9/5-6 Gorge 14m & 10m

[Jason Klein]

Went a little crazy and decided last minute to drive up to the gorge for a not-long-enough weekend. Really too much driving for a 3 day weekend. Wind was pretty gusty for the gorge, with rain on the coast and in the hood river area. I kited further east.

Pulled into Rufus Saturday morning and by around noon, wind was mid-high teens. John G showed up just in time to launch me and I headed out on the 14 for a warm up session. Wind was kiteable for about 20 mins, but then slowly backed off and in the end I was just happy to get back to shore. John had driven out to Roosevelt while I was kiting, and after a few phone calls, I decided to follow him. It was a complete mob-scene there. I guess everyone who wanted to kite made the drive since the western and central gorge was stormy. The launch was a clusterF and pretty tough since the wind was NW instead of the normal W, which made it side off and in a wind shadow. Rigged the 10m and managed to get out. Once away from shore, wind was a bit stronger than it seemed (in the shadow). Probably 25-30mph and pretty gusty - but no worse than your avg day at DC. Definitely got to test the high end of the 10m. Probably could have been on the 7m most of the time, but aside from the 15 mins or so where it was just too much, got a nice 2 hour session in that ended when one of my footstap screws came out - all the way on the opposite shore. That was a long way to drag back.

Spent the night there at Roosevelt and woke up to an almost identical forecast for Sunday. Took the 14m out for a couple hours around noon, and the 10m again for the late afternoon. Asked a guy for a launch for the afternoon session, who told me I shouldn't go out - not said as a recommendation, but like he might say it to his 8 year old son. Now I can see that because I wear a helmet, maybe he thought I was a newb. I let him know that I've been kiting for 5 years and was comfortable in gusty conditions, to which he replied that he had been kiting 6 years and that was the worst conditions he had ever been in. There were probably 25-30 kiters out at the time. Before it degenerated into us pulling our d1cks out to see who was bigger, I thanked him for his advice and asked him to launch me anyway. I swear that the guy tried to screw up my launch by pointing and throwing the kite into the ground. What a dick. I launched it fine anyway and headed out to what turned out to be the best session of the weekend. The first hour and a half was a relatively smoothe 24-28. the last half hour was gusty and a bit stronger - pushing the high end of the 10m, but again, no gustier than DC.

Too much driving for 2 days of kiting, but at least I got 2 decent days in.

[John Guay]

Hi Jason,

Glad you got a couple of good sessions. I hope Todd did the same. I had a good week of westerlies and headed home on Sunday. Roosevelt was a crazy scene on Saturday and Sunday being the only decent wind on a big holiday. Cars parked up and down the road, very little space to pump up and a difficult launch with northerly offshore wind. Be ware if you kite Roosevelt that there are lots of small thorns in rigging lawn and on the sand where you launch. There were some bummed out kiters with holes in their kites.