My alpine equipment is 23 years old an I was thinking of buying some new equipment, what should I get? What do you all like?

Do the new skis they called them shape skis back in the old days will those work or do I need to by the old straight skis like I have now?

I find it all depends where you snowkite. Most likely you don't need new equipment - if it worked for you downhill it will work snowkiting.

I use my old straight skis for crusing on a flat surface but I use my shape skis for hilly or mountainous terrain where I turn more often. I also have an old pair of shape skis to use if rocks are a factor.

I like twin tips personally but I use my old race skis ;super g and downhill, for ice conditions.

If your looking a new pair ( for you )? Get an inexpensive pair.

You'll likely beat them up

Anyone care to elaborate on these different types of skis and their benefits over one another... :dunno:

Depends on the conditions. As I stated in your other thread, long straight skis will handle 99% of the riding you will want to do. New skis will have too much sidecut and (assuming you are edging correctly) will continually carve up wind. Requiring a constant disengagement of the edge to resume course. Most current alpine skis are in the 10-16m carve radius range. Meaning they will carve a turn and from entry to exit is 10-16m. You can imagine at a cruising speed how that would feel and at high speeds your knees flail up and down like pistons in an engine.

If the snow is soft, you can get away with more shape as you are planing as much as edging. Hard pack and ice you are at the mercy of the ski's carve specs.

Firm conditions ideally have a longer than 20m carve radius. A widebody ski, something more than 76-80mm underfoot is ideal as it will help you in the softer stuff as well. One of the best all around snowkite skis we've seen is the Salomon X-Mountain. Long radius, wide, torsionally stiff, handles everything. As an alpine ski it was a total dog. Kite ski? AWESOME.

An earlier version of Rossignol Phantom is an excellent choice as a Bandits. Most of the "Big Mountain" hard charger skis make excellent versitile snow kite skis. Essentially low radius powder skis with a GS ski construction. They handle firm conditions, ice (to a point), powder and crud. If I'm going somewhere and don't have the conditions dialed I'll bring my Phantom 108s. When I raced the Mille Lacs Crossing they were perfect as the course had everything from boiler plate to deep drifts. They were instrumental in helping win that race. They do it all. I added rocker to them 2 yrs ago and they're killer.
Soft deep snow, anything will do if you're a solid skier. Personally I've gone to powder specific skis with 116mm under foot and rockered tips. This allows maximum float with minimal snow so stomping a landing, even if the powder is just a few inches, feels super soft. The rocker allows the kiter to lean into the tips like they would on firm snow and ride normally and aggressively if they want. But you can also ride centered on the ski and surf the hell out of the pow. :D

Twin tips are fun skis for hucking and riding moderately frim snow if they aren't too aggressive a sidecut or you don't edge too hard. Nice if you want to land switch and really nice if you come up short on a roll and land switch accidently. Molly loves playing on her twin tips because they're about half the length, 1/3 the weight of her "normal" skis. The thing to keep in mind with twin tips is that when edging the kick tail provides a ton of drag. When you see someone cruising with a twip tip and they have that sick rooster tail spraying up behind them, that's causing drag. Sucks on days when you have the wrong wax, base structure,wind or all of the above.

Hard conditions/glass. Race skis. More specifically Giant Slalom, Super G, DH or Speed. Carve radius from >21m - >40m.
Ideally DH or speed skis for hard, fast conditions. When properly tuned they can lock into the hardest glass ice, better than skates, and just rail for miles. As the old saying goes "Short skis suck, long skis truck" it's very true on a snowkite. My daily drivers, as we have mostly firm conditions here, are 215cm Salomon DHs that I scavenged from the Salomon Race room after they stopped thier race program. My fast ski is an Atomic 242cm Speed. Molly is on either a 208 or 215cm most of the time. With her lighter weight she does fine with both. If you want the good edge angles lifters are mandatory for reducing the risk of boot out.

:P We could go into a ton of detail further on the subject but this gives you a general idea I think.

