Boarding School

Somewhere east of Temecula, at a remote desert outpost known only as Point X, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins is perched high atop a wooden platform, fending off butterflies.

“I don’t know why I’m so scared!” she yells down to her friends.

She has returned to the extreme sports camp where she made history last winter by becoming the first female skateboarder to negotiate a successful landing -- after a jump across a 50-foot gap -- on the harrowing Mega Ramp.

In a sport where accolades are earned through feats of courage as well as creativity and skill, the 15-year-old from Encinitas reached deep within for five hours before taking the 48-foot plunge down the takeoff ramp.

The distance she had to cover -- the equivalent of about 12 cars side by side -- was only one concern. While in the air, nearly 30 feet high and traveling at 35 mph, she had to clutch the skateboard to her feet, keep it pointed toward the landing ramp and touch down in just the right spot.

A photo sequence of her accomplishment appeared on two pages of Skateboarder magazine, a publication devoted almost entirely to male athletes. She went from being known as one of the world’s top female skateboarders to one of its top skateboarders -- period.

“There are probably less than 20 people in the world that have come out here and made that gap, and there have been top professional riders that have come here and not been able to make it, or have been too scared to try,” says Tony Magnusson, 41, chairman of Osirus shoes, and an acclaimed skater.

“So for her to make that ... not only is it such a huge statement for girls’ skateboarding, but for her personally as well.”

Now Adams Hawkins is back for another session, as DC Shoes’ lone female team rider, and the view from the top is just as unnerving.

Her friends return shouts of encouragement until she demands silence. She shoves off, plummets rapidly and is soon soaring gracefully, with one hand on the board and an outstretched arm for balance.

The flight ends, however, with the clank of an errant board, ditched before touch-down, and the thud of a skater landing on padded knees. Undeterred, she picks herself up, brushes off, locates her board and climbs up for a second try, then a third and a fourth.

“This style of skating is all about perseverance,” says Buster Halterman, 33, who has come to skate the Mega Ramp with Adams Hawkins, Magnusson and Owen Nieder. “You’ve just got to have a hard head and never-give-up attitude and she’s got it.”

The DC Mega Ramp at Point X, outside the dusty hamlet of Aguanga, was designed by Danny Way as an extreme progression of standard quarterpipes and U-shaped halfpipes. Numerous skaters have suffered broken bones and other injuries.

The roll-in ramps are approximately 50 and 70 feet and the respective gaps cover similar distances. Skaters have to travel slightly farther, however, to make their landing on the downhill slope of the second roll-in ramp. That leads to a 28-foot quarterpipe wall, which skaters roll into at about 40 mph, then attempt an aerial maneuver and another landing.

In 2003, Way pulled off a 720-degree midair spin while clearing the 70-foot gap, stuck his landing and soared 23 feet 6 inches above the quarterpipe lip.

Way, who is also from Encinitas, is the Mega Ramp master and the only person known to be semi-comfortable leaping the 70-foot gap. At last summer’s X Games, on a replica constructed specifically for the Big Air competition, he won by spinning a 360 over the 70-foot gap and performing a Christ air above the quarterpipe.

More recently, on an even more extreme replica of the Mega Ramp, he became the first person to jump China’s Great Wall without motorized assistance.

Way is working on a mobile version he hopes will create more event opportunities. Nobody rides the Point X ramp without Way’s permission, and that Adams Hawkins has been granted the privilege speaks volumes about the respect she garners.

“I don’t know of too many 15-year-old males that would even attempt it,” Way says. “I’m not trying to be chauvinistic or bias toward males or females, but this is a little bit of a statement [on Lyn-Z’s part], I have to say.”

Adams Hawkins, who is 5 feet 4 and has shiny blond hair, has practically lived at the Encinitas skate park and DC Shoes training facility for the last five years.

Though a vert specialist -- she won the gold medal at the 2004 X Games -- she’s also adept on the rails and steps of street courses. She finished fourth in the X Games street competition and her goal this summer is to win both disciplines. (The Big Air competition on the Mega Ramp is for men only.)

One of her role models was Cara-Beth Burnside, but older male vert skaters such as Halterman, Bob Burnquist, Andy Macdonald, Bucky Lasek and Kevin Staab have been her real mentors. She has baby-sat some of their children and regards many of them as uncles.

“I’m really lucky because kids who don’t have a lot of support don’t get as far,” Adams Hawkins says. “They still can, but not as easily. Even if I quit skateboarding tomorrow, they would still support me and be there for me.”

Her mother, Lynn Adams, has developed a trusting relationship with Lyn-Z’s friends. She says her daughter has never been careless, nor has she been seriously injured. “Although I sometimes wonder whether I’m being a bad mother for not being more nervous while watching her do this,” she says as Lyn-Z launches herself over the gap for the 15th time.

During Lyn-Z’s first attempt last November, she stood atop the roll-in ramp for five hours trying to gather the nerve to go. “No lie,” she recalls with a smile. “I kept standing up there on my board telling everyone, ‘OK, keep quiet.’ I mean they had to be dead quiet or I wouldn’t even think about it.”

When she finally did go, she bailed out immediately and slid to the bottom on her knees. On her next try, she hit the upturned kicker at full speed but ditched her board and flew as though she were shot out of a cannon over the gap. “I was speechless,” she says. “I was just so happy I got that far.”

But now the afternoon wanes and she’s no longer in a talking mood. Halterman and Magnusson have both ridden the landing ramp to the quarterpipe several times. She and Nieder have made more than 20 attempts but seem more determined than angry. Neither wants to be last.

Finally, on her 26th try, Adams Hawkins lands almost upright on her skateboard at about 35 mph and somehow keeps her balance as she rolls up and above the quarterpipe wall, losing her skateboard in flight and sliding back down in a heap.

Successfully performing a trick on the quarterpipe is her next big challenge, she says, her mood brightening.

“Make it, Owen!” she yells up to Nieder. “You can do it!”

Deep in concentration atop the wooden platform, he offers no reply.