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Hit the Slopes with an Airboard

Canaan Valley, W.Va.- Middle Eastern food, West Virginia art, caves, cliffs and an extreme take on sledding.About 200 miles from Washington, or 4 hours.( the article by Matthew Graham has been taken and reviewed from Washingtonpost.com )

Like a rocket, you sled down the snow-covered hill. But unlike the short hills of your childhood, this one keeps going and going. At one point you wonder, "Am I going too fast?" You make a few turns to slow down and then skid to a stop at the bottom, a spray of snow buffeting your face. Time for another run. But instead of walking up, you hop on a chairlift. For this isn't any old hill or any old sled. Better known to skiers, this is Canaan Valley, and you're riding a high-tech Airboard.

An Airboard is essentially an inflatable sled -- an extremely fast inflatable sled. And Canaan Valley is the only ski resort in the mid-Atlantic and one of six in the country to offer this new sport.

Impressive! Lying facedown on your stomach, you grip handles on either side of the board, which has a triangular, truncated nose. Airboards are designed to carve turns through the snow like skis and snowboards, but steering isn't intuitive. You have to press hard with the sides of your chest to engage plastic rails on the bottom of the board to initiate a turn. (No amount of leaning will help you here.) To stop, you push your weight off the board and spin it 90 degrees so the rails grab the snow like a skate in a hockey stop. This isn't so easy, either. In fact, Canaan requires newbies to take a lesson and become certified before hitting the slopes alone.

While Canaan Valley caters to skiers and snowboarders as well, airboarders have their own terrain park: 600 feet that goes two-thirds of the way up the mountain (as long as there's lots o' snow). Think plenty of jumps to catch big air -- and the boards are yee-haw fast! Speeds have topped 80 mph, although the average is about 30. That's still plenty fast for extreme fun when your face is a few inches from the snow.

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From a true story........

SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colorado — Once you try the airboard you "MUST" have your own.(The following article has been taken and reviewed from USATODAY.com).
The first time Kate Duncan rushed down a mountain on an Airboard, she liked it so much she bought her own 'board the next day.
This past Christmas vacation, she and her sisters got mom to try it, too. One "Oh, god" and an expletive later, Eliza Duncan, 51, slid head first on her 4-foot-long, 9-inch-thick air cushion into a powdery snowdrift as her family cheered her on.
She said:"A lot of my friends wouldn't do it," she said afterward on a clear, sunny day on gentle slopes on a public trail, not far from the Snowmass ski resort near Aspen. "I thought it was fun. I just didn't like losing control."
From tubing to Airboards to snow bikes, mountain resorts and guides have been looking for new excuses to get people outdoors and new diversions to keep them entertained. Reviews are mixed on whether the Airboard can bolster ski visits the way snowboarding has, but supporters talk it up as a niche snow sport that doesn't stress the knees.
Some say riding an Airboard is like ultimate sledding. People who ride the six-pound Swiss invention slide down snowy mountain slopes face first on polyurethane air cushions that look like blowup rafts with handles and a ridged bottom. Riders have been known to reach speeds of more than 80 mph.

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