Kite skiing

Kite skiing on ice

Closeup

Kite skiing is a relatively recent development of skiing where the pull comes from a kite. It can be done on water, snow, land or ice.

Kite skiing on snow has little in common with downhill skiing. It shares a greater similarity with cross-country skiing but the driving force coming from the kite rather than stocks or gravity. The kites used for kite skiing are similar to those used for paragliding, but are generally smaller since the kite does not need to provide sufficient lift to raise the skier from the surface.

Kite skiing on water can be done with different kind of skis, therefore it may be compared with water skiing or with wakeboarding. Kite skiing on land uses specialized grass skis or sand skis.

On 20 January 2007, during the Antarctic summer, Team N2i reached the Antarctic pole of inaccessibility using kite skiing as their primary means of propulsion.^[1]

On 5 June 2010 Canadian Eric McNair-Landry and American/French Sebastian Copeland kite skied 595 km in 24 hours (an average speed of 24.79167 kilometres per hour, or 15.4048295 miles per hour, or 6.886575 metres per second), a distance world record.^[2] The team completed the first east to west crossing of Antarctica using kites, a distance of over 4000 kilometers via the pole of inaccessibility and the South Pole over 82 days in 2011-12^[3]

References