On Board Entertainment's Monster Kicker

On Board Entertainment billed the jump as the largest man-made snowboard jump in North America. And it definitely was huge.

"There were about 300 people watching us and about 19,000 listening to the bands," one rider said.

"Great ramp, good snow, we're jumping," said rider Zack Diamond. "In fact, there are some girls down there that want to take us home with them so we're jumping some more."

"I was really stoked," said K2's Luke Edgar. "I thought it was awesome that 20,000 people that got to see snowboarding. That was super cool. We gave away four snowboards and three of the people who won had never snowboarded before and they told me they were going to go by bindings and boots and take it up."

While most riders said the jump was good, several wished there could have been more attention brought to their performances. Because bands like No Doubt, Goldfinger, and Dishwalla were playing, the riders got little or no fanfare: no announcer explaining what they were doing, no one broadcasting their names when they hucked. In fact, other than possibly exposing the crowd to the "idea" of snowboarding, the only real impact the jump had was the fact that it took up one-fifth of the lawn seating.

But this was okay, according to Sarah Haynes of On Board Entertainment. "What we really wanted to do was see if we could build a ramp that the riders would like and that would be safe enough to hold a contest on," she said. "We've done that. Sure, there are a lot of things we wanted to do differently, including having an announcer, but it just wouldn't work with the bands. This was a great learning experience for us."