Roadtrip – Irrigon Skatepark Grand Opening

In spite of the fact that it was pissing down with rain in Portland Saturday morning; MC, Rich Burton and Shawn Reinert hit the road for the Irrigon Skatepark Grand Opening. Smay was right behind us with Lance Leisher and Brogan Robinson and Chris Stevens. The new Grindline creation was packed, 200 people or more watching and skating. The park was as unique as we had hoped but just crazy crowded. The grass hasn’t grown back yet so the crowd tracked a lot of sand into the park and everything was smaller and tighter than I expected but it’s a really fun skatepark.

Dan Hughes was also there with some sparking trucks and has some nice shots of the park and the crowd.

One of the gnarliest shots I’ve seen from opening day is this one of Jesse Nelson by Nicole Barker the photographer from the local paper, The East Oregonian. Jesse was amazing – he was on the ceiling all day.

Wally Inouye, Mike and Veronica Swim, Tom Kilroy, Skeletor, Dave Tobin, Justin Hindery, Chet Childress, Xander, Glen Siekawich and local ripper Andy were some of the other skaters who made the trip.

Also check out Doug Edwards’ shots over at OldSchool.

The park has a lot of unique features and nothing is really big. Pipe looks to be about 16 foot diameter? Wally Inouye standing about half-way up on the deck next to the pipe gives it some scale. There are two doorways in the bowl section. One at the end of the pipe/capsule and the other at the end of a small ditch in the street area.

We skated for maybe two hours as it threatened to rain off and on. In the end we’d had enough of the crowd and the sand and the rain. We set out to see what else there was to skate out east.

The Rebel crew drove north 45 minutes to Richland, Washington with our old buddy Thomas Reece to a skatepark that Grindline was called in to save. The transition section of the skatepark that was being seriously botched by another contractor. Shades of big-city bureaucracy – I was told that the 20,000 square foot park cost $800,000 $100,000 of which was a pay-off to get rid of the contracted designer. Big bowl was fun, 3-10 foot deep? lots of hips. One tight corner had four inch diameter steel coping, thick and zesty!

There was also a mid bowl that unfortunately had no vert and what looked like a pretty good plaza style street area but what do I know? I know not to drink beer there, cops came and busted some dudes while we were there. No ticket but they are banned from the park for a year. A guy who was maybe parks maintenance narced them out and they weren’t even being rowdy.

In fact these were some of the same guys who hosted us in Walla Walla for a session at a private indoor ramp. A group of approximately 45 skaters about 15 of which are hardcore users run it as a coop. The building is 30 x 30 with a 24-foot high ceiling and the ramp fills the whole place.

There is a post in the middle of everything but it works out – dividing the space into big and mini-section the door tunnel is on one side of the post and small pointed hip on the other.

The biggest wall is eleven feet high with three feet of vert with a tile strip and coping at the top. The most amazing thing about the place is the custom shaped granite coping. The stuff is really hard and smooth and has been shaped to a nice bullnose. One of the skaters does the stone work and was the provider of the granite at Pier Park. Thanks to the Walla Walla crew: Thomas, Grant, Doug, Carmen and Tracy for a great session and thanks Doug and Bonnie for your hospitality.

We woke to beautiful weather Sunday morning. Rested and showered, we hit the road 70 miles back to Irrigon. The park was much less crowded but I think the inattention of the various children and bicyclists dribbling around the bottom of the park was worse. I had to ask bicyclists who were just sitting on their bikes in the bowl to move. We were feeling a little burnt from Saturday but Shawn managed to rip it up. He did a big corner air from the deep bowl to the side of the pipe and air over the outside of the capsule door.

Time for lunch. You can’t skate at the hamburger place in Umatilla but you can get a bag of fries the size of your head. I’m going to go ahead and recommend that double Viking Burger, it was far superior to the greasy gut bomb I inflicted on myself the previous day at the Kennewick Carl’s Jr. Then it was back into the car for a 61 mile run up to the Prosser, Washington Grindline skatepark.

I was got excited about Prosser last year as a possible stop on the way to Idaho from Portland but it is a substantial side-trip so I never made it. Damn. Prosser is a great little park! It seems simple but there are several features like mulitple waterfall drops and a variety of hip configurations that make it a really fun bowl to skate. The main bowl is a long mini section feeding into a three-leafed clover with 6, 8 and 10 foot bowls with a mix of steel and concrete coping. Thomas Reece writes that the Prosser big bowl is actually 11 foot -don’t believe everything you read.

There is a small channel that wraps aroud the head of the run that looked really fun and was very popular with a few little guys. Man we were burnt at this point.

135 miles to Hood River for a short stop at the skatepark and then home. Hey, That half-pipe is in pretty good shape. Estes said they might try to host an event there. The Prosser side trip added 84 miles to the Portland to Irrigon distance.

More coverage at:
Earth Patrol Media
Northwest Skater
Old School Skateboarding
antigravity press