Mountainboarding You stand at the top of a rough grassy slope on a board attached to wheels. The slope is strewn with half-buried rocks and there are patches of scree dotted about.

You feel tall and exposed on the board. Your feet are fixed in a duck-footed stance by webbing straps. Working up your courage, you lean forward and the board begins to roll down the hill. Almost instinctively, your arms come up and you bend your knees as the board rapidly picks up speed. Fighting the urge to jump off, you lean forward into the hill, the wheels turn, and you start heading right across the slope. Before you crash into the bushes at the edge of the slope you lean back, arms out, and you're traversing back against the slope. As you jib back and forth down the hill, you see rocks coming up perilously close to your wheels, and only with desperate, jerky maneuvering of the board and flailing arms do you get around them. A plume of fine dust hangs over the slope behind you and little stones roll alongside. Near the bottom where the slope levels off you quit jibing and enjoy the feel of the board rolling fast and straight. When the slope runs out, you turn the board around with a wide, leaning swoop and with quiet aplomb, step off the board. That's mountainboarding.

Mountainboarding is both old and new. The basic mountainboard is not really that different from skateboards that have been around for years. It's more rugged and the wheels are bigger with knobly tires, but the principle of turning left and right by leaning forward and back is the same. It's new in that it owes much of it's popularity to snowboarding that has only recently become a major sport.

The obvious problem with riding a wheeled board down a steep slope is slowing down and stopping. You can jump off a skateboard, and maintain fine control of a snowboard with the edges, but you need to be strapped onto a mountainboard and it has no   'natural' speed control elements. This problem is solved by making wide turns across the slope to control speed where there is space, hanging on for dear life when there isn't, and the power slide for coming to a complete stop. Low tire pressure will also result in lower speed, as of course will riding on gentler slopes, both of which are highly recommended to start off.

Power sliding involves gripping the bottom of the board with one hand and hanging off board while bringing the back wheels around in a big slide, hopefully to end up stopped and sitting on your butt or knees. You can tell a failed power slide by the fact that your face is planted firmly in the ground and you can't feel your toes because your neck is broken.

Actually, the problem of excessive speed has obviously challenged the designers of mountainboards as they have come up with a solution - brakes. These come in various forms. For 4-wheelers, there are drum brakes on the back wheels activated by a free floating cable that ends in a handle and brake lever similar to that of a bike, held in the left hand. The DirtSurfer has a V-brake on the back wheel operated by the back leg pushing on an upright lever, while the Outback has a very simple friction flap that presses against the back wheel when you stand on it. Braking is perhaps the least elegant aspect of mountainboarding, with the simpler solutions being more attractive. Practice and good technique though, are ultimately what make brakes redundant.

What to wear for mountainboarding? For beginners, a helmet, knee and elbow pads are essential. Unlike snowboarding where the snow softens hard landings, any wipeout on a mountainboard will be hard. It's a very physical activity so expect to get hot. Shorts are good. If you have a history of damaged ankles, footwear that offers ankle support is recommended, otherwise any sports footwear will do. Sunglasses complete the picture of a nonchalant cat on wheels.

So how much does all this cost? When I went to my local Alpen to check out the cost of boards in Japan, I was surprised to see that MBS 4-wheelers were in the 10,000 to 20,000 yen range, reduced from 89,000 yen. You could see the original price through the bit of paper they had stuck over the first two figures. Something funny is going on here, but what? I believe that the former extreme price reflected the view of mountainboarding as an extreme sport while the striking reduction indicates a revision of that view. This begs the question, is mountainboarding an extreme sport?

Yes it is. It's like snowboarding only tougher and more varied. You pump up the tires for maximum speed and race down dirt and gravel tracks, or risk major injury steering your board over smooth rock formations. Your board is equally at home on steep tarmac roads in remote mountain regions as on end-of-season slush and mud ski-slopes. The board is great for aerial derring-do where the cost of error is horrible to contemplate and even total body armour won't help you much. Those without nerves of steel and total carelessness of physical risk need not apply.

Or, no it isn't. You can find a gently sloping meadow and spend a pleasant few hours carving back and forth and get nary a grass-stain on your jeans. A cruise over the paved pathways and grassy slopes of a local park is within nearly anybody's capability. Riding your 'mountainboard' down to the shops is possible. For practiced riders, gentle riding without any protective gear is no more hazardous than riding a bike. I think it's this realization that the potential market for mountainboards is so large that has brought the prices down. At least I hope it is.

Japan has an organization (surprise!) to promote mountainboarding called JATBA, the Japan All Terrain Board Association. JATBA makes a stand for safety and training, while promoting mountainboarding as a means of regional revitalization. They point out that most winter sports locations can only benefit from their investment in facilities 3 months in a year. A fair few winter sports resorts are offering boarders use of their lifts, and some have gear for hire. Some places even offer lessons.