4 days of winter wild camping, snowkiting, speedflying and touring ski.

You can read all the report here : http://www.freeairadventure.com/BS&Seng.pdf

and to watch the film/documentary here : http://vimeo.com/22242182

http://www.freeairadventure.com/

The F-Mountains Snowkiting school has pulled on its new clothes for the coming season : check out the NEW website at www.snowkiting-school.com

What can we ask for more? Some sauna and hot tub… yeah right!

Well we only had to ask…

After all the teams have arrived, we all reach Vadso where a diner (local reindeer meat!) has been organized in an old farm. 3 warm saunas and 2 hot tubs are waiting for us outside, with loads of Norwegian cold beers…

The final results are given : our team finished 5^th on the overall, out of the 14^th team which have raced over the last 3 days. But whatever the result, we are so happy to have joined this race and made it to the end.

We are aware that except for the small snow storm, we have been extremely lucky with the good weather conditions, visibility and high temperatures. It would have been a total other story racing the same 175km in the white out, by -20 degrees….

Anyway, competitors and staff all join in the hot tub to enjoy the party until late in the night, when the sunrise makes us realise that it’s time to go to bed, as we all have to go back to our everyday life, living our great memories of this VAKE 2010 behind us.

Finally, the VAKE is probably, and up to this day, the longest and hardest snowkiting race in the world. But for us, is simply the BEST of all! Great atmosphere, cool spirit, professional organization and amazing kiting area…

BIG UP to the Varanger Kite Club and it’s sponsors who have offered us one of the best snowkiting experience EVER!

And many thanks to our sponsors, families and friends ou have helped us before and through this adventure. For sure, we will do our best to come back next year !

It’s been snowing and blowing all night. Hidden behind its shelter, our tent has been shaken and covered with a white layer of fresh powder. But when we wake up at 6.30, the sky is blue and the air crispy cold…. but no wind is blowing.

Briefing at 8am confirms that we will race today anyway. Wind forecast is good, even though so far it’s still quiet. And this will also be the last day of the VAKE 2010, arriving tonight in Vadso, since the next day forecast is bad, leaving us no chance to make it to Vardo with the 3^rd leg.

At 9am, the horn launches the start of the race. The wind is very low around the camp site, so some competitors have chosen to start walking. We take our chance with the 12.5m Montana5, not really motivated to walk And it appears to be a good choice, since reaching the hills going up to the plateau, we fill the wind getting stronger in our kites, and we are even running second.

But we are a bit too excited, and forget to check on the relief. So we take the most direct route, passing a hill on its left side, down wind. And within a few minutes, we end up standing still, our kite dead on the ground Further on the ridge, we see our concurrents still kiting in a light wind, but slowing fading away…. while we have no choice but start walking.

45 minutes walking later, we are approaching a better altitude, and the wind picks up. Back on track, we are heading in a straight line to the next check point :

This is a spot on a frozen lake, where a few fishermen and scooter drivers have gathered to see us passing by. A 30 min stop is mandatory… and we ear that the first 2 teams are already running an hour ahead of us.

Energy bar eat, water drunk, sledge repacked, we are in the starting blocks for the last part of today’s leg : a 22km line with a nice side wind.

Conditions are perfect: Cold snow, 10m/s wind sideways, we are flying to the finish line, crossing plateaus, canyons and rivers, and slowly gaining on other teams.

The last 4km are the most exciting: overlooking the wide flat area with the final line at its end, we see another team coming to our right. Making a quick choice, we stay on the ridge instead of going straight down, hoping for better wind. And it pays out! We are totally flying toward the finish line, leaving them behind and finally arriving 3^rd of today’s leg!

What a race…. and what an amazing landscape we have crossed once again on those plateaus!

Sleeping in the snow was not a problem at all, since we are well equipped with proper Artic sleeping bags from our sponsor Bergans of Norway. Anyway, this is a very mild spring, and lately the temperatures have hardly dropped below -5 degrees at night. Good for us !

Morning briefing is clear : today’s leg has to be cancelled due to bad weather expected during the afternoon (snow and strong winds). Beside, we are already standing in the fog, and the 2 missing teams have not been rescued yet because of too bad visibility…

A dog sledge has joined us, so we enjoy a few rides with them. The organization has also set up a big tent with a small wood stove, where a few of us can spend some time chatting and warming up for a while.

But the snow storm picks up in the afternoon just after the missing team joined us. We have to secure the tent and build some wind shelter using snow blocks. The Russians do even better : they built a real Igloo! Beautifully done…

Finally, this day stuck at camp site is an opportunity to recharge our “batteries” while sleeping or relaxing in our sleeping bags… getting ready for the next leg of tomorrow!

15 teams of the 18 originally planned have finally made it. Of course, getting ready for the VAKE and coming all the way up here was a race by itself!

The start area is pretty wide. But there are still many rocks sticking out from the snow. The wind is quite strong, but blowing exactly against our direction to the South.

At 10.30am, the first leg of the VAKE 2010 is officially launched, and we all ride full speed up wind, toward our first check point on the GPS. But after only 500m, one Swedish contestant makes a mistake with his kite and gets violently dragged into the rocks, loosing consciousness… Hopefully, he is quickly taken care of by the staff and evacuated to an hospital. That is over for them, only 14 teams are on the competition.

