Western Rippers

A huge part of the reason for going on this big-ass driving trip was to skate some sick parks out West. Unlike the rest of the country, they actually support skateboarding all across the West, building crazy stuff, making it free, and best of all, not requiring pads if you don't wanna wear em.

I got a taste of things to come in Venice and Northern California, but it wasn't until Oregon and Montana that I really got to see what was up.

By far the best park of the bunch was in Missoula, Montana. This park is just gigantic, poured concrete, and it's built by Grindline, which means it's not for the faint of heart.

It's really hard for photos to do this park any justice, and even harder to explain how incredible the locals ripped this thing. 12-year-olds were blasting huge over-vert frontside carves through the pocket (which was about 12 feet high) and nollies into the bowls. The funny thing was that most of them were kinda over the park. They thought it was cool, but weren't even really impressed by it any more. I tried to tell one little ripper that it was the best park I'd seen in 25 years of skating. He just looked at me and said "How old are you?" I told him I was old enough and went back to my no complys. Little punkass.

Anyway, it was insane, and we got in a solid two days of skating that were some of my favorite of all-time. If you're ever out in Missoula and you skate, you have to go to this park. If you don't have a board, buy one, or steal one, or build one or something. But don't pass this thing by.