Explore europe in a campervan

We tucked in, rather late in the evening, to a roast dinner. It seems to take forever to cook potatoes in our oven, but we had some cooked pork that we’d been given so it was well worth the wait. Although we wanted to get another good day of boarding in, it was decided not to set an alarm so we could get a good sleep and 11 hours later we woke naturally! The weather was mild and clear, with blue skies, and we hoped for another really good day on the snow.

The mission was to head straight to Switzerland to the kiting spot. The last time we were there, armed with a small kite, the wind was blowing 30mph and gusting up to 45mph. Not really the conditions to try snow-kiting for the first time. It took quite a while to get over there, mainly because the lovely snow of two days ago has been ruined! Partly by the warm sun today and partly by those inconsiderate skiers, who all seem to follow each other, which creates bumps called ‘moguls’. The pistes were nearly all bumpy lumps of slush, which I find very difficult to board over or around. But we made it there eventually and there was a bit of wind.

By the time we were ready, and in the right conditions, to get a kite out we checked the time - it was 3.45pm! There’s a genuine possibility of getting stuck on the Swiss side of the area if you miss the last lift to get to the French side of the mountain. Apparently a taxi back to Morzine from Switzerland costs in the region of €100, so we couldn’t really afford to get stranded and the pressure was on!

We checked the wind (using my wind meter sponsored by families Clarke and White!) and it showed a steady 19mph - totally manageable and much less than the windiest conditions we’ve land-boarded in Poole. Simon launched the kite with no problems - using the stake that’s conveniently left at the spot by the kite school that (we’ve never seen) use the area. It felt a little strange to be flying a kite again, on a hill rather than on a flat, and on snow - but he got going pretty easily and actually had to work the kite quite hard to get power. There was so little time that I had a quick go and just about got moving but needed more time to really get the feel of kiting on snow, with feet fixed into the board, unlike land-boarding. But we got a few pictures so you can see we finally did it and our ‘kiteboard’ title isn’t completely unrealistic.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Diary, Snowkiting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.