im getting setup for my first season of snowkiting. what sort of kit is best for nsw snow?
i have a 12m and 16m LEI should i take down a smaller one? like a 9m.
what length lines are recommended?

anything else i should know?

check out a best tempest (water/snow kite), two kites in one, 2005 inflatable with all the 5th line gear to increase the safety and relauch ability that have previously been missing from inflatable kites used on land, dont forget the many other upgrades...


regards browneee

there is a snow kiting forum on kiteforum
kiteforum.com/ you may very well get some great advice on there

Hi

Came across this in the archives and thought i would give a reply as the snow season is upon us and no doubt it will be tempting for many to take their kitesurfing kite and skills into the high country.
Some background on me first.I have been traction kiting and buggying since 96.(hang glider pilot before that)I also tried snowkiting for the first time in 96.Initially I used open cell foils (peel) which were fine for dragging you around the place and also going upwind.Being a 2 line kite though it was difficult to land and disable .I then used 4 line foils and C Quads .More power control and able to dump power.Our winds in the snowy are generally nukin or nothin and really gusty and they were pretty bumpy to ride and were prone to collapsing.
i then used the early gens of arcs and LEI's .Arcs were great for gust absorbtion but didn't have good depower.lEI's had good depower but spankin in the gusty stuff and in the light stuff too heavy and were difficult to relaunch(this is better with 5th line)they are still quite scary tho and get trashed by the ice crystals that we get.
My pick is the venom probably because it is also great on the water and per kite has a huge range and excellent gust absorbtion(Also the pick of Ben Deacon who crossed greenland last year and plans a dash to the southpole next year.)
A word of advice the backcountry is awesome and compelling and has some great snow but it can really give you some scares.Remember you can cover alot of ground fast and its a bloddy long walk if something goes wrong or the weather closes in.A beautiful sunny day with a nice 15- 20 kt wind can give you a really bad false sense of security for day 2 (or perhaps 5 minutes later)when it can turn nasty fast.
Don't go out alone ,be well prepared and try to find someone experienced to go with.
Snowkiting in the Oz alps can be a really awesome experience and on the right days can be easier to learn than kitesurfing.just give it the respect it deserves .
There is quite a group of us here in Newcastle that will be doing quite a few trips this year .We also run the Peter lynn kiteboarding snowkite event the first week of Sept each year at Thredbo.
Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] .Mike Walker is one of Australias most experienced snowkites and is worth having a chat to also.

all the best

lach

Just my $.02 worth, a different perspective for what it's worth: I was talking to some french guys the other day, they say kitesurfing is huge over there. There have been some sales figures thrown around on the other forum which back this up... I think it was said that the french buy more kites per head than the rest of Europe. These 2 guys were backpacking with 7 kites and 6 boards between them, they were well committed to the sport.

Anyway these guys were saying that kite snowboarding was huge over there, all the young guys are into it. Most of the kitesurfers there have snowboards already anyway, and it's not a huge stretch to want to keep kiting in winter.

I asked them if there's a lot of foils, they said no, it's almost all LEI's on the slopes. Apparently having a 5th line setup and being a bit more conservative, ie not crashing the kite too often, is all you need to do. Not crashing should be slightly easier as you're never under water - unless you're in really deep, fresh powder!

So that's what they said. It surprised me, I always thought a foil was pretty well required.