Whistler Snowkiting

Whistler Snowkiting

Kiting near Flute Summit

April 6, 2024

Eric, Kyle, Stan, Frank

20 miles, 3,300ft gain

I’m trying to find good snowkiting locations in the pacific northwest to train for upcoming expeditions, and by now with low-elevation snow melting out it is kind of difficult to find places in Washington. It needs to be fairly flat, open, snow-covered terrain. High-elevation icecaps and glaciers are great now in the spring, but in Washington those are generally in wilderness areas and it’s unclear whether snowkiting is allowed there. The wilderness act doesn’t specifically prohibit it, so maybe it’s allowed. I think so few people practice this sport in WA that perhaps the law has not yet addressed this issue.

The route

In British Columbia, however, snowkiting is definitely allowed up on icecaps and above treeline. The icecaps are also much larger, giving better practice. They are also often accessible by snowmobile, allowing for more time to be spent kiting and less on the approach.

This weekend I met up with expert kiters Kyle, Stan, and Frank and the plan was to kite on some open above-treeline slopes near Whistler. The plan was to kite along the Whistler-Fissile ridge near Flute Mountain and Cowboy Ridge. This area is also accessible because the Whistler gondola provides access to the summit of Whistler peak, which is relatively close to the kiting areas. Also, I can only really take one passenger on my sled (now with melted-out spring roads I can’t really tow skiers behind). So with a larger group the sled-access locations didn’t make sense.

Kiting at cowboy ridge

Friday night I car camped at a pullout on the Brandywine FSR, then Saturday morning at 8:30am we met up at the Whistler gondola. I was able to get a ticket for a single ride up which was pretty cheap. From the top of the gondola we skied and skinned over Flute Summit to a nice flat open area between Flute and Oboe Summit. There we got in some good kiting for an hour. We were outside the ski boundary, but many skiers passed by. I think a lot were doing the spearhead traverse, which sounds fun.

We eventually packed up and skinned farther over to cowboy ridge. There I got practice kiting uphill. I had to do a lot of loops to generate enough apparent wind with the kite to pull me up. We got in a few more hours of kiting before it started getting late. So we skinned back over to Flute, then skied back down to Whistler by 6pm.

I cooked up some Ramen back at the Brandywine FSR then decided to get some more skiing in. I drove up to snowline at four corners on the FSR, then skinned four miles up to Chocolate bowl in the dark. I had an icy ski back and car camped again that night.

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