Snowkiting
Snowkiting is a sport and a variant of kitesailing that can be practiced on snow-covered, open areas in winter. You need a suitable towing kite and skis or a snowboard . If there is enough wind you let the kite fly and pull you over the snow. As with all kitesailing sports, make sure that the lines are under sufficient tension, otherwise the kite will collapse and fall, e.g. B. caused by driving directly behind the kite / 'driving into the kite'. The speed record is currently 111.2 km / h. The “Snowkite Mecca” in the Swiss Engadin is the Silvaplana Lake , in the Italian Vinschgau the Reschensee . Races are held there regularly.
Even as a child, Dieter Strasilla , inspired by Otto Lilienthal , practiced gliding near Berchtesgaden . Dieter Strasilla started parachuting in Germany and Switzerland (1961 in the USA) in the 1960s and perfected a kite-skiing system in the 1970s by developing a paraglider and leading the lines to a pole on the pilot that was connected to a universal joint. This allowed the pilot to turn the body in any direction and to cross with the kite sail, to go upwind or uphill, and then to go into free flight at will. At the beginning of the 1980s Dieter Strasilla and Andrea Kuhn used this system in combination with grass skis, converted kettcars, surfboards and skurfs (similar to wakeboard) and thus belong to early kite surfers.
In the 1980s, a few alpine skiers also began wind skiing in a frozen bay in Erie, PA, using a steering-line rectangular parachute. This was followed by kite skiers on many frozen lakes and fields in the midwestern United States and the east coast. Lee Sedgwick and a group of kite skiers in Erie, PA were early ice / snow kite skiers here.
In 1982 Wolf Beringer started skiing and ski sailing with his “short line parawing system”. This system was used on several polar expeditions to ski sledges, sometimes covering very long distances. Ted Dougherty began making sails for ski sailing, and Steve Shapson made sails that used two handles to make the kite easy to steer.
In the mid-1980s, Shapson took an old two-line kite while ice sailing and tried to sail with the wind on the frozen lake in Wisconsin. Shapson introduced the "kite skiing" sport in Poland, Germany, Finland and Switzerland. He also used grass ski to kite ski in grassy meadows. Some of the early European kite-ski sailors were Keith Stewart and Theo Schmidt, who were also among the first to water-ski with kites. The American Corey Roessler, together with his father William, developed a kite ski system for water skiing and began to win windsurfing races with strong tail winds.
The following terms describe the sport of “kite” or some refer to “power kiting”: kite buggying , kite skiing , kite surfing , kiteboarding , ski sailing , ski sailing .
Web links
- Snowkiting Guide. KiteTeam.ru (English)