My first experience with kite snowboarding couldn't have been much more rewarding. I got up to around 30 mph, got some air, and then proceeded to smash my face into the icy ground repeatedly.
Let me back up a little bit. It wasn't all fun and games. There was definitely some hard work in learning the basics.
Here is one of the first times I let the kite pull me up. (double click to view the movies)
And here is some decent speed, shortly afterward. Notice the small fall at the end.
Luckily I started to get the hang of the whole kite thing. Right at the end of the footage you can see guy that suddenly showed up and attempted to ground me. Permanently.
Here is some more surprising footage of the snowmobile riding terrorists that would have surely run me down if it weren't for my incredible speed. Not bad for a days work.
After making a harrowing escape, I rested the rest of the night. The next morning I realized that the wind had just about doubled overnight. Too bad my skill level had not. The wind was even too strong for any snowmobiles to chase me around. The wind was at least 30 plus gusts, but I managed pretty well for about an hour and a half. After my ride out of there was late, everything started to change. The wind became quite gusty. I have no video, but imagine the fall in the second video above, except instead of the wind pulling me over really fast, it pulled me up 15 feet right before dropping me on my face. Now imagine that, despite the bloody mess I had become after once such fall, I continued attempting to head downwind. After smashing my face in this way 6 times, my vision started to go black. Unfortunately for the Grim Reaper, my kite string also was cut on my snowboard edge during my last "landing".
