Hardwater Kiter

Well it looks like this is it for our local snow kite season. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and I feel bad that I’ve slacked off on the blog but at the same time I’ve been scrambling to get as much kiting in as I can and get my best speed for the season up before the season finally hits the end. It’s been a weird season to say the least. The weather has been all over the place, the weather forecasts have been useless, and we thought we were going to be without ice almost 3 weeks ago and then it turns out we have conditions we usually only see in February. There’s been some discussion that we might make it until April but after the last few weeks and the day we had on Sunday I’d be happy calling it a season. It’s been pouring rain for the last three days and it’s supposed to get into the 70’s on Friday. Mike I don’t know where to begin to describe the sessions we’ve been getting the last few weeks. It’s been absolutely unbelievable really. We all thought we were going to lose a...

Stacked 15m and 19m Since I got into this kite thing this is always a weird time of year for me. The snow kite season is coming to and end, the weather is getting warmer and the days have gotten longer. While my co-workers are bubbling about the warm weather and up coming riding season (I work in the bike industry) I find myself getting depressed about the rapidly approaching end of the snow kite season. This is compounded by the fact that our season is ending about a month early and we’re already scrambling to find the last bastions of kite-able ice. We still have ice at Umbagog and we’ll probably make it until April but it will still be a short season. This entry is a bit long because I've added a story with some valuable information in regards to safety. I apologize in advance if this seems a bit too long. Last Friday Molly got the day off and she, Mike and myself went down to Squam Lake to check the conditions and see if we could “safely” squeeze out a few more sessions on i...

I was going to race the Mille Lacs Crossing,  an endurance race out in Minnesota, this weekend. It was to be the last one ever and I would have liked to have a shot at winning it but the wind forecast looked really bad and I bagged it at the last minute. I heard they really got "skunked" with 50 degree heat and no wind.  They had to cancel the race. It sucks but it's okay because I got to stay home and ride one of my favorite places to throw a kite in the air. Moore Reservoir. "Luke, I am NOT your father." It’s been two weeks since Kitestorm and there’s been a sudden terrible downturn in our local riding conditions. Just after Kitestorm we got hit with a storm that dumped almost 4 inches of rain in some locations and also got some snow, which left us with several inches of slush on top of the ice. You can’t reasonably kite in slush because it’s too grabby and too damn messy. To make it worse the storm has been followed by unseasonably warm weathe...