Another +1 for arcs...

So, I went to Snowkite Soldier last weekend and haven't had time to post this experience and advertise for arcs a little. Saturday of the event was dead until around 1:30 and then the thermal winds turned on and at one point there were close to 50 kites in the air. I was flying my 15m Synergy and my brother was on his 10m Pulse. We were dinking around upwind of the race they were having and looked off in the distance at the hills that line the prairie and we saw a handful of kiters at the top of them. I pointed it out to my brother and he said "you wanna go?" Heck yes I did.

We took off for the hills and had to fly our kites under some power lines about half way out. We made it to the base of the hills and started to climb following the tracks of the guys already up there. I've gone up the hills closer to the road there and it was pretty dang cool, but this was frickin' awesome. My brother figures we gained about 1200 ft. in elevation. We had to wind our way on the ridges of the hills to get to the top. We made it to the top and had quite the view, unfortunately I didn't have my camera. At the top we were almost 4 1/2 miles away from where we had started.

So, now the +1 for arcs story really begins.

While we were climbing we were going slightly down wind and at points straight downwind up the hill sides. This made going back down a little tricky because there wasn't a ton of room to maneuver and tack upwind. I ended up on the downwind side of a hill with not enough speed to cut upwind and go uphill. To compound that, there was a wind shadow because I was on the downwind side of the hill. Because of the wonderful auto zenith I was able to keep the kite overhead and start working my way uphill sidestepping with my skis.

I was doing pretty well and making some progress when the kite lost some wind and drifted back and across me. Had I been on an inflatable I'm pretty sure it would have hindenburged on me. I reached out and grabbed the front lines to keep it from pulling too hard and yanking me over, but I was too late. I got tugged over and pulled off a 6 or 7 foot cornice of snow right into a woody bush. Too small to be a tree, but too big to be a bush. Anyway, I got pulled through it and had my left ski pop off. I looked up and there was my kite staring down at me. Definitely some kiter error involved in that happening. Fortunately, no lines got permanently stuck on any branches. I managed to grab the ski that was still in the bush and work my way around so I could start climbing out.

I had to take my other ski off and hike up the hill. It was pretty dang nice not having to worry about my kite while I was doing it. I just started crawling up the hill with the depower line across my chest, tossing my skis up the hill as I went. I made it to the crest and after catching my breath popped my skis back on and didn't have any other problems, just tons of untracked snow on the way back to the truck.

Would I have been hosed if I didn't have an arc? Probably not. Did having an arc make hiking out of a hole a ton easier and possibly prevent something worse from happening? Absolutely. I'm not hating on other kites, just sharing my experience about why I love my arcs and hope to never have to get rid of them. And, I wanted to say how awesome Snowkite Soldier and the Camas Prairie are. Especially as my home kiting area. ;-)

Nice

Yeah me too AD - anything on snow! With all the snow we had this winter I was sure it was going to happen but either wind, snow or time was uncooperative. Next year I think I'm just going to have to drive up north for a long weekend ...