Recreation Next
Ten years ago no one had heard of geocaching. Twenty years ago inline skating was just starting to take off. What recreational activities in their infancy today will be a common activity a few years from now?
Outdoor recreation planners need to keep abreast of new activities so they can begin thinking about how to accommodate them and, in a few cases, protect resources and other recreationists from negative impacts. This link site is primarily for those planners. We hope it also provides some entertainment for those who consider Web surfing a recreation in itself.
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Each month we add a link to some form of recreation that will intrigue, interest or irritate you.
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Human-powered sports
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| Canyoneering is simply the act of traveling through a canyon. Participants may be hiking, biking, boating or climbing, often requiring specialized gear. |
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| Bouldering is climbing big rocks, often without equipment other than a crash pad beneath you on the ground. Haven't got a handy boulder? Several companies will build one for your park. |
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| Free Climbing Free climbers disdain the use of equipment that helps them in their upward mobility. |
YouTube videos |
| Le Parkour or Free Running is "the art of movement," a way of using obstacles found in one's path to perform jumps and acrobatics. It is all about finding new, sometimes dangerous ways, through a city landscape--scaling walls, roof-running, leaping building to building. It's basically Spiderman without the net. |
www.americanparkor.com
YouTube videos
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| Off-Road Skating Off road and all terrain skating is a combination of mountain biking, skiing and inline skating squeezed into one roller sport. |
www.terrablades.com
YouTube videos
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| Speed Climbing How fast can you ascend? |
YouTube videos
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| Tree Climbing Isn't this what I did as a kid? Yup, but these folks are serious about it. They have equipment! |
www.treeclimbing.com
YouTube videos
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| Noodling Sounds like something your kids do with foam toys in the pool, doesn't it? This is fishing at its most basic, no hook, no line, no sinker--not even a pole! Just shove your fist into the mouth of a catfish and hope for the best. |
YouTube videos |
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Bicycle sports
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| Ski Biking Remove wheels, add skis, scoot downhill. |
www.ski-bike.org
YouTube videos
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| Off-road Unicycling A sport designed with those for whom careening down a mountain side on two wheels is not challenge enough. |
www.unicycling.com/muni
YouTube videos
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Board sports
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| Mountain Boarding This is just what you'd expect, all terrain skateboarding. |
www.mountainborder.com
YouTube videos
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| Streetluge High speed stuff on what looks like a large, modified skateboard. No standing. Just as in the winter sport from which the name is derived, participants lay on their backs and rip down the road. |
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| Sandboarding Much like snowboarding. Remove snow, add sand. |
www.sandboard.com
YouTube videos
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Wind-powered sports
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| Kiteskating is, according to kiteskating.com, an extreme sport using powerful, controllable kites to propel riders of in-line skates, off-road skates or mountain boards at speeds up to 60 mph across parking lots, desert dry lakes, grassy fields, and sandy beaches. Lots of wheel variations on this one. |
www.Kiteskating.com
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| Land Sailing Not necessarily new (it's been around since the 50s in one form or another). |
North American Land Sailing Association
YouTube videos
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Water-powered and water based sports
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| Riverboarding Also called sledging in New Zealand and hydrofoil or hydrospeed in Europe, this is basically riding a something like a boogie board--normally towed by a boat--down whitewater. |
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| Hydro Bronc This is a brand name item that looks like a human-sized gerbil ball tumbling down the rapids when in use. Also used on the ocean, on lakes, in swimming pools or anywhere one might have the yen to walk on water. |
YouTube videos |
| Motorized Kayaks Not a personal watercraft in the sense of Jet Skis, but not exactly a kayak, either. |
YouTube videos
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Dog-powered sports
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| Skijoring Man's best buddy gets to, uh, participate. Strap on the cross country skis, tie yourself to a dog and head down the trail. Who needs a sled? |
www.skijornow.com
YouTube videos
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| Dog Sledding You know about this one. As your family poodle pack begins to expand, perhaps you should consider it. |
www.gomush.com |
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Motor-powered sports
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| Rock Crawling If you have a hankering to traverse your neighborhood glacial moraine, this is the motorized sport for you. Drivers maneuver their four-wheelers across the rocks in timed and skill competitions. |
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| Tracked ATVs Jealous because your ATV can't go where a tank can go? Here's a solution to that little problem that also purports to make the purchase of a snowmobile unnecessary. |
www.litefootatv.com |
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Flying and jumping sports
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| Bungee Jumping Fairly common. Included because anyone who willingly throws themselves off a perfectly good bridge should be. |
YouTube videos |
| Cliff Jumping Also known as cliff diving, this one requires knowing exactly what you're jumping into (assuming you want to live). |
YouTube videos |
| Hovercraft These have been around for years as noisy, impractical vehicles. Guess what? They're getting better. Look out ATVs. |
www.hovercraft.com
YouTube videos
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| Ultralights Experimental aircraft often painstakingly put together in someone's garage. These, too, are becoming more sophisticated and are likely to show up where you least expect them. |
YouTube videos |
| Paragliding and Hang Gliding Remember when you used to strap those frogs to a kite when you were a kid? Now you can feel the same thrill the frogs did! |
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Technical recreation
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| Geocaching In a sense, this activity is what started the Recreation Next website. Its sudden popularity caught many recreation managers and planners by surprise. Although mostly benign, it has caused some problems in the areas of resource damage and safety. |
www.geocaching.com |
| GPS Games Did you think geocaching was all you could do with your trusty unit? Au contraire! Globe trot with the best of them as a "Geodasher." Or, use that other digital device in kit back in a game of Shutter Spot. This site highlights these and other games. |
www.gpsgames.org |
| Letterboxing Much like geocaching, except that participants find hidden rubber stamps with which to stamp their logs. |
www.letterboxing.org |
| Degree Confluence In the tradition of geocaching, this activity encourages people to locate global latitude and longitude intersections. |
www.confluence.org |
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Weird, offbeat and radical recreation
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| Zorbing If we had to pick one activity to represent Recreation Next, it would be Zorbing. Also called gerbiling, this sport appeals only to insiders... inside the Zorb, that is. It gets bonus points for originating in New Zealand, the home to an inordinate number of offbeat recreational activities. |
www.zorb.com
YouTube videos
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| Extreme Ironing Yes, you read it right. These dedicated sportsters like the challenge of pressing a pair of pants on a mountain top or beside a coral reef. Really. |
YouTube videos
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| Elephant Polo Not likely to be a major issue for the Forest Service or your local city park (unless you happen to live in Nepal). |
YouTube videos |
| Irish Road Bowling This one has been around since the 17th century. As an emerging recreational trend it is taking its own sweet time to emerge. |
www.WVirishroadbowling.com
YouTube videos
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