A Turning Point

It's about time.

Last snowkite season was the worst I'd seen in the last ten years that I've been involved in this nonsense.  It was late getting here, the surface conditions were a mess most of the time and the wind, well there really wasn't any.  Kitestorm didn't have any wind, Mille Lacs didn't have any wind, the wind we had locally was almost always southerly which kinda sucks for a lot of our local spots.  It wasn't like previous years when my "go to" kite was a 13m Venom.  No last season pretty well sucked.  The suckiest suck that ever sucked.

And I would take it over this season in a heartbeat.

The ice situation this year has been non-existent.  We get a cold stretch and then a skim on the smaller lakes then we get hit by a warm stretch and it gets wiped out.  This keeps happening and I won't lie it's starting to feel like a punch in the privates everytime it happens.  My only solice is that we aren't suffering alone and even up in Canada they have the same deal going on.

Apparently winter is in the mood to torture snowkiters, no matter what thier nationality.

It's not all hopeless though, Jim Cline rode a pond outside of Bethel Maine a week ago after skiing 37,000 vert and Sunday River. He's the first one of our riding circles that got out on the ice this year.  He only kited 11 miles but his top speed was 27mph which is a hell of a good first day out for Jim. 



Cline

Chocorua hasn't set up yet.  Usually the first to freeze over around here and it's just barely maintaining a one inch skim.  Fortunately it's been cold these last few nights and we're looking at temps below zero soon.

Yesterday I tried riding in a field. We only have about three inches of fresh powder on top of ground that just recently froze.  We've been out a few times on similar conditions but not with the ground frozen.  It feels exactly as you would imagine it.  Every turn I made had to have a super flat ski or I risked blowing an edge out on the frozen grass, dirt and rocks just under the surface.   I rode for a little while just to get my fix then bagged it before I trashed a ski.

Too bad, the wind was beautiful.



After that quick session I decided to head North to check out Umby and see how the ice is holding up there.  I heard a report last week that it had about 2-3 inches on it but we've had snow since and snow sucks for the ice making process.  There's no way to really know what's going on with a lake without actually checking it out in person.



WRX dash cam.



I opted to keep my gear on and bring my kites in hopes that there was an odd chance of getting out on the ice.



On the way up I passed a place along the Adroscoggin where a lot of people ice fish.  Out on the ice were two guys, each with a beer in one hand and an axe in the other, chopping holes in the ice.  I pulled over and asked how thick it was.  One guy put down his beer, reached in and said it was about 4-5 inches.  Had it been less I probably would have turned aroud there and saved myself the extra 40 minutes drive but this just fueled my optimism that I might get to ride ice today.

I jumped in the car and continued north.

I got to Umby and the wind was blowing straight out of the Northwest at about 10-12mph.  The lake looked awesome but it also looked untouched.  That makes me the test dummy.  I grabbed an ice screw and began making test holes in the ice.  It's a time consuming process but worth it if you want to assess the ice.  And it's not a great assessment either because what could be happening here may NOT be what's happening on the ice a mile of so off shore.

But it can give you some sort of baseline.

My first hole was over 8" of ice.  This was a very good sign.  Iwent out 100' and drilled again, same.  Another 100', another hundred etc. and the thinnest ice I found was 4".  And this is all BLACK ice which is the strongest ice.  I went back to the car and got my gear on.

I decided to fly Big Blue because the wind was dying as I was drilling holes and I didn't want to fall through the ice and be underpowered if I had to self rescue.  This made things a little interesting at first.  I launched, took off along the shoreline at 28mph with Blue directly overhead and me below, skimming, just barely on the ice enough to hold an edge.  I was a wee bit overpowered but happy in the thought that I'm not putting much load on the ice.  I cruised the shoreline for a bit and decided make the leap and head out into the broads.

Big Blue on 30m lines and almost ZERO wind.



After a few passes back and forth across the broads of lower Umby I saw that the ice was at least 3" thick and that a few pressure ridges were beginning to appear.  This was a good sign that the ice was relatively safe.  I maxed out at 35mph in one short light wind sprint and I decided to head north and see if I could get to the farm just before the cut that heads out onto big Umby.  I made it about half way before I turned back as the wind was quickly calling it quits on me. One thing I've noticed about Arcs in bigger sizes. They seem very resistant to the effects of weight like other kites in large sizes. If you get Blue in the air she tends to stay there.If it wasn't for Blue I would have been stuck out there which was the last thing I wanted to do.

