Launching wasn't meant to be easy!

I recently got back from a trip to the gorge where I managed to kite 10 out of the 12 days I was there and thought I'd share my experience at Stevenson, which is one of about 8 sites you can kite in the gorge. One good thing about Stevenson is there are no beginners, not that there's anything wrong with beginners , which has something to do with the horrendously bad launch there. Once rigged up beside, or more often than not, on the bike path you walk down a 45 degree slope while one person picks up the kite and another acts as line clearer to keep the lines out of the low shrubs. Once your at the bottom of the hill you sit down in a little pond of still water behind a big rock and get the board on. You then bum shuffle into the water and drift down current and as soon as you get line tension the kite gets thrown up and hopefully clears the big trees just down wind. Once your up and planning the last obstacle is the salmon net thats not very considerately anchored to the big rock that extends about 100m out in the river that needs to be jumped before you get to open water. The wind was about 30-35kts when l first got there so had to wait a couple of hours to get out on the 11m as the 7m I'd ordered hadn't arrived yet. Once out the wind held 20-25kts for the rest of the day which made for a good session. The landing is a little easier but about as fun as the launch. As you come in you give the signal to land so someone can get ready to catch the kite. You come in up wind and when about 30m offshore you get off the board and body drag towards shore and steer the kite down to ground level, which is about 10m above water level so the kite can be caught and then swim as hard as you can to shore to get out of the water in front of the big rock you launched from. If you fail to get in in time you end up drifting down current with your lines wrapped around the big rock and your kite at the top of the hill ready to get dragged down the hill and start looping so needless to say most people find that a strong incentive to get it right. We had two near kitemares that day. The first happened when the chicken loop popped just as a kite was being lauched. Luckily the rider was able to grab the chicken loop with one hand and steer with the other and managed to drop her kite in the only gap in the trees onshore where the kite was grabed by a couple off people running down wind. She then climbed up the bank, walked back up wind and launched again without a problem. I was casually told by a local later that "this is just something that happens sometimes here". The second was on landing when the kite that was kept too high as they came in, backstalled and rolled over just off the ground but was then caught by a tree( and in case your wondering it wasn't a cab) before being grabed by a couple of people. Once it was removed from the tree it was found that the only damage was a small dent in the riders ego. So the next time your launching off a nice wide sandy beach you might want to give Stevenson a thought, or if you game, a visit( the best time is July to September).

My launches around these parts aren't quite as risky as that, although could easily go bad always being solo.

(Could you try pressing the return button occasionally, i nearly didn't read that massive block of writing and it was actually a very good yarn.)

I will be googling for some pictures of the rock at stevenson now