The monoboard

There is a monoboard in the ski patrol room at Broken River.

In the wee hours of the morning I can hear it calling to me. It whispers sweet nothings into my ear as I put my boots on each morning. While I eat my lunch in the day lodge I know that it is there, just beneath my feet, waiting.

Despite the never ending challenges of telemark skiing, I’ve never really felt like moving onto “normal” alpine skis. The joys of the rare moment when I nail a turn or a run and everything works outweigh all the frustrations of all the runs where things go wrong. Occasionally I wonder if moving to alpine gear might allow me to ski harder terrain in better style, but it’s not something I particularly want to try. I’d rather ski easier terrain badly on my teles than make the switch.

Similarly, snowboarding doesn’t really hold any attraction for me. For a start, riding rope tows on a snowboard looks like a sad and humiliating experience. But even on a field with chairlifts or other modern conveniences the whole sliding around sideways wearing a ridiculous outfit just doesn’t float my boat. I must admit that seeing professional snowboarders ride in powder on ski movies is pretty inspiring, but then that whole concept is so remote from what my ski trips are actually like that it’s hard for that inspiration to turn into motivation.

I don’t like to admit to a desire to monoboard. It’s something of a dirty secret in the modern ski community. Monoboards are like high-class prostitutes and crack. They’re probably a lot of fun, but it’s the sort of fun you’re not supposed to have. Any degree of respectability they may have had some time ago is gone. These days they’re associated with weirdos who drive vans with tinted windows and spend too much time parked outside schools.

And yet, something about monoboarding resonates with me. It could be that they’re the most ridiculous means of descending snow ever to approach the mainstream. It could be that they take all of the best parts of skiing and trade them in for the worst parts of snowboarding. It could be that they look like one of the best ways of ripping your knees apart aside from actually setting out to do so with specialised equipment. Imagine the retro chic that fixed gear bikes had before hipsters started riding them, then add the essence of a one-piece ski suit made from fluoro green and purple nylon and you’ve got the forbidden cool of the monoboard.

The only things standing between me and realising my monoboarding dream are the lack of alpine ski boots (my tele boots won’t fit into the bindings on the monoboard) and the small shred of self respect I have left. Since self respect has never really been an important feature in my decision making, once I find some size 26.5-ish alpine boots that I can actually get my feet into I’ll be ready to hit the slopes.

The best imaginable outcome is that I hate the damn thing and never want to monoboard again. The worst outcome is not even imaginable.