Chris, use the skis you have and see how it goes. At this point if they slide and you're comfortable with them, just ride 'em and focus on building the kite skills. After some time on the kite in various conditions you'll recognize the deficiencies and benefits to the ski you have. One you start riding powered you'll notice what the ski does even more. :D

Ok that helps a lot, the local ski shop is aware of kite skiing but they dont know the requirements of what ski works the best. I think I have the the owners son interested in giving a kite a try, he would be a great asset with his ski knowledge to join our local kite club.

In Duluth our skiing at the local hill is groomed and Icy, I was leaning towards a backcountry boot and a very stiff straight ski for use in Icy conditions.

The kiting that I will be doing here will be on a reservoir lake it is usually compacted hard packed snow, we will only have power after a snow storm for the most part. As the power company draws the lake down in the spring the lake becomes a now park dream, natual half pipes and all sorts of hills and valleys to jump. I think I'm am going to find snow kiting to be much more fun than going down the same booring runs at the ski hill.

You have the same conditions we have here. New England, not known for pow skiing. :D

I love when they drop water levels and you get all the terrain features. Can be very dangerous if the ice sheet wasn't thick enough when they drop the levels. Going through a hollow pocket can really ruin your day. Fortunately it's pretty rare in our parts of the world not to have enough ice.

Keep in mind, if you are running a backcountry boot, especially one with a flex softer than say 90-100, you're going to have some trouble driving a stiff plank. The boot will crush and absorb your energy before the ski even thinks about reacting.

Most of us run 2 sets of boots. For firm days I'm in a 130 Flex boot that's two sizes down from my street shoe size. For teaching and soft snow I'm in an Agent AT. Still a fairly firm flex for an AT boot but cozy like a slipper.

You will find Snowkiting more fun. And the lakes all have their own personalities just like ski areas except the personalities change with the wind direction.

Duluth made national news, we went from no snow yesterday to almost 3 feet today! No time to kite too much shoveling

That answers my question if you Duluth guys got pounded with snow. We got pretty much all rain down here. Lakes will be fast with the arctic air coming in a few days:D

Chrisz, you have conditions like us in Green Bay. I use straight race style skis 99% of the time on Green Bay and other area lakes. For the rare occasion we do have deep snow on the lakes, I picked up a snowboard for that purpose.

I would love to lesn how to use a board, that just seems more natural or kitting

Maybe for those who start out on water. As a skier I feel perfectly natural on skis in regards to body position.

When you get you flying skills dialed you rarely, if ever, look at the kite while you're riding. You're focus is on the skiing and you manage the kite in response to feedback you get through your harness etc...

The kite flies next to you as you ride.

We only have 3 dedicated snowboard riders in our local community. On the firm surfaces if you ride a board and don't have one of Todd Hansen's Switchblades you're out of luck. Skis are just more versitile.

Our students, even the snowboarders, usually start on skis. Makes learning much easier in regards to managing the kite as a beginner. Once they get the basict flying skills dialed they move to thier boards. Some have even come back later and said that they have gone to skis for kiting and only use the board on the slopes. Just works out better if the surface is firm.

Conversly, Gary Kjellerin, the guy who won last season's Hardwater Kiting Global Speed Ranking, learned to kite on a snowboard without even snowboarding before. He said after years of boarding on a kite he tried to ride a ski slope.

He said it was an aweful, aweful expirience.:P

The guy is a machine on a board and no slacker on a DH ski.

I'm with Feyd on the boards. I've been a DH boarder all my life, I love boarding, and just got some skis (well blades) this season. I'm so impressed I now want proper long skis! I really think skis are better suited to kiting as you don't have to ride switch half the time, and the turns are way more fun.
I also found my muscles get less tired as I get to move the kite on both sides of the body and edge both directions. All that heel edge on my board kills the calf muscles...

The purpose of a sidecut is to make a ski turn when on edge and therefore ANY sidecut on a ski used for kiting is undesirable. Forcing a ski on edge with a sidecut to go straight means it is continuously sideslipping – otherwise it would go upwind. The more sidecut, the worse the effect. There is no useful contribution of a sidecut to gybing either that I have been able to detect – just the opposite. And while on snow the sidecut - causing an increased drag plus possible control problems at speed - can be compensated for, the unavoidable slippage of the edge on ice makes holding the edge difficult or impossible given the ice slick and hard enough – especially for a lightweight. Scrapping the ice, as opposed to cutting, contributes also to an accelerated dulling of the edges.

