By Allison Walsh

During his days in the kayak industry, Matt McClain spent a lot of time at trade shows perusing the latest and greatest outdoor sporting gear. It was at one such show in 2003 that he was introduced to power kiting, and later ran across a rudimentary mountain board.

“I put the kite and the board together and found myself on the beach at low tide and it was amazing; it was really fun,” the 32-year-old McClain says. “My wheels started turning and I thought people would do this.”

He took the idea to a couple of close friends, and within a few months they had launched Ground Industries, a local company specializing in the all-terrain boards used in a relatively new sport known as groundboarding.

Groundboarding – or mountainboarding, all terrain boarding, or dirtboarding; the terms for the sport are almost as endless as the places to practice it – first emerged about 15 years ago as a means for snowboarders to extend their season year-round. Because all you really need to play is a board and a slope, it has gained in popularity among skateboarders, snowboarders and mountain bikers.

“If you’re a mountainboarder, there is a 99.9 percent chance you’re a snowboarder as well,” McClain says. “It’s a great way to improve your snowboarding skills in the off-season – snow melts, dirt doesn’t.”

The boards the boys at Ground turn out can best be described as tricked out skateboards that move and handle like snowboards. Pneumatic tires on a centralized hub and suspension system give the boards the feel of a bike, as well as the ability to control the speed through air pressure, and bindings offer a greater degree of control than a conventional skateboard.

“You can roll over big cracks or rocks without the catastrophic results you would have on a skateboard,” McClain explains. “The boards have a wider stance than traditional skateboards, so it feels like snowboarding. The riding techniques are the same; you can do all the same tricks.”

Entry-level boards start around $130, and the selection of available bells and whistles available for customizing a high-end, performance oriented board – adding fiberglass and other advanced composites to the standard maple deck and aerospace grade aluminum to take some weight out of the wheels, for example – can jack the price up to as much as $700.

The sport’s biggest appeal seems to be the fact that you really can do it anywhere – the trails at Paris Mountain, grassy ski slopes in the off-season, or the hills in your neighborhood – and devotees are constantly pushing the limits of what that means.
“When you say anywhere people don’t really get that, but it really is anywhere,” says Baron Frierson, 23, a recent graduate of Appalachian State University who competes on the Ground Industries professional mountainboarding team. “Anywhere there’s a hill. You don’t need concrete, or even trails.”

Frierson discovered the sport about seven years ago when he saw someone riding on television. He did some research online, ordered a magazine, and ran across an ad for a shop in Fletcher, not far from his Asheville home. From that point on, most of his weekends were spent there, riding and learning all he could. He started competing a few months later.

“The cool thing is the better you get the more terrain you can ride and the more possibilities open up,” Frierson says, adding that he thinks Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina have some of the best riding in the country because the terrain here is far less rocky than what you’ll find as you move west. “There are a lot of good spots around here that haven’t really been exposed.”

The limitless possibilities groundboarding offers riders is also the appeal for Richard Guilmette, 38, who used to ride competitively for the Ground team and is now an employee, overseeing the construction of a first of its kind all-terrain park at Beech Mountain Resort, set to open this summer.

Guilmette first saw someone groundboarding on TV, and when he spotted a board at a surf shop in Florida 15 years ago he snagged it and hit the trails in the North Georgia mountains and around Atlanta, where he lived at the time. Guilmette, 38, was a skater in high school but had never snowboarded before he became an avid groundboarder.
“[Groundboarding] is more like snowboarding than anything else, more so than skateboarding,” he says. “It made it really easy for me to pick up when I first went.”
Even after 15 years in the sport, Guilmette is still hooked. “Now the fun is finding new places to ride.”