Christmas Gift Guide 2017: 20 gift ideas for adrenaline junkies

MBS Core 94 Axe Mountainboard (£279)

Take a skateboard. Kit it out with 8in tyres. What do you have? A death trap.

Ditch the DIY and grab this all-terrain board from MBS, instead. Perfect for beginners and improvers alike, its composite fibreglass deck, lightweight construction and sturdy bindings should have you hurtling downhill before Christmas dinner is served. Who needs a sledge, anyway?

Heimplanet HPT COORDINATES Tee (€34)

Being extreme is all well and good, but it’s hard to live your life on the edge while you’re searching for quinoa in the Waitrose world foods aisle.

Give your fellow shoppers a peek at your thrill-seeking soul with this fast-drying tee from the outdoorsy sorts at Heimplanet. Coolever tech should see shopping sweat quickly wicked, while the coorindates print on the front practically screams “danger”.

Bop It! Classic (£15)

Forget extreme sports. For true heart-pounding pleasure, there’s no more intense way to play than Bop It!. Sure, it looks like an innocent toy – albeit one adorned with various bits of oddly shaped plastic – but fire it up and you’re in for a thrill.

“Pull it! Twist it! Bop it!” You won’t have time to titter as the orders come thicker and faster, your ticker thrumming with adrenaline as the tempo increases. One wrong move and – breathe – it’s all over. Time for a whisky, while your 5-year-old relative trounces your score.

GoPro Hero6 Black (£490)

Remember that time you went Nessie-hunting? And you actually saw what you thought might or might not have been the actual monster in the actual Loch Ness? Sadly, nowadays a charcoal drawing and a lot of insistence simply isn’t enough to prove your exploits.

Put paid to evidential regret by picking up GoPro’s latest and greatest action snapper. Truly tough and capable of capturing 4K footage at 60fps, its 120fps slow-mo mode should ensure your monstrous close-ups are silky smooth – while upgraded video stabilisation tech ought to tackle your excited shaking as you scream, “I got it! I got it!”

Zombie Survival Experience (£99)

Sure, spending three hours trying to outwit and outlive the zombie hoards hunting your team might sound like a harmless (albeit terrifying) experience.

Ask Jeff next door, though, and he’ll tell you the truth. The truth about how it’s actually a government-run recruitment program, used to select leaders for the the post-apocalyptic world. And he knows it’s true, because he read it on the internet. Why tea and coffee are included? That remains a mystery.

Bell Full 9 Helmet 2018 (£383)

You might have all the gear to get your adrenaline pumping come Christmas morning, but one quick tumble and it’s off to A&E for a Boxing Day in bandages.

Strap on some stylish safety with Bell’s Full 9 helmet. A full-face protector, its carbon shell should see impacts easily shrugged off. Better still, it’s got a pair of camera mounts built-in – so you know where to stick that new GoPro – as well as Soundtrax pockets for all-action tunes.

2.1M Budget Traditional Zorb (£600)

“Want to see my big, bouncy ball?”

Oh, the fun you’ll have explaining that one to the police. Or not, as the case might be, as you Zorb down the street in a chase scene of inflated proportions.

If you’d rather avoid any drama with the law, stick to rolling on the lawn in these blow-up tumblers.

Bungee Jump at London 02 Arena (£80)

Boing. Boing. Boing. Snap! Give your adrenaline-hooked buddy something better than an elastic band to twang this Christmas with this bungee jumping experience.

Hauled 160ft into the air by a crane in the centre of London, they’ll leap, bounce and land in full safety. If you can call some bits of stretchy rope wrapped around their ankles safe. Which we can’t. But, hey, at least it’s not you up there.

Razor Crazy Cart Shift (£245)

An 8mph top speed might sound pretty slow – but, when you’re just centimetres from the ground, drifting around a car park whilst crouched on a tiny plastic cart, it feels nippy indeed.

Razor’s latest Crazy Cart does plenty to live up to its name, with a back-end so happy to slide that you’ll struggle to keep it in a straight line – even without January ice covering the asphalt. Its battery will give 40 minutes of sideways action off a single charge, too.

GoFly Tiger Moth experience (from £120)

“Wilbur, quick! I’m flying! Get the GoPro!”

Sure, they might have mastered the art of flight, but the Wright brothers didn’t get it right when it came to capturing the moment.

Do what they couldn’t by strapping on an action cam and hopping in the front seat of a Tiger Moth. This package will give you 20 minutes of aerial enjoyment over Boscombe Down airfield – near Stonehenge – as you bank and roll in an 80-year-old plane that trained Spitfire pilots.

