Categories

A sample text widget

Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.

Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan. Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem, suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.

Ice/Water Kiting

Unseasonably warm.  The last two days shattered records when we got in to the lower 60s.  The nice snow cover we had across the lake was quickly disappearing… only to be replaced with an inch or two of water in some spots.  With this change of weather we also go some wind.

I’ve had a few days trying to kite on wet wet lakes.  It can be fun.  Rooster tails of water behind the skis.  Wet from head to toes.

On Cross Lake there always seems to be an area of open water between it and Rush Lake.  A week ago I was kiting on Cross Lake,  I skied up near that area and notice it had gotten significantly larger.  The warmish weather was causing area of flow to open wider and wider.  It was weird this with people still driving trucks out on the lakes to fish.

I was thinking with the right wind it might just work for water kiting.  A pretty straight south wind would allow you to ride the gap of open water almost perfectly.

View Larger Map

 

Sunday rolled around.  Spent the morning relaxing with some friends.  The thought crossed my mind and I called up Todd Hanson to see how the lake looked down by his house or what he thought of that area for kiting.

He was interested.  Game on.  Talk turned to using one of his switchblades (http://www.mnkiteboy.com/Switchblade.html) on a kiteboard for an amphibious board.  I donated a board to the cause and we mounted it on the back of my board.

We headed to the lake with Todd, Vicki and Katie.  Plenty of support if things went awry.  Donned the drysuit, set up the old 16m 2006 cabrinha crossbow because I was worried about not having enough power.  Launched the kite on the frozen lake and got pulled downwind on my butt on the ice.  Tried to get in my bindings, but had to ditch my booties to get my feet to fit.

Kite had plently of power.  I was overpowered trying to use the switchblade with the kiteboard.  Todd said that my boots might have been to far in the middle of the kiteboard (on a snowboard your heels are right on the edge).  It was manageable, but was tiring.  Finally, I made it from the ice to the open water.  Ahhhh sweet riding.  Very powered on the 16m and perfectly flat water.  Did some ice to water transitions and back.  Landed a couple jumps from the water to the ice.  It was awesome to get some water riding in before heading for some epic snowkiting in AK in two weeks!

If the wind lines up and the temperature is warm it would be great to be able to get out riding there again!

Thanks to Todd and Vicki for borrowing me the switchblade and for all the help!

I had Todd’s Gopro on the helmet… so we will have to see if it actually was recording.  That would be fun to see!

 

Kate took all these picture below!

 

1 comment to Ice/Water Kiting

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>