 It's one thing to kite, at speed, over thin ice.  It's another to have to skate without a kite in the air to save you if things go bad.

So, I'm happy in the fact that the season has finally reached a turning point and is actually starting to happen.  We have some rain comming and then a hefty cold snap so that will clean the ice off and give us thicker ice afterwards which will be awesome.  Hopefully some localized ice will appear and we won't have to travel so far to get the goods.  But in the meantime we can at least get out and ride. 

That's all for now.  Sirius is telling me it's time to go out and drop his payload so on that note.....

Snow nose.

Patience is a Virtue.

Well the season isn't carrying the momentum we hoped for after getting a jump start back in freakin November.  People are running around spouting "global warming" assuming these last two unusually warm months are because the Earth is getting warmer.  But we've been noticing that the spring months have been colder the last few seasons so it appears to me to be a shift in the seasonal cycles.

At least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself.  Otherwise I might become suicidal at the thought that my snowkite seasons might be getting shorter.

I've been playing with various Arcs that I haven't had much time on and cruising on my Coyotes (off road skates) as a substitute for skis and snow.  The Coyotes are actually a hell of a lot of fun but I use them rarely because they dig in a lot if the ground is a little soft and I don't want to tear up anyone's fields.

But when the surface is firm they're a hoot.

Mo and Jo

Molly and I have been static flying a bit these last few weekends and teaching our friend Jotham (A.K.A. Mr. Oliver) how to fly.  Molly has been doing most/all of the teaching while I've been flying and riding.  Jotham is picking it up quickly in and it's awesome watching the progression.  It'a amazing how learning to fly a kite instantly turns a full grown adult into a little kid.  You can just see thier eyes light up when that kite's in the air.  It really is like magic.

It's also great to see a new rider learn because it reminds you of when you were in the same boat.  You see them do things that you remember doing when you were learning and you just have to chuckle to yourself.  And it's interesting to see how some things really challenge them while others don't.  Everyone is a bit different and it's striking to me to see Jotham totally nail some things that I remember having trouble with when I started while struggling with things that came naturally to me. 

Sure, having someone there to walk you through it could have something to do with it.  Still, it's always great to see kiting again through a beginner's eyes.

Jotham is progressing fast though.  I get a kick out of watching him make the classic beginner mistakes like sheeting the bar in (pulling the bar in) all the time and steering the bar like bus driver with a steering wheel (turning the bar clockwise/counter clockwise) instead of a like a boxer throwing punches (pulling one end of the bar while pushing the other away).



"Steering the Wheel", fully sheeted in, flyin into the ground. D'OH!

 But before long he'll be able to fly without any assistence.  Then it will be a short jump to get him up and riding on snow. Once he gets out on the snow and gets a taste of that action he'll be hooked.  Especially since he lives near some really great kiting areas.

DUCK!

Of course teaching someone to fly is not without risks.  Always stay behind the new guy when possible!

As I said earlier I've been playing around with some of the Arcs that I don't fly very often.  One I've been playing with is the 6m Phantom 2 Proto.  I flew it a bit last winter and Molly flew the hell out of it a couple of times.  It's a great little kite and for it's size, just like the Charger, it can build a ton of power if you work it.  The other is a 10m Charger Prototype.  Man what a sweet kite!

Looking up the Saco towards Washington.

I've been playing around a bit with my Drift helmet cam as well.  I made a wingtip mount so I could see the actuation of the Phantom/Charger VPC system in flight.  I also wanted to see how much spar deflection there is when you really work the kite in a hard turn.  All the footage was static flying and I think it will look different when I'm actually riding but it is amazing to see how the wing responds and reacts to input.



Spar flex at Autozenith.





Spar flex in while turning.



Pretty wild I think.  Pepijn Smit head Arc cat at Peter Lynn once told me to try running spars that allow for the most amount of flex without completely folding. This would allow for getting the most out of the wing profile if I understand correctly. My friend Mike ran some REALLY flexy fiberglass spars in his 15m Charger and it was pretty wild.  They were too flexy and if you really flogged the kite she would go nuts and fall out of the sky. 

Anyway, sorry I haven't had much to report on the snowkite front lately.  Ol' Man Winter is droppin the ball on us here in the Northeast.  Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have a little more going on.  My friends in Minnesota have ice, maybe a trip west would be prudent.



Self Portrait.



Until next time.