposed to be a lot faster than the plastic sleds and bed-liners that we normally used. Since toboggans were expensive (and we probably would have broken one in half anyway), my brother and I decided to improvise. I had already scavenged some old rental skis from a trash pile at the local ice-and-fake-snow ski and boarding hill. They were pretty gouged up, so we weren’t shy about adding some steel struts and bolting several skis to the underside of a narrow plank of plywood - instant “skiboggan”.
The first run of the skiboggan was a blast. Not only was it fast, but it tracked straight in powder and sticky, packed snow alike. At about 8 feet long we could stack 5 guys on it and have enough speed to crush through the smaller kicker ramps we built for our plastic sleds.
Our second run of the skiboggan saw a few modifications. We added small wooden ridges to keep us from falling off the side, and we filed off the ski edges to stop them from slicing-and-dicing gloves and boots. With the ski edges gone and the slope iced up from the previous day’s fun we managed to build a long, gradual ramp that wouldn’t get shattered by sheer speed and weight. …with six guys loaded the skiboggan built up a ton of speed - and started to drift sideways. We hit the ramp broadside, lost two guys off the back of the sled, and started spinning in the air. One concussion, a broken hand (my hand), and a sprained ankle later - the skiboggan was retired for the winter.