While I like longer skis for downhill skiing, I don’t use them for kiting much if at all anymore. Even the old and the most suitable for the purpose have too much sidecut for my liking and are just not quick enough for directional changes. Generally I don’t kite in deep snow and the manoeuvrability of a shorter ski (important especially in variable, gusty and shifty winds, shorter reaches with a lot of gybing and when flying the kite aggressively) outweighs the benefits of a longer ski for me. And (what is important) I can make shorter skis almost sidecut free by cutting off the tail section of an old and long ski and side filing the edges toward the tips and tails. That works for snow.

Now for the ice. I disagree that any ski can hold as well as a skate given the black mirror and low temperature. Having the blade under the centre of the foot means that no angulation is necessary and so no effort required to hold the edge. So for clear ice I use long blades with the same bindings (and same boots) as on all skis.

Very often though there are unavoidable drifts on ice and for those conditions I make iceskis. They work on the same principle as skates i.e. the rocker reduces the contact area and proportionally increases the pressure allowing cutting into the ice surface. For the maximum hold such as needed for hockey, a rocker radius is about 3 m, while speedskates have a rocker of about 10 m to reduce the drag and still provide sufficient grip. The skates I use are long and have a rocker of 30 m. For slick and hard ice with drifts I have iceskis with a rocker of 15 m and for softer conditions and/or more snow cover I use longer ones with a rocker of 25 m. These iceskis hold on ice as well as skates (almost) while allowing traversing snowy areas.

For the white velvet ice of April and May (my favourite) I use iceskis with no rocker and no sidecut, similar to my snow skis but shorter.

I sharpen the edges to a as acute angle as possible. I see no merit at all in the base bevel for kite skis. On clean ice the edges need touch-up after about 100 km – more when warm, less when on dusty ice. I change L to R after about 60 km.

Edge bevel is a funky thing. I have the my own specs that I tune mine to and I'm in agreement on having an acute edge. The tun I put on my skis today would have likely killed me on a ski slope. Same hardware on your feet but the maintenance is different.

If I put my sharpest edge on it locks into glass like nothing else. That edge comes with reduced life in regards to staying sharp. On a speed session day I retune my edges every 30-45 minutes or about 20miles. If on the other hand I put a 2deg side and .5deg base bevel I will get about 85% of the grip my other tune offers but about 250 miles before it noticeably degrades and I can't hold a line under full power.

I change the bevels a bit when I lose enough base that the ski gets really railed. There more drag but the effort to hold the edge is a lot better.

Prussik, could we get a photo of these ice skis you build? They sound pretty neat.

Well as of yesterday I will no longer be kiting on bare ice, we have 2 feet of snow on the lake. So now what do I do for skis, keep my old ones for bare ice and by powder skis for for today's conditions? How many sets of ski's do you guys have?


I am not sure my little 5.5 meter kite will pull me around any more with all this snow!

IF you have one set for Pow and one set for ice you're good to go. As you progress you may find yourself adding skis for specific types of kiting like a short pair of twin tips for jumping, rails etc. or a super lightweight AT set up for long distance touring.

You're correct, in deep snow the 5.5m won't be a lot of fun unless the wind is blowing 25+. And even then, a narrow hard pack/groomer ski is going to be a lot of work in the deep stuff.

Unless you get some flavor of big mountain "hard charger" type ski you'll be needing 2 skis. Even with a big mountain style board, once you get really good you'll find that as the board does a lot of things well, it doesn't do any one thing great. That's when you start looking to haul around use specific skis.

Right now my personal quiver consists of 5 pairs of DH skis, one pair of speed skis, 1 big mountain, one AT, one powder. We have firm fast conditions more than we have pow days and our ski choices reflect this.

If you want to see a visual, at the end of this blog post are some images of the gear we haul for snowkite season. I'm loading the van today in fact. =)

http://hardwaterkiter.blogspot.com/2010/04/last-days-at-umba...