Loudspeakers blare hip-hop and rap music as dirtboarders get ready to race. Off jumps each racer, down, down, up and over, twisting and turning in the air.

There’s a good crowd in Empire for the 2009 Altitude Cup Mountain Board Challenge. This new board park is the biggest in the country, and there’s an up-and-coming new sport to match. Standing on the edge of a deep gully, looking down onto a vast vista of dirt mounds, raised lifts, steep dirt ramps and cones lining an obstacle course, this huge dirt area stretches out football fields in length.

Jason Lee, nicknamed J Lee, is the Godfather of Dirt, a title given him by his peers. “I was always athletic,” Lee said with a slight smile.

A skier since age 3, Lee also spent summers honing his skills as an avid skateboarder and as a Pikes Peak VMX bike racer. Later, Lee’s sport was snowboards. The snow season was short, and Lee had an idea.  

“Imagine being able to ride everywhere, anytime. You don’t need tarmac, you don’t need snow, all you need is the passion of riding,” Lee said.

Credited for producing the first mountain board in 1992 using four fat tires, independent suspension and click-in bindings, Lee also co-founded the first Mountain Board Sports in Colorado Springs a year later.

“With the boards,” Lee explains, “you can ride anywhere you want. The whole planet is really open.”

It is the variety of terrain that makes mountain boarding so exciting, whether on mountain trails, a BMX course, or riding down a beautiful grassy mountain hillside.

Competition is the name of the game, and this sport is international. Lee is a seven-time world champion record-holder in Pro Boarder Cross events. Another record for Lee is in Ripley’s Believe It or Not — he jumped a record 29 feet and did a back flip over a pit full of alligators.

Both David Kennedy (Gonzo) and Phil Sheader (Yeti) of Altitude Sickness Boards in Empire, which sponsored the event, stressed the importance of padded rubber body armor and helmets.

The need for safety equipment is easy to understand. The deck is the base for the rider to stand on. Trucks are the springs, and axles attaching the wheels to the deck. Various types of bindings hold the rider on the board. Wheels have pneumatic 8-inch to 13-inch tires. It becomes more complicated with decisions on how much air goes into the tires for speed, what type of binding to use, steering, brakes … the list continues.

Dust clouds erupt when wheels hit the dirt, and the events continue.

Friday: a day of teaching techniques for beginners and for the more advanced riders.

Saturday: the four-person head-to-head racing BoarderX and the Dirt Slalom through gates. For the first time ever, the dirt slalom was held as a timed event.

Sunday:  Big Air Freestyle, tricks and flip time. From riding rails and over mounds to a steeper downhill run again over mounds with tricks. The most exciting was the very steep dirt hill for experts doing snowboard type giant flips and tricks.

Empire has entered into the future with the dirtboarder and this huge Mountain Board Park. The progression started with skis and surfboard, on to skateboard and mountain bike, then the snowboard and now, the newest adrenalin rush, the dirtboard.