What Exactly IS HangBoarding?

March 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
By Chris

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Have you ever wanted to ride down a snow-packed hill suspended above your ski or snowboard, relying on subtle weight shifts for steering control? If so, it sounds like the HangBoard crew has been looking for you.

The official site describes HangBoarding (they capitalize the “b”) as a mix between “snowboarding, hang gliding and mountain biking,” a combination that makes for some fairly entertaining video:

While you might not want to go through all eight minutes, it is worth looking at to get an idea where the extreme sports folks are looking for in order to bring innovation to the table. And while I can’t correctly judge the speed, it does look like the HangBoaders are moving pretty rapidly.

In case you are wondering about the device’s safety, the YouTuber responsible for uploading the video offered these words of encouragement:

More than 2000 runs on all kinds of terrain, with skiers and snowboarders on the slopes with us, and no major injuries.

Will this kind of thing appeal to the existing outdoor sports enthusiast? I guess the only real way to be sure is when HangBoarding becomes an Olympic sport or when it appears on the X-Games.

Until that time, it looks more like an “interest” instead of a “sport,” per se, but, it really does look like a lot of fun. And isn’t that the goal of sports-related exercises anyway?