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November 2012 will go down in the record books as an incredible snow month in Haines, Alaska. We had a total of 11 ft in one month! Normally, November sees us travelling up to the pass to get our snowkiting fun, but this year we had really cold weather for weeks on end and literally mountains of fresh powder - at sea level.

The local crew took full advantage of the conditions getting some really good sessions in. Sometimes, the complaint was too deep, too much powder, etc. etc. The jumps were soft and smooth and the landings even softer and smoother!

With an upcoming trip planned, I started to research the costs around taking my board with me on a couple of airlines. All told, it was going to cost me about $300 to transport my board. Yes, I have a deceiver golf bag, but the airlines are getting wise to those and they ask what's inside (and if you don't have a set of golf clubs in there, beware). Besides, those deceiver golf bags are enornous and take up more than their fair share of room in the tiny rental car on the other end.

I would like to draw everyone's attention to KiteFest 2011.

The event takes place over the Memorial Day weekend in Homer. That's a long way for kiters in Southeast to travel but if you are a kiter in the Anchorage or Kenai area I highly recommend making the pilgrimage.

For kiters in Haines area, we'll be having our own fun on the beach that weekend. We might even be joined by the Canadian Kite Yukon contingent!

In what is a fitting end to this quirky winter, two Haines kiters hit the water this week for some fun spring sessions. It's funny that our opening water sessions happened on the same weekend as the Thomson Pass Snowkite festival, but it matches our experience this year.

Hope everyone has a great time up on Thomson Pass this weekend. Down here in Southeast we'll be flying high over the water! Let the summer begin!

A pretty disappointing Alaskan winter is drawing to a close. All over the state lower than normal snowfall, colder than normal temps, and higher than normal winds have made kiting more of a challenge this winter. The passes in southeast are pretty thin, featuring bullet-proof snow and sastrugi conditions. Down at sea level the flats are covered with barely any snow.

Rideable conditions finally came calling with our first real weekend of snowkiting at sea level this season! After a week of temps in the low teens, it snowed all day Saturday and then the temperature dropped overnight from 32 to 20 and the sun came out. The result was absolutely splendid conditions out on the river for Sunday and President's Day. The ice was firm and the 8 inches of snow was powdery beneath a thin crust that kept it from all being blown away.

In what continues to be a very dry and low-snow winter, a week of heavy rain has removed pretty much all the snow at sea level in this part of Southeast Alaska. The bare ground continues about 15-20 miles inland -- quite unprecedented for the middle of winter in Alaska. In contrast to our usually regular kiting on the local rivers and flats, we have had a total of about 4 kiteable days this winter!

We've been jonesing for some good snow here at sea level for a few weeks now. The good snows over Christmas were obliterated by subsequent rain and a week of temps in the 40s. This was followed by 2 weeks of bitter cold and howling wind, which froze up the river again, but wasn't so good for kiting.

Then, on Monday we finally got some fresh snow to lay on top of all that ice! It wasn't as much as we had hoped for, but it was enough to get an edge. Besides it was a sunny day, so that's all you need for good times!

I went out for my first snow-kite session of the year today and was reminded of a few little tips and tricks that I wanted to share.

September, 2010 was a very abnormal month in most of Alaska. It started off pretty normally: windy, rainy, grey (as shown in the video below)