SNOWKITING DD SNOECK[1][2]

INTRODUCTION
Dixie Dansercoer
Instead of losing myself in lyrical approaches to a world
full of winter wonder, I first decided on a very basic,
generic title for this book: ‘Snowkiting’. However, as the
pictures will hopefully evoke, I have tried to showcase a
combination of amazing grace, beauty and agility from
the riders. Quickly, I understood that a dry definition
of this wonderful sport needed a bit more spice and
‘Freedom of Flow’ was added to convey the feeling of
liberty, grandeur and flair that we experience when
gliding or soaring across endless fields of white.
On top of my gratitude for the testimonials by the
people featured in this book, I must give enormous
credit to the creative eye of the photographers who
have captured the moments of complete flow or
created harmonious moments between frozen nature
and the riders. They have turned the apparent apathy
of the frozen white into an adrenalin-filled adventure.
Snowkiting is a sport where riders use the wind to
power up their kites and progress over snow or ice.
Their playground is either to be found on frozen lakes
or large snow expanses, ice caps or even glaciers.
Up or down mountains. Close to home or very far away.
With the acquired techniques, the skier or snowboarder
uses a kite to glide over snowy surfaces to go
from A to B. More risk-filled snowkiting comprises
boosting the generated power into jumps, defying
gravity and pushing the limits of areal gymnastics.
This aesthetically-pleasing sport is similar to its waterbased
sister kiteboarding, but the solid playground
has one big difference: water has been converted into
its frozen state i.e. snow or ice. The principles of using
the kite are the same, but the feel of having to deal
with water or snow definitely makes for a totally
different game.
In the early days of snowkiting, foil kites were the
most common type of kites. Today, we see a more
complex situation whereby a good deal of snowkiters
with limited budgets use their water-kites for both
kiteboarding and snowkiting. However, such a compromise
is not possible when hi-end goals are pursued.
Very specific snowkites definitely deliver that cuttingedge
advantage and specific qualities of aerodynamic
wings make soaring over snow so much more efficient.
This book is about the art of snowkiting where no
compromises can be made. Where fine technique
shows what perfect symbioses are produced when
the wind, kite and the rider orchestrate a fine the fine
art of gracious movement. Just like a virtuoso violin
player may not settle for less than a Stradivarius, so
are dedicated snowkiters: everything must be in tune
and with perfect control, the effortless moves are
turned into a natural exchange with the elements.
From water to snow
Should we talk about kite-skiing or snow-kiting or
should we also have considered kite-snowboarding?
Names or definitions organically grow with the birth of
something new. This was exactly the case when the
sport of kiteboarding gained popularity in the eighties/
nineties. I think we can safely call this accessible and
very popular watersport the mother of all modern kiterelated
sports. Would it perhaps not have been better
to have called this water-based sport board-kiting or
water-surfing or something similar? With the inherent
developments that took place, in- and outsiders
started to merge definitions and kiteboarding became
the generic definition of this new phenomenon.
Kiteboarding was the closest to what it represented to
the grand public: gliding over water with the aid of a
kite while using a board. After years of experimentation
with windsurfer boards or other flotation devices and
even the occasional tests with waterskis, the boards
copied from wakeboarding seemed to be the most
suited for an easy and quick learning curve and allowed
for a wide array of moves and jumps. With the typical
evolutionary progress whereby the pioneer riders pushed
the limits and started to use surfboards to venture
out on the oceans and tame those monster-waves,
kitesurfing was born. A new breed of ‘uni-directional’
surfboards with or without footstraps were used to ride
the waves, thus establishing a clear distinction between
kiteboarding and kitesurfing.