Bring: Your esk8, a helmet, and a good attitude. Come to Portland, one of the skate friendliest cities in America.
Hosts: PNWesk8 crew! To keep things fresh and fun and fair, we decided to trade off years for CarvePDX and CarveSEA moving forwards. This gives both communities a break and keeps both events alive!
Cost: Free. Save your dollars for quirky lodging, delicious food, and your crippling esk8 addiction.
Helmets are required for all riders at all times, and we strongly encourage additional safety gear. Weāre very serious about this. If you roll up to a ride without a helmet, you will be asked to leave. Please donāt make it awkward, just wear the fucking lid.
After a 2 year hiatus (wherein the CarvePDX staff gladly kicked back and enjoyed attending CarveSEA) we return to once again skate Portland and have fun with our friends in this beautiful city. Carve PDX is a multi-day esk8 event set in Portland, Oregon and hosted by the Pacific Northwest Esk8 community. That means all your faves from Portland and Seattle are coming together to make this event awesome.
Come join us for a weekend of skating around the gorgeous PNW. Portland is one of the skate capitals of the US, with hundreds of miles of dedicated bike paths, trails, & plenty of streets to shred & hang with friends. In Portland, you can legally street ride and are offered the full protections as bicyclists. Combined with an average speed limit of 20-25mph for cars, this makes a perfect environment for us to descend upon with our electric murder sticks.
Portland Oregon is my hometown, and I am super excited to see everyone again this year + hopefully many new faces.
RIDE! Council Crest - Nansen Summit - LakeO - 20mi Kicking things off with some monster hill climbs! Bombing up Council Crest is absolutely punishing on your motors, but the view is worth it! Same with Nansen Summit.
RIDE! Friday Night Ride - 9mi This is a Portland eRiders event. We are attending, not leading. Itās a very slow paced parade through downtown. Please be respectful of their ride, donāt race, donāt bully slower people out of the way, etc. We usually split off from the FNR people at some point after the first stop, so stick with the Carve group if you want to make sure you split off when we do!
Take the MAX Train (Red or Blue Line) to the Hillsboro Airport. Public transit in Portland is super easy. Plug your destination into Google Maps, select ātransit directions,ā and it will give you step-by step instructions. You donāt need to buy a ticket or load a card or anything. Just tap your debit/credit card (or apple/google pay) at the kiosk on the train platform and it becomes your ticket. More info here. This is a ~40min train journey, so get comfy. Trust me, itās worth it.
RIDE! First half - Rock Creek/Westside Trail/Progress Ridge - 22mi This one will fuck you up! This is a tour from the outskirts of Hillsboro back into Portland, it will take most of the day and all your range For those without range, you can bail at ~15mi and get back on the train to Portland. For those with the range, you can continue to the mid-point rest stop at Progress Ridge.
Progress Ridge mid-point rest stop! Get food or drink or fro-yo in the area and hang out! There is very limited 120V charging, PRIORITIZE THOSE WHO DESPERATELY NEED IT so we donāt trip breakers. There is a 240V EV charging station a couple miles from the rest stop, for those who want to go get a fast charge.
RIDE! Second half - Fanno Creek Trail to OMSI - 20mi If you donāt have the range for the full 20mi back to Portland, you can head back north on the Westside Trail for ~10mi and get back on the train.
RIDE! Extremely Chill River Loop - 11mi After that monster ride, weāre gonna take it slow and chill on this scenic waterfront loop. Enjoy the views of the Portland skyline!
RIDE! Pittock Mansion - Mt. Tabor - 25mi No charge stops! 25mi loop with serious hill climbs and descents! This is a serious workout for your motors and brakes, so use caution. Route ends at Ladd Circle Park, and Iāll be heading to the Hawthorne Asylum food carts 0.2mi away to get some lunch. Come hang out!
RIDE! Rocky Butte - Gateway Green - 24mi No charge stops! Some chill neighborhood streets out to the Rocky Butte hill climb. Great views of NE Portland from up there. Then bomb down to the Gateway Green mountain bike park for a bit of tomfoolery before rolling back through some more chill neighborhoods to OMSI.
Inside the purple border! The heart emoji is the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (AKA āOMSIā), which is the meet-up and ending point for most of our rides. I highly recommend picking a location that is close to OMSI, so you donāt spend a bunch of your range getting to/from OMSI before/after each ride!
Lodging is expensive in Portland, so you should definitely consider sharing! If you want to share lodging but dont have anyone in mind, post here or in the Telegram group to find some people with space.
Absolutely! We take pride in commissioning independent artists to design beautiful art for stickers and other swag. Stickers and swag are always free for attendees, but that doesnāt mean they cost nothing to make! If you are able and willing to donate to our Art fund, please do so! It helps us keep this event awesome and free for everyone.
Also, thereās a rumor that some underground glass artist makes dozens of pendants each year and gives them away at Carveā¦ No one is quite sure, but if you ask around you may get lucky.
Is this all the info that youāre going to post? No dude. This thread will be updated with a lot more info as time goes on, please keep checking back here to see the latest!
How much range do I need? Depends, how much do you like being towed by other skaters? Portland is a very hilly city, and all our best rides take full advantage of this! You should have 30 miles of range riding hard on hilly terrain. That includes getting to/from the ride meet spot!
