An intro to Riverboarding

R

Riverboarder

New member
Hello - My name is Robert and I work for an action sports company based in Boise, Idaho called EVEN Surf company. Chances are that you have never heard of the sport of Riverboarding. Riverboarding is a board sport and river sport. Riverboarders ride small surfboards(skimboards) on rivers, shooting upstream at 30+ mph for a ride that is longer and faster than the average ocean surf ride. Good riverboarders can do all kinds of skateboarding tricks once shooting upstream - kick flips, Big Spins, shuv-its, etc. Once your ride is done, you float back downstream grab the handle, hook it to your board, use the river current to stretch the bungee, then launch upstream again. Riverboarding is a "green", earth powered sport. Riverboarders are shot upstream using, a specialized bungee cord. Many of you have probably seen the Banshee Bungee? I am the inventor of the bungee. We started having problems with the Banshee bungees ( Not powerful enough, Short life span), and they wouldn't fix them, so my company now manufactures a bungee that lasts 5 times longer than the Banshee. This board sport continues to evolve just like every board sport has, and the bungees, boards, riders, tricks will all continue to improve over time. Once we start launching guys off ramps at 30+ mph on the river, it could dramatically increase the tricks available to the sport. I honestly believe this could one day be an olympic sport. They have Kayak courses at the olympics that we could easily use for riverboarding competitions. I think it would be easier to score than surfing? Riverboarding rides are longer than the average surfing ride and we can do a lot more tricks for scoring, and we can have a lot more rides to score in a shorter time span - no paddling back out, or waiting for waves.

Anyway, I was told about this forum from a friend when I was complaining about our lack of video of this board sport. When guys are learning to riverboard, it makes for some great video/photos. Guys get in crazy positions with water and the board flying around all over. This summer 95% of our video was go-pro, from 1 angle. I am not an A/V guy. It seems most guys shoot video with DSLR cameras these days. Can you please recommend a good/ cheap camera to shoot with? If there is anyone in the Boise area that is interested in coming out to shoot a surf session, we would love to have you.
 
contour is an awesome cam company out of seattle. i wanna try this sport that you speak of. bring it to WA or sell me a bungie.
 
i'm in boise, and i have a decent quality camera. let me know next time you guys are going to surf. i've never seen anyone doing this before so i'd like to check it out
 
yea i have heard of this sport i and have watched videos and it looks pretty cool, but how can you compare it to surfing? it looks compealtly different, more like wake skating.
 
Why do we compare it to surfing? Even people in Idaho understand a little bit about surfing. People often see our video and think are rides are short in duration, but as I said in my first post, the average bungee surfing ride is longer than the average ocean surfing ride. A lot of people in Idaho have only seen surfing in Elvis movies, so they think waves last forever. Truth is the average wave, at an average beach, only gives you a 9 second ride. Of course there are places like Rincon that can give you a lot longer push. People also don't understand you can ride over and over again with riverboarding, as long you can "hit the hook" - One of the things that beginners need to learn when riverboarding is how to hook the board to the bungee in a moving river current. EVEN is also a surf brand. When we first demo-ed this sport for a bunch of sales reps on the Sandy River near Portland, one of them said to me "When this sport takes off, my wetsuit sales will explode." We immediately contacted the "Ocean Surf Brands", thinking they would love to hear about something that would increase their sales. We never heard back. For the past 8 years we have reached out to these brands and we never hear back. One year all the ocean surf brands came out with boardshorts that didn't have pockets. We wrote them letters. Never heard back. EVEN is the surf brand that builds it's clothing line for the water lover that is not fortunate enough to live near an ocean. We sponsored the world's first riverboarding contest as one of the events of white water festival here in Idaho. We reached out to the ocean surf brands for sponsorship, never received a reply. We are a "niche" sport. Not big money yet. I believe this is why we are ignored. Those surf companies donate a lot of money to ocean causes and charities. EVEN is the surf brand that is dedicated to river causes and charities. I grew up in Idaho(more miles of river than any other state in the US) and I have been a "river rat" my whole life. The health and protection of rivers is so important to me and this brand. So although we are a surf brand and an action sport, we would never compare this sport to the thrill of surfing. Surfing is the godfather of many sports. And nothing could beat the thrill of charging down the face of a 10 foot wall of water. Riverboarding is just another godchild :) Someone once said at a trade show we attended "Whoever invented this must have been a frustrated, land-locked surfer." They were so right!
 
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It is a lot of fun. And I am sure it will get a lot more fun - look at how every other boardsport has evolved, and we are at the beginning with this sport. Wouldn't it be cool to see a documentary of how snowboarding went from Jake "Burton" Carpenters bedroom to the olympics? Well here is a chance to do just that. We are at the bedroom level and honestly believe this sport will be much bigger than it is - Rivers are everywhere. If you want to buy a board or bungee, add me on Facebook - Robert Geier
 
I was floating a river in Switzerland once and saw some guys on the banks with surf boards and was like what the fuck are these idiots doing. Then a little further down I saw one of them do the exactly what you described and it was crazy! I hope I get the chance to try it someday cause it looks like a blast! Anyway, I have a friend in Boise who films so ill pass this onto him. Good luck!
 
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