The first Monopalooza was in 1998 following the original "Mike Doyle Invitational". I hunted for the surfing legende and monoski founder Doyle, planning an event to gather monoskiers together to celebrate the sport and to get Mike Doyle back on a monoski for the first time since 1983. The founding father of our sport picked it up easily, but really wanted to carve and get that surfing feel with a tight radius turn.

Doyle was now an artist living in Cabo in the Gringo Hill area, but he wasn't too hard to track down. His Autobiography "Morning Glass" led me too him through his publisher.

Mike was very receptive about getting on a monoski again so I flew him to Colorado to honor him with his own monoski event. He signed his book for everybody at one of the banquets and we all took photos with the monoskis founder.

Mike's interest didn't last though, so Monopalooza was created for all the diehard monoskiers that just didn't want to ski without other monoskiers any longer.

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. I've met many of my best friends through Monopalooza sharing a common bond with a sport that portrays a culture that I believe 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!

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, did the story he wrote quite a good article. Rob didn't like the monoski, maybe his old-school skier's genes couldn't allow him to have interest in this bastard sport that failed during the early 90's with the conception of the snowboard into the sliding world.

Story's slant toward the sport was negative but Jeremy Nobis ended up having a good 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 last January. They sent ski legende Tom Day to film Monopalooza 2006 at Solitude Utah.

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.

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!