1/8 Monte Cristo big kites

[Brian Fox]

Had a friend in town from jhole so we headed out to Monte to try and score some rides. I'm sure the wind was a lot better at Powder Mt. but i decided I'm not that into paying to go there and i really like the terrain at Monte so we decided to try it. Arrived about 1:30- 2:00 to almost no wind..drove up to the snowmobile parking lot and a breeze of about 10 gave us some hope. Went back to the launch area and started rigging because at this point going back to Powder would've been pointless. I rigged my 12m turbo diesel and my Ride 161, Will rigged a 13m instinct and was riding his Twisted board. Took us about 30 min. of slogging just to get up out of the launch area. I had already invented some new curse words at this point but once we got up out of there things started to pick up. Wind was really south and almost seemed like it had a little east in it which was weird. Snow conditions were awesome and there is pretty much total coverage there now. Wind picked up enough that we rode out on ant flat to the first bigger hill out there. I rode up to the top of this and the wind was quite a bit stronger up there but we were both a little concerned cause of the fickle wind so we started tacking back to the launch area after a bit. The wind was pretty decent in the fields tacking back and we had a nice session of practicing our jibbing. Before we made it back the wind completely crapped out on us...not wanting to accept a walk out we sat there for a good 45 min...nothing...as darkness started to set in we rolled it up and skated out on the cat track...prob got two and a half hours of riding in with and hour or so of 15-20 wind, pretty awesome session! Didn't seem to get warm enough to mess up the snow either, seemed fairly fluffy when we left.