Turkey Wind

Today was predicted to be SW 10-15 mph increasing in the afternoon. Got up there around noon and met up with Mark for the epic day! So there we were...getting all extreme skining up Mt Hood. After an hour we got to a new spot near the Steel cliffs, by far the best snow coverage on the lower part of the masive mountain. Had the Octane 12m in the pack and it was about right for the conditions that we found up there- SW 6mph for a minute, then West @ 13mph followed quickly by a sharp NorthEasterly...it was alll over the place! Great, time to Send it! Rigged and flew around in this ever changing pattern of confusion. Fun stuff for really brief periods, then not so much. Really a beautiful spot to be goofing around all day though. Thanks for the photos Mark!

Sunset Session's Rock

Another three feet of snow and we are in business. So it a little bare up there, well at least its kitable. Today wasn't the greatest wind direction but what a great excuse to stay out to see an amazing sunset.
Although they were publishing a wind direction of around 110', The wind was coming straight from the shack in the upper right of this photo, towards me. More like 60' Fighting gravity and fighting to stay up wind is really fun let me tell you. Under powered on a 9 meter. But doing it. Making upwind, uphill progress, slowly, but doing it. And going for it again tomorrow! Which reminds me, I gotta run... get my ATL Relaunch installed on my kites for the new and improved Saturday South Wind!

Peterson gets his stoke on!

Imagine if Alex had a Mohawk like Glenn Plake. Right where his Mohawk would be is where we ride on Palmer Glacier. This picture was taken just minutes before hiking up when the wind blew in the clouds and stole our sweet visability. Oh well, that's mountain snowkiting for you.

Cloud kiting

It's amazing what 30 seconds of riding uphill can do. One minute your riding with perfect visability and the next minute it turns into ghost kiting where your literally riding through the clouds and the only thing you can see is the neon reflection of your kite.

Timberline nukes on day 2

25 -30 knots on 8 meter kites in the clouds. Soooo good to be back on the snow no matter what the conditions. Aaron and I hiked for 1/2 hour in no wind wondering if we had grabbed the right sized kites for the day. Finally, when we got above the tree line, the first blast of cold mtn air hit us! The snow had settled some and melted a bit leaving even more rock exposed. We got to the spot where we had set up days earlier and rested, took some water and set up our kites. Aaron was fast and ready, I launched his kite and watched him haul ace up and out of sight, into the fog layer at 6500'. I got going and joined him in the fog to see how high we could ascend the mtn. After about 700' of vert we ran into another rock field that was impassable by snowkiting. We cruised around in the West wind for about 2 hours, making easy tracks straight up and down the south facing hill we were sliding on. Looking at the GPS after the session we put on 7 miles and it was just sooo good to be back on the snow!

11/6 Snowkiting season is on!!!

11/6 Snowkiting season is on!!!
Words from Aaron Sales

Early season storms brought Mt Hood nearly 3 feet of fresh powder in under a week, just enough to rally the crew for the first snowkite session of the year. A quick drive up to Mt Hood Timberline from Hood River for a look at the conditions proved worthy. Snow. Check. Wind. Check. Visibility. Shitty but Check. With an hour long hike through the clouds Alex Peterson, Laura Maher, and I arrived to the openness of Palmer Glacier above Timberline… The snow was deep but not deep enough to cover the car sized boulders. Laura and I took a look at the riding area and assessed it as sketchy, while Alex had a different view, " good enough, lets go". Alex was the guinny pig and launched in a steady 15-18 knots and soon disappeared up the hill and into the clouds. It always blows me away at how much ground you can cover on a kite. What would have taken us 20 minutes to hike up, Alex kited up in 30 seconds. A few minutes later he reappeared coming down through the mine field of rocks with ease. A few jumps later he passed the kite off to me for my first tracks since April. Damn it feels good to get back on the snow. An hour later, our session had to end as we only had an hour till dark, but it was still by far, the best session of the year. It looks like 2 more feet of snow are soon to arrive and when it does, we hope to get back on Hood for some freshies.

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