Will there be charging? On some rides, at some places yes, though itās likely going to be pretty limited. Bring your biggest battery, and donāt plan to ātop offā when charging is limited!
Is CarveSEA also happening in 2026? Nope! As mentioned above, CarveSEA is taking a break this year so the Seattle folks can come and enjoy beautiful Portland, the way us Portland folks have been enjoying Seattle for the last couple of years. Weāre probably going to alternate years moving forward, so neither community has to put on multiple events in a row. That way it stays fresh and fun for everyone!
Are non-esk8 vehicles allowed? All PEV (personal electric vehicles) are allowed, but we strongly encourage you to ride an esk8. This is an esk8 event after all! All our routes and events are optimized for the speed and range of an electric skateboard, and we will not be compromising that. So weāre not going to go faster to accommodate EUC/eMoto, and weāre not going to go slower to accommodate eScooters/Onewheels. Come and skate!
Found this forum a couple of weeks ago while going down a PEV rabbit hole on YouTube, kept it open in a tab. Havenāt been on any kind of skateboard since the late ā80s, but I got an AT two days ago, tried it out in the Fred Meyer parking lot behind Powell Park, then had a great time riding around on Tabor yesterday, came back to check this out again today, andā¦ uhā¦
ā¦you know, between ā30 miles of range riding hard on hilly terrainā and āweāre not going to go slower to accommodate eScooters/Onewheelsā and, most especially ā[weāre] back, b*tches,ā I actually kind of appreciate having such clear signals that this event isnāt for me.
But thank you (seriously!) for posting something that showed up in a search for portland oregon electric skateboarding group, because now that I have taken another look, I see that this is a whole Discourse forum. So maybe Iāll lurk for a bit, poke around, and see if I can pick up some useful info in other threads.
It takes a while to re familiarize oneself when one has has a 35 year break from riding skateboards, much less stepping on something with several horsepower and 20 miles of range, which didnāt exist back then.
Those who have refined their skills and their equipment, find riding slowly, to be boring.
Good to know oneās limits though.
I got out of skating in the late 80ās when wheels got small and hard, filled with a seething disgust. Got a longboard in ā94 though.
Electrified something similar about 2 years ago. Iād be surprised if I have skated less than 6K miles since then.
Relatable! NGL, I might have created an account just to make a spite post, but maybe one of the benefits of age is being able to realize: hey, not everything has to be for or about me.
Honestly, Iāve searched for electric skateboards every few years for what feels like a decade, but just was never able to find something I felt confident dropping $2-3k on. Getting a capable sub-$1k board that solves the two things that kept me away from skateboards for most of my life (those being āSURPRISE YOUāRE RUNNING NOWā and āhills=deathā) is kinda great. That it can carry my 250-pound ass up an extinct volcano? Amazing. And as someone whoās become very good at their day job, I like finding ways to be a n00b again every so often.
So, yeah, sincerely, I hope yāall have fun out there.
I really appreciate the good attitude. We donāt have anything against slower riders, itās just that most of us have dedicated a good chunk of our lives to this sport and on average are higher skilled (faster) riders.
There are some rides at this event that are pretty slow, like the one on Friday night
Good to know. I usually have my kiddo on Fridays, but Iāll keep an eye on this thread and see how I feel about it when summer rolls around. I might even be able to talk them into getting on their JackRabbit and riding down with me to check out yāallās gear and lights and shit.
Being the famously slow rider that I am, last year I requested that they have a sweep for the slower riders at the Seattle event and they complied, but Iāve come to realize that this just isnāt an event for slower riders - we should just let these fine fast folk run wild and free unfettered by having to be responsible for those who canāt keep up.
So I wonāt be going to these events in the future because I donāt want to be a burden and, honestly, thatās not what this event is about.
If we want to create events that include slow riders and/or extend this event we certainly (probably) can do that. Cascade Bicycle club handles this by breaking riders up into groups - Leisurely, Moderate, Brisk, etc. (the riders self select) and adjusts the length of the routes such that everyone arrives at the finish line at more or less the same time.
But we slowsters need to organize that, not expect the CarvePDX/CarveSEA groups to do it for us.
Noooooo! Love having you at SEAcarve and your vocal slowness is an important part of the group. Though you are on the slower end of the spectrum it was never a burden - more of a great way to make sure we donāt make the rides inaccessibility to what is a large part of the esk8 community.
Come to pdx - ride your own ride. There is always an aspect of group rides that tends to push people in the middle and rear to have to go faster than the lead - itās i think just the effect of the lead being able to make all the turns and route shifts confidently and everyone behind having to play catch up. Having a caboose sweeper is just good practice.
I do wish there were more leads and more esk8s in general so we could more easily work a split group. Shit doug youāre a fixture - bet you could lead a route in either city with good gps - pdx even more easily because the city core is so esk8 friendly. Does your display support turn by turn seriously though - i only get to hang out with you once a year
Dang it! got a family summer trip. I need to come to a CarvePDX or SEA before I get too old to skate. Canāt believe itās been 10 years since I started this esk8 thing.
For those without range, you can bail at ~15mi and get back on the train to Portland. For those with the range, you can continue to the mid-point rest stop at Progress Ridge.
Iāll be on vacation that week with the family on the other coast.
seriously though - i only get to hang out with you once a year 