Ride the lightning

Talk about the surreality of it all.

Here be the Banaue Rice Terraces (as it was and hopefully always shall be), and here comes a tall, longhaired Foo Fighter-resembling extreme sportsman (a wakeskating rebel from the U.S. of A.) bucking like a red bronco down and across the 2,000-year-old pools-cum-pillars carved into the Ifugao mountains. The white knight rises over the ricelands. A writer will dub it ingeniously as some kind of “rice rodeo.” Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries should be blasting from a boombox somewhere. Maybe Speed King by Deep Purple. See me fly… Or something by Volbeat.

Meet Brian Grubb, wakeskating pioneer. Wakeskating is the discipline that sees athletes translate skateboarding moves to bodies of water. Wakeboarder magazine’s 2007 Wakeskater of the Year has dominated the sport of wakeskating since he ditched his wakeboard bindings to focus on the new venture. With a Vans Triple Crown Championship, a National Championship, World Championship, and wins on the Byerly Toe Jam Tour and Pro Wakeskate Tour, Brian has become the most decorated rider in wakeskating. As much as he excels in competition, free-riding is Brian’s first love. He also films Red Bull projects like Human Trailers, Urban Assault, Winch Masters, Capital Chaos, and Project Blackout.

Ever since Grubb saw a drawing of the Banaue Rice Terraces on the old P1,000 bill, he couldn’t get the thought of someday wakeskating across the iconic terraces out of his head. Surely, wakeskaters have attempted to ride on unusual surfaces — dams, bridges, urban pools, water fountains, and (in Brian’s case) Lost River Caves — but this latest venture by Red Bull feat. Grubb and German wakeskater Dominik Preisner is crazy! Cool yet crazy.

“The place was amazing,” recalls Brian several days after the feat. The man has been in the Philippines several times, particularly to help open the Camsur Watersports Complex (CWS) for wakeboarding and wakeskating. “Banaue is a different world. It’s like being in the mountains and up on the clouds. Red Bull and I did some research (before going here), talked to the local people and asked if we could ride the terraces.”

Plans to build all-natural log sliders were approved by the locals. It was essential that plants and wildlife were neither damaged nor disturbed in the process. The Red Bull crew built a 30-foot down-rail from the top pool to the bottom pool — and Brian rode his bad-boy board in a downward spiral. He explains, “When you get to the top where we actually rode, it’s called the viewpoint, and there’s basically just the top of the mountain and it’s just four pools that step down. It’s just, I mean, visually, even after the fourth and fifth day we were there, we’d pull up in the morning and just watch the sun come up and we were just like, ‘Man, this place is epic.’”

The weather up there was challenging to say the least.

“I mean you are up pretty high in the mountains and fog would roll in super quickly. We’d be shooting with great light and then 10 minutes later we’d just be in a cloud and it’d be drizzling. But then it would blow through so we had enough time to get done what we needed to do. But yeah, everything went pretty smoothly except for maybe some weather delays.”

There is a particular photo at the Red Bull website where Grubb ollies out of the first pool. He describes it thusly: “We used a 160m line, flat bar from the pool, ollie the second five-foot drop, a down-rail eight foot drop, and a flat rail down. You have to land on the right spot to get to the rail! (With) 10m in between the rails, you really have to plan your line. Very technical.” That was a rockstar move right there.

Learning to fly

Brian Grubb — who grew up in Orlando, Florida — started wakeskating when he was about 14 or 15 years old.

“I grew up wakeboarding and started seeing wakeskating in magazines and on videos and just thought, ‘Man that looks super fun!’ — and wanted to try it. I did both for a while for a couple of years, and then I just kind of got bored with wakeboarding and just really wanted to focus all of my time on wakeskating. It was such a new sport at the time that I just saw a lot of opportunity for growth and just really wanted to push it to the next level.”

The board has taken Brian to Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Panama — heel-flipping, flip-tricking all over the world. His chosen instrument is a Catalyst wakeskate created by Hyperlite Wakeboards. The board that he’s been riding is a new 2014 model called Mr. Ocean, which is a 40- or 42-inch laminated wood with layers of bamboo and maple. According to Brian, it has a laminated base so you can hit sliders with it.

“Every journey is different — especially with these Red Bull trips. It’s usually in some far-out location and with crazy setups,” he shares. He remembers a trip to the northern part of Australia, the Kimberley. “We went on a boat trip for two weeks. It’s one of the most remote places on earth. It was out there. Being a part of the Red Bull team has allowed me to do some really crazy things. Stuff beyond my imagination.” 

Now that Brian has rode down the Banaue Rice Terraces, he says it’s quite a surreal experience.

“Just the whole area is crazy,” says the wakeskater in amazement. “There’s one road that just basically winds up this mountain and everyone just lives off this one road and it’s just nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Well, the people of Banaue have never seen the likes of Brian Grubb before — riding the lightning board down the ancient mountains like a cowboy visionary skater.