Wakeskate pros Grubb and Preisner take on the Banaue Rice Terraces 

The world-famous Banaue Rice Terraces of the Philippines, called the Eighth Wonder of the World, prove to be the ultimate playground for an epic wakeskate winch session. 

 

Professional wakeskaters Brian Grubb (USA) and Dominik Preisner (GER) traveled to the Philippines for an epic winch session at one of the most beautiful spots in the world. The famous rice terraces of Banaue are considered to be the Eighth Wonder of the World and were the perfect playground for a unique wakeskate session.

 

Even for one of the world’s best wakeskate pros like Brian Grubb this spot proved to be a real challenge: “This was my seventh trip to the Philippines, and my biggest project ever! Since I first saw the drawing of these huge rice terraces on the back of the 1000 Peso bill, the idea of having a session there wouldn’t let me go. It was only a drawing but it looked like a perfect winch spot and probably a super scenic location. And it was! The whole project was a real adventure for us and the team. It is still incredible that we were wakeskating at such a fascinating place!” 

 

The spot covered four pools with a total length of 80 meters. To keep the scenery’s natural look, the setup was kept as simple as possible: the only man-made obstacles being a wooden log slider and the custom winch setup.

Both riders had a blast performing a whole bunch of tricks, such as Brian´s stylish FS and BS Lipslide Shuvit Outs. 

 

Respect for the environment was a priority from the beginning of this project. The team made certain that the plants and wildlife were neither damaged nor disturbed at any time during the event.

All aspects were agreed with the locals, taking into consideration their traditions and culture. 

Brian, you mentioned you’ve been to the Philippines multiple times already. What is it about the country that really bring you back to it? What’s so unique about it?

 

Brian Grubb: Obviously, being in Asia is really far from my home but it’s great here because there are a lot of people who speak English, which is great. There’s not a huge language barrier like you have in other Asian countries and there’s just a lot of great places to ride. Lray has done a great job of building some nice cable parks, world class cable parks that people travel all over the world to come to, so obviously being at CWC is always fun for us. We came over here four five years ago to film the whole Billabong movie, and we got to ride at some amazing lakes and we traveled all over the country and it was really fun. I’ve heard a lot about this Republic Wakepark from all my friends and they said it’s just an awesome park and it’s close to the city and there’s tons of rails here so it’s been on my list to come here to check it out so I’m glad to be here today. 

 

So, the Banaue Project. When did you first hear about it and what were your initial thoughts about it?

 

BG: traveling over here before, we had seen some small rice terraces and stuff and always kind of joked around that it would be kind of cool to ride in them cause they look like a perfect wakeskate setup. We kind of looked into it a little more and kind of discovered the region of Banaue and saw just how big and how many rice terraces there were and for a wakeskater, it was paradise. And it’s completely natural. There was just an opportunity to maybe ride there so I got together with Red Bull and did some research and with a lot of scouting missions and talking with the local people up there and getting permission to actually go up there and ride and to finally get their blessing and to bring in all the infrastructure we needed to ride there, it took a lot of work and a lot of planning, but I think the end results is gonna be really well received. And I know I had a great time filming it and yeah, it was just an awesome experience all together.

 

What were some of the highlights of the experience?

 

BG: Just the whole area is crazy. There’s one road that just basically winds up this mountain and everyone just lives off this one road and its just nothing like I’ve ever seen before. And then when you get to the top where we actually rode, it’s called the viewpoint, and there’s basically just the top of the mountain and it’s just four pools that step down and then it just kind of terraces down the whole way. It’s just, I mean, visually, even after the fourth and fifth day we were there, we’d pull up in the morning and just watch the sun come up and we were just like, ‘man this place is epic.’ It’s just so beautiful and it was just great being there. We had some challenging days like with the weather, I mean you are up pretty high in the mountains and fog would roll in super quick. We’d be shooting with great light and then 10 minutes later we’d just be in a cloud and it’d be drizzling. But then it would blow through so we had enough time to get done what we needed to do. But yeah, everything went pretty smooth except for maybe some weather delays and stuff.

 

How does this location compare to some of the other locations that you’ve gone to? We’ve mentioned that you’ve done projects like this all around the world but for something as unique as Banaue, how does this compare?

 

BG: It’s definitely right at the top of the list. We’ve done some reallly fun projects with Red Bull… you saw the cranberry shoot, that was amazing. We did one where we rode underground in a cave a couple months ago. That was a pretty cool one. But yeah, we just try to go to places that have never been ridden before or people don’t really think about riding. Everyone in Banaue probably didn’t even know what wakeskating was so just to spread the sport of wakeskating to people that have never seen it before and then the opportunity for me just to go there and ride was a once in a lifetime opportunity and a real honor just to be a part of it and spend a lot of time up there and hangout with all the local people up there. Everyone was so nice and we couldn’t have done it without them. Just setting up the pools and building the rail. We built the rail out of a log. And we probably had 60 to 70 people that helped us throughout the week before we got there and then while we were shooting, helping us pull the rope back and keep the rails wet. It was just a total team effort and I just got to do the fun part and ride it.

- Press release from Red Bull