Airboarding at Richmond Hills Park

12.21.09. After 4 days of being stuck in my neighborhood due to the snow and the city of Asheville Public Works' inability to scrape the roads, the temperatures finally climbed high enough to allow me to get my vehicle out. I promptly headed for the buffet at El Chapala and then to Richmond Hills park to try my airboard since there was some real snow.

I would have liked to had gone to Cataloochee Ski Resort (note: they don't currently allow it to the public, but are thinking about it and have given me the go ahead to ride a few times while they mull it over), but since it's the holiday season, that means high lift ticket prices. I also had a lot of other errands to run after being stuck around the house for 4 days and had to be home by evening before the roads refroze, so that put Cataloochee out as well. I look forward to getting out there in about 2 weeks, and also hope that they will allow and start offering airboarding.

I didn't find anything too epic. I've played disc golf at Richmond Hills before and I remember it being a bit steeper. There were also a lot of branches down across the ground blocking some good lines. I still had a great time tromping through the snow and finding little hills to go down. I even got a foot or two of air over some of the humps.

The quote of the day came from one of my roommates Drew (who I've gotten hooked on riverboarding and who plays disc golf at that park a lot) after seeing my footage of the day. "I was a little concerned about you and wondering if you would try the gap in the fence over by the stairs." Yes, Drew, you can rest assured that all it took was me seeing that hill to know I wanted to do it. I did drag my feet on the first run to make sure I made the fence gap, but the second run was full steam ahead.


Maybe one day I'll own an 4WD or AWD vehicle and there will be more airboarders when we get another snow dump like this. It will be fun to reminisce about my runs through the woods while building a launch ramp.


Kevin,

Kevin is a FLI C.O.R.E. team rider and is also sponsored by Faveur clothing, Tooks headware, Globe shoes, Six Six One protection, Mean Monkey hydrospeeds, and Freestyle watches.