Colin Whyte 13y

COC debuts warpDrive athlete launcher

Action Sports

Whistler's Camp of Champions has a new way for snowboarders and skiers alike to launch their carcasses -- and it's no joke. The warpDrive, created by Luke and Adam Schrab (twin brothers who are both engineers), is a 480Volt, electricity-powered "human launching device" with twice the torque of a 600cc racing motorcycle.

Three tries and that triple cork might be triple cake...

The warpDrive is best described as a dry-slope launcher. Using a flat track of plastic mSnow and the COC's Big Air bag to land in, it is intended to take some of the work out of learning tricks.

"Instead of having to swim out of a pool with all your equipment and then hike up six-to-eight flights stairs after every hit, all you have to do is walk 100 feet to the start of [the warpDrive]," explains Ken Achenbach, owner of Camp of Champions. "You'll be able to take a lot more runs in a training session, so you can't help but get better faster. [It] will replace water ramps as the way to train for aerials and terrain park riding."

Leave it to Midwestern engineers to come up with such a wicked invention. "Growing up in the flat Midwest forced us to get creative about how we were going to jump big enough to make a splash when we went to the mountains," says Luke Schrab. "We slung ourselves out over the cornfield with many evolutions of gas-powered acceleration devices..."

The warpDrive is built of aircraft-grade aluminum, aircraft cables and carbon fiber and is powered by a "brain" that can run through 60,000 math problems a second to safely launch an athlete with a force that is calibrated to his or her size.

"Rest assured, it provides super clean and smooth acceleration that can launch a titan or a mouse with equal delicacy," says Schrab.

Check out this video to see how the warpDrive was built. To get in on the action in Whistler this summer, visit Camp of Champions and see if they've sold out yet.

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