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Red Bull Wakeberg: Iceberg ahead!

If you suddenly find an iceberg in your way during wakeboarding you’re either having a bad dream after watching Titanic – or you’re participating in Red Bull Wakeberg.

Parks Bonifay has done a few crazy things in his life. He first took to water skis at the age of six months and 29 days – which got him into the Guinness Book of Records. At 14 he won the X Games. He then invented the half cab double backroll, the heelside double back roll and the temper tantrum. And he could, he says, be even more successful, if at every contest he didn’t ‘forget half [his] equipment and then have to borrow a vest, a cable or something else from somebody.’

But for the most harebrained thing in his wakeboard career Parks had to wait until he was 26: On July 8 and 9 with his buddies Josh Sanders and Adam Errington he took part in a two-day wakeboard session on the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Its peculiarity: at Red Bull Wakeberg the riders didn’t do their tricks on artificial kickers – but on icebergs.

‘Totally insane and totally awesome’ is how the riders described their experience of transforming monstrous mountains into a playground for front flips and air rolls. On the first day, about two hours north of St. John’s, the riders and their crew happened upon an ideally formed iceberg upon which they were able to feel their way towards the boundaries of speed, guts and grip. On the second day they ventured to the region near Trinity East to find an icy monster that measured 45 meters in length and towered about 18 meters above the water – and allowed even more spectacular tricks (and photos).

Wakeboarding in unfamiliar territory not only demanded vigilance for avoiding being buried under falling chunks of ice. Any involuntary forays into the ocean were more than refreshing with a water temperature of 4 degrees Celsius. But neither of the above seemed to bother the riders much. They intend to venture out to the glittering white adventure territory again in the next few months.

 

 

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