Not the smoothest ice, some big wind shadows on parts of the lake but a nice little wind trough down the middle and a sunny afternoon to kick off the season at a small lake just a few minutes from my house. I like to entertain the people sitting in the restaurant running the kites across the windows with the sun setting behind me - but no jumping until I get a little snow to cushion my crazy criss crossed ski landings.
http://www.vimeo.com/17944188

Awesome!!!! How thick is the ice over there? Looks like you were getting a good amount of power going to the right. Did you have a GPS on you? Any idea how fast? Looks mid 30-40 mph. Hard to judge the wide angle.

Looks sick tho. Wicked jealous.

Hopefully today we'll get some local riding. There's zero snow here but Lake Chocorua is rumored to have almost 4" of black ice. We'll see.

Looks like a great session Mark. Congrats!

A lot of places around us got a huge dump of snow and that insulates the freezing on some lakes - hope we don't get that slush layer sandwich. Puslinch is a kettle lake - no currents and no snow so it freezes fast - right now a good 5 inches of solid ice in the deep holes where ice fisherman go, the rest is very shallow and has a little thicker ice. (located just the east side of Cambridge Ontario if anyone is looking - but can get busy with snowmobiles)
This was just a few clips thrown together quickly to show guys what the surface is like - wouldn't want the snowboarders showing up and then throwing me grief on the Ontario kite forum - already broke three of their rules 1) kiting one ice
2) using skis 3) using one of those "foyle" kites. I didn't think the GoPro would last long and filmed everything from set up, talking to fisherman, chasing a dog around the lake - to pack up and walk back to the car. This is the smaller section at the east end and a trough of wind going down the middle - a bigger section to the west that I didn't show. Had a GPS but it would shut off after a minute on low battery - turned it on 4-5 times and got one recorded run at 78.6 kmh (around 48/49mph) - the rest varied anywhere from "stuck in wind shadow' to comfortable cruising mid 30s and into the 40's running down the centre. I think I'll take the ice buggy over today but lighter wind and dull looking out there.
Hope you get some good riding soon Chris.

Bah! We have the slush sandwich going on with all our bigger areas. Kills me. Everyone is wishing for a white xmas and I'm just looking for cold and maybe another rain event to consolidate the layers.

Well, I'm glad someone is getting out. Heading out to check Chocorua but not much hope of riding with this killer high pressure and ZERO wind. Not even wind currents around the house to make the random dead leaf twitch.

BAAAAHHH!!

Might have to go ice skating instead.

Excellent! I have to think that there were some WTF? moments in that restaurant when the kite shadow flew across the windows.