Kite Yukon Canada

Hi everyone,

Jim and Cath from Yukon just sent us those news below. They have tons of snow and best snowkite conditions ever. Read on…

The 2007 season in the Yukon has been unreal. We have had non stop good wind and snow by the meter. The beauty of this area is the proximity to the Pacific Ocean as well as the presence of roads that travel above the tree line. At the Yukon Alaska border the warm most air from the ocean is pushed upward and rapidly cooled in both the Haines and Skagway summits, resulting in both deep snow and consistent winds(25/35kmhr).  Things are only looking up as our northern latitude means that March and April are going to produce long days, warm weather and great snow. The Yukon kite community is growing rapidly as the word spreads of world class conditions, soft snow for soft landings and kite access backcountry skiing. We could not design a more perfect kite playground.

We are launching our kites 5ft from our car and getting in some huge days. Everyone seems to be flying 10m – 12m frenzy and manta kites. We could not be happier with the performance of either. It sure beats the old days of getting dragged around face first through the mountains on my inflatable. We spend most of our time kiting on a long lake system that has about 20ft cliffs on the side. Once there is enough snow these cliffs fill in and resemble a giant kite half pipe/terrain park that runs for about 26km. We have taken up the habit of parking a vehicle at each end of the pass so that we can work our way downwind all day finding different wind lips, drops and terrain features to play on. We just finished our sixth weekend in a row of perfect conditions and I am going to pack the car right now to head towards Haines Alaska.

Lately we have been shooting a little bit of video for fun and taking some big hits as the height of our airs keeps increasing.  The crash video clips should be good. We can’t help it after watching those Chasta videos. After crossing Alaska last winter we have become hooked on the huge local ice fields, they offer open terrain steady wind and unlimited opportunity. As a result Kite Yukon is planning a spring session at  the base of Mnt. Logan, the home of the largest non polar ice cap in the world. We have our sights set on making an ice field base camp and getting in as much kiting/skiing as possible at the base of Canada’s highest peak. The terrain features are amazing and the glacier is close to 180kms long as well as an incredibly deep snow pack. We are working on our website at this time and should have some video up in the next couple of weeks.  www.kiteyukon.com

Kite Yukon would really like to host a spring kiting event in the Yukon during the spring of 2008 if you have any interest drop us a line. These photos are from the last couple of weekends.  Hopefully we will see some of you out in the pass. 

Jim and Cath Welsh