Montana Snowkite Season Kickoff

Montana’s snowkite season blew in with a bang.

After two days of steadily falling temperatures and relentless north winds, the snow began to fall across Montana. All day Friday it accumulated and by Saturday 11 October, 2008 there were some valley locations reporting between twelve inches to an amazing three feet at Pony, MT! With weather like this there was no choice in my mind.

I packed up my kites and skis Friday night and was ready to roll at dawn the next morning. Snowkite season was on! Joel Beatty (aka Wreknball) from Montana Kite Sports and I met at Mount Haggin where there was a solid foot on the ground and abundant deep drifts. We sessioned at new spots as the north winds made places like Dry Creek and Showboat Hill difficult to kite. (I did session Showboat for an hour and, with uphill being upwind, just grew tired of it.)  We found the best snow and wind direction was just above Deep Creek on the south end of the area and there we spent the afternoon.

I started out on my 8m Manta II and Joel flew the 7m Frenzy FX. Both kites were perfect in the near whiteout conditions. Winds were a solid 35 mph with the gusts hitting over 40 regularly. The temperatures stayed in the low 20s all day and that made for a real winter-time feel. The snowfall never let up and there were many times that the surrounding hills just disappeared from view. It really didn’t matter as we were there to kite and not sightsee.

To be back on snow was a fantastic feeling! It was so fun to be boosting air off the wind drifts and landing silently into soft pillows of powder. Occasionally the thin snowpack revealed a few rocks but we could have cared less: It’s early October and we were kiting! As the day progressed I began to feel the fatigue from blasting through so many drifts of dense, wind deposited powder.

For my day’s fourth and final session I got out the 6m AccessXC and kited until almost sunset. The six was the ideal kite for the white freight trains of wind that thundered off the Pintler Mountains. While I could not get the height or air time as I was from the Manta II, the Access allowed me to shred plenty of powder and hit small kickers with ease. It was a sweet day and a just what the doctor ordered to start another long winter of snowkite bliss.

DAY 2 

As the snowfall totals were being tallied across Montana, it became clear that there are literally hundreds of square miles of ranch land that are deeply covered with a mantle of powder. Snotel reports across the state have commonly registered areas with 2 to 3 feet from last weekend’s storm.

On Monday morning I headed west to an area near the lower Madison Valley that always has wind – so much wind that usually that the snow never sticks, it just blow away. However last weekend’s storm was not normal and luckily within a half hour I had permission to kite on a gigantic ranch with loads of snow and a steady south wind.

Fully powered on my 12m Manta II, I had an awesome session. I kited on the open range for miles, up, down, north, south.  For most of the day the snow stayed light and dry. There was so much terrain I almost never had to cross my tracks. The sun was brilliant and as the day progressed the snow warmed steadily. By late afternoon the snow was beginning to feel more like chowder than powder. Oh well, my day was complete, four hours of powered up kiting on a completely untracked mountainside with great views of the nearby Tobacco Root Mountains.

It’s hard to believe that it’s only the middle of October.
See ya out there,
Noah