Longboarders are ripping down Knox Mountain in Kelowna this weekend at the third annual Knox Mountain Downhill event.
The Kamloops Longboard Club and the Kelowna Longboard Alliance co-founded the competition as a celebration of longboarders and lugers everywhere.
“Knox Mountain is a really great track for us,” event director David Befus said. “You’re hitting something in the area of 95 to 105 kilometres on it, so you need to be good at going fast. You need to be good at turning both ways. So, only the best will put up a good time here.”
More than 60 longboarders are racing down the twisting mountain road this weekend, following the path from top to bottom.
But the course itself is only part of the event’s appeal.
“The community, everybody that you do the race with, they are all so communal,” said Tristan Lawton, a longboarder from Calgary. “If you need something, somebody will try to help you with it and then, on top of all that, you get the rush out of it,”
Organizers have made the event free to the public in hopes of drawing a crowd and have also brought in food trucks. The Knox Mountain Downhill closes for another year, Sunday June 2 at 5 p.m.