Chocolate Carabiners Gift Box (£15)

Oh, the fun you’ll have explaining to the dentist how you switched your climbing pal’s chocolate carabiners for real ones, in a fit of peckish desire while halfway up Pen-y-ghent.

Still, it’ll be less embarassing than when they find out you also swapped their ropes for strawberry laces in a moment of festive folly.

Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch (£400)

How does an insatiable thrill-seeker kick back at the weekend? Sure, 4K TV is eye-wateringly sharp – but it’s not nearly engrossing enough to get the palms sweaty.

Strap on an Oculus headset and you can keep your heart-rate racing until the next skydive. Spend Christmas afternoon setting up its room-scale VR (and the new gaming PC you’ll need to make it work), ready for a Boxing Day of immersive experiences and sweaty palms. Not sure where to start? Grab your Touch controllers and fire up ADR1FT.

Jones Snowboards 2018 Hovercraft Splitboard (£757)

Snowboarding is far more enjoyable on fresh powder, but getting to it isn’t always that easy; while smug skiers can reach all the best spots simply by skinning uphill, you’re left trudging about in snow shoes. A splitboard solves the problem: you pull it apart to create makeshift skis good enough to get you up the slope, then clip it back together again for the journey back down.

The Jones Hovercraft is a top quality split option, crafted from fibreglass, Slovenian poplar and a bamboo topsheet, and with a short length which makes for a highly maneuverable ride. It’s not cheap, but it’ll be worth it just to see the look on all those plankers’ faces when they arrive to find you’ve already used all the best snow.

Instant Regret Chilli Chocolate (£8)

“Fear? Pah, I eat fear for breakfast.” Once your adventurous friend has finished their morning meal, pass them one of these for afters to truly test their mettle.

Sure to give even the hardiest of thrill-seekers the sweats, these spicy sweets are no Belgian truffle. In fact, it might be worth putting out some milk for them, instead of Santa.

Merlin Annual Pass (from £179)

For some, there’s nothing more exhilerating than hurtling upside down around a steel track, strapped to a chair on wheels. For those people, nothing else will do for a thrill.

Short of building a mini-coaster in the yard, pick up Merlin’s Annual Pass and they’ll get access to a host of attractions across the country – from Alton Towers to Legoland to London Dungeon – for 12 months. Some date restrictions do apply, so be sure to check if you’re planning a birthday treat.

You Only Live Once: A Lifetime of Experiences (£11)

“You only live once” is truly the andrenaline junkie’s mantra. That, and “always have health insurance”.

Pick up this Lonely Planet compendium and you’ll never be short of inspiration for your next death-defying adventure. Across its 336 pages you’ll find countless experiences and ideas to take your breath away – and, if it all looks a bit tame, you can always pack a wingsuit.

It, by Stephen King – Audiobook (£30)

In a year when Pennywise once again frightened the life out of kids across the world, it’s only right to invite Stephen King’s It into your ears.

Dim the lights, lock the doors and prepare to be frightened: lasting for almost 45 hours, this audiobook is sure to go where even the most thrilling of thrill rides fear to tread. Sure, it’s not jumping out of a plane strapped to a sheet of cloth – but adrenaline junkies need to rest sometimes, and this is the thing to ensure they don’t think of sleeping.

Suunto Spartan Sport (£465)

“I was cool as a Koala, bro, even when I was grubbing. Yeah, going over the falls was no biggie.”

While Suunto’s sturdy Spartan Sport watch won’t correct your sketchy attempts at surfer lingo, its in-built heart rate monitor will tell your board-riding buddies exactly how scared you really were as that whopper of a wave tossed you into the foam.

Ariel Nomad (from £30,000)

OK, so this one isn’t quite a stocking filler – but, with 235BHP in an off-road shell weighing just 670kg, there are few better ways to tear up the garden this Christmas.

Made by the same boffins who bolted together the arrestingly quick Atom, Ariel’s Nomad is a serious bit of silly kit for your dearest thrill-seeker. Equipped with a lightweight safety cage and 2.4-litre engine, it’s the perfect machine for dirt-track hooning. Just don’t forget your gloves – the windows seem to have gone AWOL.

Crosscall Trekker X3 (£500)

When leaping out of planes, scrambling up rocks and splashing through canyons are part of your daily grind, it just won’t do to wrap your iPhone in a rugged case and hope for the best.

Shell out £500 on Crosscall’s ultra-durable Trekker X3 and, besides its rugged build, you’ll get a suite of adventure-focussed features – including an altimeter, so you’ll have evidence to back up your next tall story.