Tacking upwind is a hard job, especially when the breeze gets lower and lower… After 30min, it’s hard to keep going, even with our 12,5m Montana5. But hopefully, after a few kilometres, the wind picks up again. The views over the Barents Sea are so beautiful, and the plateau so wide, that we kind of forget about the lack of wind.

The teams are slowly spreading apart over the Varanger plateau, depending on the size of their kites, the weight of their sledges, their navigating skills, etc.. etc.. We end up not seeing anyone else, which makes us feel very small… but makes the race even more exciting. Crossing massive canyons, zigzagging around rocks, always looking for the best wind (which is still very low)

At 6pm, we are still 10km from the finish line of this 1^st day. But the wind dies totally, so we decide to head toward the closest (and unique) road to get picked up by the organisation, according to safety rules of the race. We are only 4km away, so we make it within one hour.

Once at the finish line, we ear that only 4 teams have made it to the end on time. So we start to set up our camp site and spend the night in the snow. When the night falls, 12 team are here, but 2 are still missing. They’ll have to stay overnight in the mountains. This is why each team has to carry everything to survive over the 3-4 days of race : food and camping gears.

We are exhausted after 8 hours tacking upwind… And by looking at our GPS track log, we understand why : to cover the 40 km of today’s leg, we actually kited over 100km…..

Well, so far it seems that the VAKE could be the hardest snowkiting race in the world…

First, we meet the Swedish/Slovenian team. Then the guys from Czech Republic who drove 3000km in their van to join the race (we are nothing with our 1600km). They have home-made sledges built in melted plastic. Rough finitions but quite nice work. Another team from Sweden comes with a traditional wooden sledge… beautiful! The Russians have also a home-made one, with a huge bag on top…. which looks quite heavy. Well, it’s pretty interesting to see how each of us have prepared gears for the race…

Bus transfer is arranged and takes us to the village of Tana, where we meet the organization and get the first race briefing. From there, we join the local Norwegian teams and jump on the bus for a 2 hours drive to the fishing town of Berlevåg, at the far north end of the Varanger plateau… and one of the northest point of Europe.

We quickly get into the mountains and up on the plateau. It’s basically one huge white area, as far as our eyes can see. And we are going to kite across it ! A few cabins are spread there and there, and used by the reindeers owners. Thousands of them are bred on the plateau.

Then reaching the north end, white turns into dark blue-grey of the Barents sea, with aggressive cliffs falling into it. Next piece of hard ground is about 1200 km north, where Greenland starts.

Berlevåg is a fishing village, but in one of the roughest place in the world. Cold, windy, but extremely rich in fishes and other seafood. Whales are often seen from the shore, but we won’t get this lucky today. Instead, we are offered to set up our gears and sleeping bags on the floor of the town cinema where we will spend the night. Wake up call will be at 6.30am, but most of the teams are still working on their equipment late in the night…

We set up the tent next to a gravel road. Ivan lights a fire in order to grill the sausages. As 2 real latins, we have bought some red wine and a bit of blue cheese. It’s not too cold, something around 5 degrees, and after a little while, we see that some northern lights are slowly rising up from the horizon… Another one !? In 2 days !? Well in the end that will only be a very small one so we go to our sleeping bags.

Arriving close to the Finland border, we are driving along the Baltic sea.. totally frozen as far as our eyes can see…. The sun is shining. What a spectacular sight!

Around lunch time, we are approaching the Polar Circle, in the city of Rovaniemi. The city of Santa Claus !! A bit of a touristic thing…. but hey! they were clever enough to bring thousands of tourists in this quite uninteresting par of the country. Well done!

Until then, Finland was not looking very wild, with houses spread along the main road. But once we passed the Polar Circle, they become fewer and fewer, living room to wide open areas of small trees, big frozen lakes, and desertic hills. We are captivated by this wilderness, seeing some reindeers from time to time… and forget to fill up the tank of the car until the alarm goes on, giving un 50km to go…. The problem is that the road signs give us 80km to the next village, and there is absolutely NOTHING in this area… except hills and trees as far as eyes can see…

Hum… we have everything to spend the night out, but we can’t arrive late for the Race ! Hopefully, trying to drive as intellegently and economically, we reach the gas station with probably 0,5l in the tank….. Ouf!

Crossing the bridge taking us into Norway, the vegetation starts to change slowly, showing that we are getting closer to the ocean. We are driving along a large river, carrying large bits and chunks of ice, illuminated by the war light of the  lowering sun. It is just beautiful!

Around 8pm we drive in to Vadsø, where we will meet the organisator of the race tomorrow morning. The northern wind is blowing quite hard, freezing us down to the bones. It’s only zero degrees, but the moisture in the air makes is hard to cope with.

We find a place outside to village to plant our tent. It will be on snow as the rocky ground does not accept our tent poles… After 20min setting up everything, we hear a raging sound coming toward us…. It’s a plane, flying quite low… and descending to the pist a few hundred meters from us! Nevermind, it’s too cold to move away, so we’ll stay here. There are probably no many planes landing on this part of the world…