I originally came up with the idea to try and help like minded gliders hook-up and have fun. The original intent was to get the inventor of the original and somewhat popular monoski movement back on a monoski for the first time since 1983 and to try and get an endorsement for my company White Knuckle Inc. to help the sport grow. I hunted for the surfing legende and monoski founder; Mike Doyle. He was creating beautiful art, and living in Cabo in the Gringo Hill area. He wasn't too hard to track down since publishing His Autobiography "Morning Glass". I flew him to Colorado and threw an event in his honor... "The Mike Doyle Invitational"! Mike was very receptive about getting on a monoski again and the founding father of our sport picked it back up easily but he wasn't interested in working with White Knuckle into the future. The first Monopalooza was held during 1998 in Utah following the first US monoski gathering in many years... the one and only "Mike Doyle Invitational", which was held at Copper Mountain Colorado in 1998. Monopalooza was created for all the diehard monoskiers that just didn't want to ski without other monoskiers any longer... after all, WE ROCK!!! Monopalooza has become an annual gathering where monoskiers can actually ski with other's on their prefered sliding toy. There aren't a lot of us in North America so the Monopalooza gathering has become an annual event that many just can't miss. There were a couple of years where Monopalooza didn't happen after I shut down White Knuckle, but we've been diehards ever since! I've met many of my best friends through many Monopaloozas, sharing a common bond with a sport that portrays a culture that the ski world has forgotten about. We are sliding comrads, we enjoy hanging out together and tiltin' a few, playing crazy monoski games and renting ridiculously huge houses to party in! We've settled on a format as well to facilitate vacationers so they can enjoy many resorts. We alternate in a three year cycle, going from Colorado, Lake Tahoe, to Utah and back to Colorado again so we can take advantage of the areas where numerous ski areas are close to each other. Even though the ski industry has made fun of the monoski and monoskiers for years, they finally became interested in Monopalooza in 2005. I heard through the grapevine that Skiing Magazine was going to send Jeremy Nobis to learn how to ride a monoski and that they'd be doing a feature article about the event which they published in the 2005/2006 buyers guide. Rob Story wrote the feature and he executed quite a good article. Rob didn't like the monoski much, maybe his old-school skier's genes impeaded his ability to understand??? Story's slant toward our favorite sport was a bit negative, but Jeremy Nobis ended up having a great time. Jeremy told me he thought the monoski felt groovy and after numerous knee surguries, he couldn't really ski bumps any more. Day two on a monoski, he was rippin' up bump lines like nobody's business and catchin' fat air too! The Skiing Magazine article led to Warren Miller Entertainment giving me a call in January 2006. They sent legendary cinematographer, Tom Day to film Monopalooza 2006 at Solitude Utah. It's hard to believe what the internet has done for obscure activities like monoskiing, we are pretty much just a ski club of like minded sliders that have a website and fun events to keep it all organized. Needless to say, everybody was stoked! Though Warren Miller never liked monoskis, the new owners of Warren Miller entertainment obviously didn't have the same view. Though their original intent was to poke fun at monoskiers and monoskiing, Tom Day spoke up and told them that he had some really serious footage for their new movie "Off The Grid". I was stoked after seeing the segment because they covered it quite well though Jamie Pierre looked pretty funny as the only monoskier in a teal one piece. Most monoskiers nowadays have better fashion sense than any skiers or snowboarders because we take all the flack for wearing one piece suits that are bright and tacky??? So after all the hub-bub, things have toned down back to normal, just a bunch of like minded sliders hooking up once a year to cause mass havoc on an unaware resort. We don't announce that we're coming to resorts, we just show up and RAGE! If you see a monoskier out there doing a showboat run under the lift, don't be embarrassed, shout "MONOPALOOZA!!!" at the top of your lungs, the monoskiers showboatin' will be stoked!!! Come to Monopalooza regardless what you ride, you'll find monoskiers are down to earth, supa-cool people and might be willing to loan you one of their monoskis to try it out. Monopalooza rocks, the people that come to Monopalooza kick ass, and more than anything... we all have a damn good time! As the Frenchies say "Vive La Glisse!" (or: Long live the glide)