Hi all,
There's going to be a gathering of kiters in Wanaka from Friday the 3rd to Monday the 6th of October, all are welcome. The plan is to head to the Snow Farm and do some snow kiting, no contests, no prizes, no T shirt, just fun. In the case of no wind there's plenty of other stuff to do. You can stay at Snow Farm for $120 a night inc or in town from about $20. Most of us are staying in town More details from Gordie Smith email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Phone: 03 443 6803 Mobile: 021 155 0917

See you there,
Chris

So I guess you guys got back last night.

How was the trip?

Dave Kay

it was great, fresh snow both days, chains needed on the road

two big days on the snow, I counted 13 or so kites up at one point

sunny with big kites up on sat with a nasty wee front clearing the hill later on

cold as f*ck on sunday with smaller kites up

by late afternoon both days the area was all tracked out like somebody had put in an invisible chairlift

quite odd seeing kane doing the big carves up the hill than back down

no damage to people happened but at least a few snowboards got a hiding from the waratahs :roll:



craig of dunedin
8)

Umm, wasn't everyone with a kite up doing that? Thats the whole point of it right..?? :?

Yup as doofus said, fun time for all. Friday was the only day with weather so bad we where forced to shelter in the pub and attempt to drink it dry. Well it did clear up enough for us to break an Australian by lending him Hugh's skateboard. He saw the funny side though and still let us ride the Snow Park lift on Monday. No proper injuries although best base gouge would be a tie between cookie, for length of gouge, and Bob, for a short but through the rail and top sheet effort. Pete got the biggest jumps and Tim the best crash on video, although I submitted my own spectacular smash, nobody saw it. I wonder if it really happend then. Kane covered the most kilometers and Stef got the Golden Oscar for filiming all day in the snow on her birthday!

Chris

Yep, bloody excellent trip.
Some pics at homepages.paradise.net.nz/~ndb/wanaka/

and a shot of the hill...

homepages.paradise.net.nz/~ndb/view2.jpg

yeah of course they were, it's just that i stopped stomping about in the snow setting up a kite and watched kane for a bit so that's what stuck in my head

that panorama shot is nice eh, i can even see my poxy old 840

Your 840 is the bright pink/orange one right? Mines the green one, Cookies yellow 14 Aero2 up top and Bob's 10m Airblast is to the left. Yeap...really nice pic Neil. Little bit of a ghosty double up in the middle. What it doesn't show is the three or so kilometres of basins over the ridge which also got fairly tracked. We moved around sessioning windlips trying to do re-entry tricks quarter puipe stylez. It snowed the first night with little wind, then the first day was bluebird, 20cm freshies with 10 - 20 knots SW gradually swinging W and building. 16m Rhino4 all day for me, a bit grim in the end when it howled and snow was blowing everywhere. Then it snowed even more that night and 'till about noon... so deep freshies and windy, 12m and even a blast on the little 8m - best powder sun and wind in the afternoon when most peoples thighs were done.

Total revelation was the wind quality. Even though we had a variety of wind directions, I had a hard time finding turbulence anywhere, it was smoother than a chch NE, and I even went deep into some valleys at times. It just got lighter not gustier. The cold dense air has smooth attached flow, and really wicked powerband venturis along ridge lines. On the last day when all the others went to Snow Park, Craig from Perth, Steph and myself climbed to the ridge line to launch and were ripping around (18m Rhino2) in wind so light it was pretty hard to even keep the kite in the sky when standing still. Then later when we had to split we watched Craig zig zag up the front slope on his 21m Ocean Rodeo Bronco with the wind coming directly from over the back. The wind was smooth downslope and he was flying his kite below him at times. I had a quick warm NW sesh on Lake Wanaka to claim the snow and water in a day thing. Also there's a wicked park for kite mountainboarding right by the lake, and what with a skatepark right there, TC, Snow Park and good downhill ATB terrain all around, Wanaka wouldn't be the worst spot for a boardsports lifestyle. No waves but.

Pete did some big glides. Not many Kiteboarders would boost that high on a new prototype self made 16m kite and calmly adjust the sheeting coming in to "land" just metres from a warratah fence... over and over. With the wind blowing upslope it was easy to boost big but hard to know how to fly the kite. Kitelooping works, overflying was way too easy, and more than a few of us got spanked by sending it too soon.