Last weekend we were hanging out with some friends here in the hills and my friend Michael pulled out this crazy skateboard-looking contraption that I’d never seen anything like before.

He called it a mountain board – which made total sense because it looked like the deck of a skateboard, except with mini mountain bike-style knobby tires. It had bindings that attached his feet to the deck and a hand-brake, similar to what you’d see on a bicycle. The brake had a cable about three feet long that ran down and connected to the wheels on the thing.

Think of mountain boarding like off-road skateboarding or summer-time snowboarding. It’s a fairly new outdoor adventure sport that is apparently growing in popularity pretty quickly.

I tried the mountain board for a few feet, but I was definitely not a natural. Michael and his 12-year old son, Dawson, were much more at ease and showed us how it was done. They mountain boarded some really cool terrain in the Black Hills and out near the Badlands – I think young Dawson might just have a future in the sport!

Check out the video above for a better idea of what mountain boarding is all about.

**Special thanks to Michael Hurley, Michael Swenson and his son Dawson for sharing their video footage for use here on the Black Hills Travel Blog.